epilogue.

John made this today...

goodbye, sweetiepie.

Okay, the good news: my parents are here and my sister, brother-in-law, two nephews, and two other extra-curricular relatives are coming on Monday.

The bad news...

Our fish, Santiago, died yesterday. And his empty bowl is sitting there on the counter...all...empty. One of my most vivid memories of living in Atlanta is of watching Santiago swim (at that time, he was living in a vase--the vase the purple roses John gave me for Valentine's Day had come in), under the lamp that belonged to my grandmother, with the light coming through his red and blue fins like a stained glass window...while I sat there, on the couch, depressed and maladjusted. He traveled through: Georgia, Tennessee, Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Missouri, Iowa, South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Utah, Nevada, and California. John had even taught him to jump out of the water for his food. He was our friend. And now he's gone. We'll miss him.

book hoarding for the chronically worrisome.

I've just finished The Polysyllabic Spree, well, basically. I have to admit, I didn't read the whole thing. The book is a collection of the essays Nick Hornby wrote for the Believer about the books he bought and/or read from September 2003 to November 2004, interspersed with short excerpts from a handful of the books discussed. And I only hesitated to say I finished the book because I actually skipped over the last two excerpts. Nick Hornby has a distinct way of writing. So much so, in fact, that he's one of those authors (like, say, David Sedaris) who shows up in blurbs for other writers' paperbacks trying to convince you that you'll like it because surely you like Nick Hornby or know someone who likes Nick Hornby or have seen a movie based on a Nick Hornby novel. What happened to me toward the end of Spree was that I didn't want to stop reading his style and start reading Patrick Hamilton for two or three pages. Would you suddenly throw your car into second gear for a few moments while going 65 down the 5? The thought occurs to me that maybe you would. My car is an automatic, after all. And besides that, when do you ever really go 65 on the 5? Perhaps I should've used a different analogy. If the thing about gears didn't make sense, and I'm not one who knows, imagine instead that you're listening to No Doubt (the early, fun stuff that most people actually like) and then there's a track of, say, Simon and Garfunkel thrown into the mix. It's not that Art and Paul aren't fantastic, but you had a certain groove going. Or again, maybe you didn't, in which case go back to the first analogy and change it around for yourself so it makes sense. I'm done with this.

The Amazon rating for this book is four and a half stars. And for some reason I'm surprised by this. Not that it isn't good--it is good. But ratings that high usually indicate run-away bestsellers like (pulling a title from a hat, so to speak) The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, which at this moment has 811 customer reviews and was one of the books discussed in Spree. Not to discredit Mr. Hornby's ability to pull in a vast readership, but let's face it, this is a book that hangs out in the Literary Criticism shelf with the likes of Deconstructionalism, probes into the deeper realms of Chaucer, and Harold Bloom. The people who read this book are people who are willing to read a book about books. It's quite possible that there aren't 811 of us around. Especially 811 of us who would want such a book to also be sprinkled with pop culture references and paragraphs like these:

[In So Many Books] Zaid's finest moment...comes in his second paragraph, when he says that "the truly cultured are capable of owning thousands of unread books without losing their composure or their desire for more."

That's me! And you, probablly! That's us! "Thousands of unread books"! "Truly cultured"! .... I suddenly had a little epiphany: all the books we own, both read and unread, are the fullest expression of self we have at our disposal. (pages 124-125)

And yet, here I am, books on the "want" list creeping up on me like kudzu...feeling incredibly guilty for wanting to continue to bite off more than I can read. At the moment, I'm "in the middle of" (which could mean page 5 or page 100) the following books:
The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi
Take the Cannoli by Sarah Vowell
Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress by Susan Gilman
Toast by Nigel Slater
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling
and ELEVEN, I've just counted, other books sitting on my shelves right now with scraps of paper poking out to say "You're not done yet, loser, get back here" that I'm not even going to list because it's been at least six months since I opened them. That's, what? Seventeen books? Do I even have enough time to finish the ones I started--not to mention all the books I wrote papers on in college without ever having read--before something drastic happens and I never read again? John and I want children eventually, after all. Can I finish all these books at the rate I'm going before there's a small child around to neglect so I can not feel illiterate for never having read Dostoevsky, who I don't even own?

Probably not. Because between now and that time, I will have no doubt bought at least 30 more books. That I won't read either.

i can't think of a witty title.

The new thing in my life right now is that company, in the form of various friends and relatives, will be flowing in and out like waves at the beach until the middle of July. Our friend Chris got here yesterday, which was his birthday. This morning while he was reading the book we got him for said birthday, I started reading Nick Hornby's The Polysyllabic Spree.

This was a book that came in the mail a few days ago, for free, because I bought a subscription to the Believer...because I felt, I guess, that it was time John and I subscribed to a magazine. I'm not sure why, but in the moment it felt very mature and somehow solid, as though we'd be forced to not move again for a while so we wouldn't have to change our address with Our Magazine. (Why getting a CA driver license didn't give me that feeling, I'm not sure.) Also, I never seem to read as many books as I feel like I should or as many as I want to. Many of these writers (like Nick Hornby, though I've read all his novels already) appear in McSweeneys, but it's expensive...so we got the Believer, which has cool people show up in it, too. Basically the idea is that if I don't read all that many actual books, at least the magazine I thumb threw at night will have more of an impact. If I can't read more books, I can at least read about books.

So, I started reading my "free gift" of Nick Hornby...who just may be the funniest man on the planet. Except for John.

Of course.

Anyway, Mr. Hornby writes this column for the magazine that apparently is going to keep my husband and I in California for at least 10 issues in which he discusses the books he buys each month versus the books he actually reads. There's this one section though, where he talks about looking around at what books people are reading by the hotel pool when he goes "on holiday" (he's English) to see if anyone is reading one of his. I just thought that was so interesting...mainly because I read his first two novels while "on vacation" (I'm still not English).

I read High Fidelity in London during my "study abroad" month. And I felt like crap in London--lonely, depressed, directionless...pretty much like I do now, only I was thinner then and now I get to see John all the time. The movie version of High Fidelity played an interesting role in the ending of the relationship I had before I started dating John and in the book Why Girls Are Weird, which (even though I didn't really like it) kind of inspired me to start this website. Anyway, I felt like crap in London and I would lay on my little bed in the Kings College dorm and read High Fidelity on the days I couldn't make myself get on a bus or train to some sight somewhere.

I read About a Boy while on a trip to Chicago with my mom. Probably the point in our relationship where we started acting like two adults talking to each other as friends...rather than one adult and a moody teenager.

I read How to be Good, too, but I wasn't on vacation...and I don't remember reading it as vividly. Mr. Hornby has a new novel coming out in June, which I plan to read, too. But I seriously doubt I'll be on vacation. And we all know I can't move.

i'm bored.

I'm at work taking my break in the office because I have no car today. Because the one I so skillfully smashed up still isn't fixed yet.

For lunch, I got food from the vegetarian Mexican restaurant down the street. And, because I never really walk outside the store, it was kind of interesting going to get my food. I mean, the store is close to this huge intersection, so that was part of it. But, really, it just smells weird outside. The car exhaust smell...the heat...it smelled like a carnival.

well, actually it is that weird.

John and I went to Universal Studios today. And rode in an eight-seater DeLorean. (Sweet!) The park is up on a mountain, in between The Valley and Hollywood, so there are these spectacular views. You know how people always say that line, you know, about being able to see their houses from up high? Well, I really could see my house from there...or at least the bigger buildings down the street a couple blocks.

It's weird that it takes me less time to get to a theme park than it takes my mom to get to a grocery store.

We bought The Phantom of the Opera on DVD today, too, and watched it tonight. Afterwards, I discovered that there's a two-disc collector's set available...which I obviously didn't get.

Anyway, I cried like a baby. Phantom, the stage production, was something my family was always into...so in a strange way, I get homesick when I hear "All I Ask of You" and "Music of the Night" and watch this pitiable, deformed creature weep because the love of his life, it turns out, thinks he's either the ghost of her father or a murderous demon and is in love with some rich prettyboy who calls her Lottie. So I cry a little for Erik, who isn't even given a name in this movie (or in the stage production either). And I cry for me. Because I can't look down the row of plush theater seats and see my grandfather--dangerously close to nodding off--or my sister's goosebumps and runny, after-tears mascara.

I've seen Phantom in three cities, including London, and once (here in LA) there was an earthquake in the middle...and I didn't even notice. I have the FAO Schwarz Barbie dolls...which seem to have appreciated a lot in value since I bought them.

Perhaps John's Godzilla..umm...interest because "obsession" sounds too harsh...isn't all that weird.

i want a house. so. bad.

Okay. So, I already have a semi-addiction to design. (An addiction that maybe only John might have ever noticed. Because I kinda talk about it...a lot. And the thing about design: you have to see it. And John is with me. A lot. After all. We are married. And I'm not married to any of you. So if you didn't know of my addiction, don't sweat it.) But today, I have come to realize, Todd Oldham is my new hero. I bought his new book today and spent almost my entire night looking at it. And it's a do-it-yourself book. I basically spent my night reading an instructional manual. And it is so cool. So. Cool.

My other favorite pop-artists/designers include SHAG and Gary Baseman.