back from a week of houseboating, where i spent every day hiking, floating around in the lake, or doing crossword puzzles. a much-needed break following a few months of frenzied hell.

it was refreshing not to have internet access, though i feel a bit out of touch now, having missed the katrina ordeal. when i saw lewis lapham speak at nash in january, i asked him if there was a sense of outrage in the US that the mainstream media was simply ignoring or if there was just no anger whatsoever. there is no outrage, he told me. the american people had gone numb.

well, there's certainly outrage now. a year too late, maybe.

on the houseboat, SW brought along a copy of the walrus, in which i noticed that one of their illustrators, sam, shared the same name as a remarkably gifted artist and genuinely awesome person i knew in high school. at the risk of feeling like a bit of a stalker, i am tempted to get in touch with him. is that weird? just a couple of weeks ago, my sweetie and i were on the bus going home from a party, when a chick approached us and started talking to us. i'd recognized her as the queen bitch from my junior high years, while my sweetie had the misfortune of going to high school with her. she talked to us like we'd always been pals.

when we got off the bus, my sweetie said, "you know, that's the first time she's ever said a word to me."

i felt indignant at her nerve to come speak to me after how mean she was to the nerdy loser girl in junior high. at the same time, i couldn't help but feel that her high school years probably were her best and she was trying to find any excuse to relive them.

anyway, point is, i don't know how a random e-mail from me to sam would be received.

***

one week before starting up again at d&m.