Old house in Atlanta

Pictures of my recent trip to Georgia are here.

Last night I dreamed that somebody loved me.

I mean, it's been years since I cried with Morrissey.

Going home coming home

Holidays and a trip to Georgia. Memories?

B. left his own family to visit mine for a few days. After picking him up at the airport, we drove the hour and a half to Athens, where I spent eight years of my life. The first two years of college were successful; I had brought a confident self-importance from my small hometown, where it was easy to shine as an intellectual, politician, and artist. During the second two, an unraveling began. I wasn't really interested in anything; I wasn't really good at anything.

Lies! Lies! How often do we tell ourselves these ridiculous lies! I was still interested in Death in Venice and, in my quarter off from school to recover from some academic attempts gone awry (a summer archaeological dig with Georgia's bulldogged version of granola-headed Gaias and beer-bellied Indiana Joneses) and revolting professors (I name him now and forever: Ganschow must atone), even began to work up a piano recital.

B. told one of these lies the other day. (Those dreadful cognitive therapists, who healed me a little, calls them distorted thoughts.) We had had a little trouble deciding whether we wanted to join a friend to watch a football game at a pizza joint that usually isn't worth driving to. "Why are all our talks like this?" he had asked in exasperation. I wasn't having any of that. "All our talks? We haven't had a talk like this in several months!" And that was true, and he realized it, and we made our decision to have pizza. (He has greatly helped me to communicate better. It has never been my wish to speak a lot without saying anything, though I do so love to noncommit.)

But I digress. Memories: Sneezing snot on the wall of Athens' first sushi restaurant. I drove B. around town, looking at the various places I had lived: "I smoked a lot of cigarettes in there"; "That's where I waited for the phone to ring"; "That's where I lived when my aunt and uncle died." We ended up at the sushi restaurant and ate with Rachel, who I hadn't seen since she visited me in Redwood City in March 2004. I only saw one person I recognized -- a Townie with dark eyebrows, possibly only one, and a child -- and twice an old ghost. The ghost of an old friend, whom my mom calls my twin, who I knew mostly through a drunken misery. (I was much inspired by the fantasy of novels then. Nowadays my dealings with humans are more mathematical.)

Ah, here it comes again: Old. Math is what happens when you get old. Endlessly adjusting to simplify the equation. Copying and recopying the formula, because there's always a smudge or a number that's a little taller than the others. Heaven forbid if you should crumple the paper and start doodling on a new sheet.

This, though: Spock playing the harp as Uhura sings, and dreaming of a taxi ride with Marcello Mastroianni, who was a little irritated with me.