2009-02-27 - 2:45 p.m.

Driving south from Scranton last week on I-81, 2,000 feet up it felt like, snow going sideways, I was cycling through the radio stations. Not much came in except Christian stations, evangelical stations, Jesus-talk, preaching stations. I kept my finger on the Seek button, trying to get something I could care about, at least some Tom Petty or Motown. After thirty or forty miles of static, I got a Scottish preacher guy who was all right. I was happy to hear a voice, and so I stayed with him for a while. But then he went and all I could get was a succession of very somber Midwestern types, guys who in my head look like Mr. Rogers but a little younger and probably with more money. And I listened for much longer than I ever have to a radio preacher man, in this case, for about five minutes. And he's talking about not stopping by the bar after work, and how you shouldn't have a beer with dinner and it just struck me that maybe these guys should loosen up a bit. I'm more convinced than ever that any kind of orthodoxy is scary: veganism, socialism, any kind of no-fun religion. I think people should have every right to not eat chicken eggs or butter or cheese, but I do think that too much orthodoxy is somehow bad for the soul. Too much no is not as good as a little yes.

I can't stop looking at slideshows of Obama from the AP or Reuters or Agence France-Presse. I think it's got something to do with the expressions on peoples' faces when they're trying to shake his hand or when they see him come into a room. I'm sure there are thousands of photos like this, but with prime ministers and movie stars and athletes, but he's my guy, I guess, and so it's different.

I went to a shopping mall today, to buy a pair of jeans. I impressed myself, because I tried on four or five pairs, in different stores, and was pretty thorough about it, rather than just buying the first dark-blue pair of 32x32 Levis I saw. I tried on those Levis but also tried on some other brands, and it turns out there is a wide, wide variety of jeans out there, in the world, being bought and tried on. Intimidating, the variety, the options, kind of like restaurants in New York or kinds of cameras. But, and I haven't been to a real-deal, two-level, suburban shopping mall in maybe eight or nine months, for the first time I really felt impatient about being inside one. I've been in a dozen shopping malls, but for the first time I really got the old guys on the benches, the guys with those middle-distance stares. Nothing much interested me there: the shiny cases, the straight and clean clothes, the half-dance music coming from Abercrombie and Fitch or from the Express. It felt, for the first time, like a made-up place.

I wish I could, like a carpenter can make a door frame, manufacture hip-hop beats. I don't listen to all that much hip hop but when I do, I always lose myself in the beats, in the samples, the mood, the darkness of the swirl. The lyrics are OK and maybe as a word guy I should care more about them, but really it's the background alleyways, the sidewalks on which these agile young men walk, that I care more about.

Ian McEwan says, when telling a story, that you'd better be interesting. There are too many boring novels, he says. Ten-four, McEwan.

Friday afternoons, you know, really are the best. It's all right in front of you, just right there, and it's coming, it's coming.

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