2009-03-31 - 11:37 a.m.
Back last night from San Diego, ostensibly for a wedding. Went out early and did stuff we wanted to do.
- Felt warm sun on my face. Wore sunglasses. Wore short-sleeved shirts. Sat by a pool with curved corners. Saw Spanish words everywhere and translated, all the time, in my head. Back and forth. Shouted Spanish exhortations: buy this, big sale, come on in.
- Ate tacos everywhere. I really like tacos.
- Drove two hours northeast, to Joshua Tree National Park. All of these things are exhilarating: the strange trees, the boulders as big as houses and bleached to dull brown, the palms, the cloudless and blue sky, the air. Everything's sharp there, in the desert. The jackrabbit ears are sharp. The clap of hands against walls of sky-jutting rock is sharp.
- In Temecula, outside San Diego: walked in a boutique to ask about where I might get a haircut on a Sunday (nowhere, it turns out). As I was waiting, the young Latina cashier bent over to get a bag for the lady in front of me. I saw her nipple. It was small and sort of puffy and nice. She wore a lot of eye makeup. And here's the thing about a nipple: it's about as real as it gets. Shocking because they're usually hidden and because I don't know this girl and she doesn't know she's getting peeped on. But I didn't ask for it, either. It was handed to me. I could look away but of course I don't. It is real becuase it's brown and probably sensitive and underneath a tank top and a bra and it's real because girls are soft and lovely and endlessly everywhere. We shared a moment, but that cashier doesn't know it. I hope it's not stealing.
- Sitting by the Motel 6 pool, watching the palms get almost blown over by a cool wind, I was thinking about clarity. Maybe it was the dancing palms against the blue sky, or the constant, angry ripple on the pool's surface, but I realized that it boils down to moments of clarity, of the sun shining through. Of sharp edges, or of the opposite, the joining of edges into one breathing and seating thing. The ability to make it out. The finding and putting on of eyeglasses after a long search around the house.
- Ideas: will write about playing sports and how skinny boys like me, when they're not so great at sports, what they might be able to do is read books.
- Sunlight, though. Took lots of photos. Sunshine in a girl's eyes. Sunshine through a girl's tousled hair. Sun making long shadows on the sidewalk. East-coast sun through the bare branches. Clarity, I guess, and seeing, noticing.
