2008-03-07 - 8:46 p.m.

Watched "Gandhi" last night. It's quite a thing, to see a (dramatized and prettied-up and fast-forwarded, for sure) story about a man who lived not that long ago who preached basic humanity, love, and above all, compassion. I found myself thinking, throughout: Wow, this guy was revolutionary! I admit that watching this movie made me want to be a better person. I tried to be nicer to the people at work who I don't like. I spent an extra few minutes talking to a woman who's about to go out for a few months while she gets and recuperates from knee surgery. I told her I'd be thinking of her and I really will try.

Gandhi, as far as I know, had little to do with pizza dough, but I just made some and the pizza is now in the oven. This is my second try. The first time, a few weeks ago, it didn't come out real well. I decided, this time, to measure stuff.

I am reading several books. I just finished a graphic novel called Safe Area Gorazde, about the Bosnian War, and it's a good book. I read a graphic novel once every year and a half and I almost always like them. I'm reading another one now by this guy Eddie Campbell, called I think The Life of the Artist. It's about his own evolution as a cartoonist but also much larger in scope, about the evolution of the graphic novel itself. I like it. I read the first few chapters of The Road, which is dark and ashen and as powerful a few chapters as I've maybe ever read. It's tough going for me, though, because I have a hard time with stories that are so dark and foreboding. And this book is foreboding. The periods are foreboding. The paper's foreboding.

Been raining all day here. It feels as if the city's getting scrubbed. All of it: the people walking around, the dogs getting walked, the wire-mesh trashcans that say "BELIEVE" on them, the trash that the wind blew out, the taxi cabs, the manhole covers, the leafless trees that grow out of the sidewalk, the storm-drain grates, all of it.

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