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2008-06-06 - 2:05 p.m.

A funny thing happens when I don't go on the internet. Ideas start coming. Internet's out at home, so last night, I was messing around, looking at rolled-up maps recently found at the warehouse space. And I knew the internet was down, and so the internet, as a resident in my head, was just not there. It was out at a long dinner, or in Europe or something. Far away. Not doable. Absent. So I was looking at this giant, wall-sized map of the Congressional districts from 1993 to 1995 (California's got just tons) and I don't know what triggered it, but ten minutes later I'd written the first two expository pages about me and baseball. That's something I've been trying to write, in one form or another, for six or seven years. And it hit me: write three pages of exposition, background on you and baseball, and then dramatize it with a scene. And I had the scene: this one game my senior year where I went three for three and scored the winning run. It was the starring-role exception to the supporting-role rule. And by showing how bright that one game was, the everydayness of my baseball playing will, I hope, become clear. Anyway, I struck some kind of paydirt last night, looking at maps, not thinking about what I might be able to do on the internet. And the internet, on some big level, is about promise, I think. Not about the actual thing you will get--movie times, primary election results, somebody's blog, scores--but instead about what you might find, what could be out there. It's like cable TV when you're fourteen and it's midnight and there are dozens of channels and there might be nudity out there, somewhere.

I've been riding my bike after lunch. Not long: once around the loop here. A goose, obstructing the bike path, hissed at me yesterday. The rear brakes are no good and I had to squeeze on the front ones so hard I think I may have pinged them, too. The goose stuck out its tongue and just would not move until the chicks had made it across. I had to respect that. Chicks to the other side, the big goose waddled off, not interested in me a bit.

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