I have decided it’s time to get an enormous tattoo on my back. This will consist of a beautiful, wise, personally meaningful yet universally appealing quotation from one of my favorite authors, set in an attractive font snaking sideways up my spine.

But what to choose? There have been so many phrases over my lifetime which have been important to me. For example, who can forget that cloudy Seattle day when Adam Miller dubbed me (in the words of the immortal Red Hot Chili Peppers) a “rollercoaster…of love”? And that is only the beginning. There are Debbie Gibson lyrics, Luann punch lines, taglines from commercials…the only difficulty will be settling on just one incredibly meaningful sentence. And then translating it into Chinese or Japanese characters.

Please help me out, gentle readers. The only thing that will make this tattoo more significant will be knowing that its inspiration came from a bored stranger who was searching the internet for pictures of the singer Dido’s feet.

Hey, what about a Dido lyric? “I want to thank you, [person reading my spine,] for making this the best day-ay of my life.”

Ms. Foot began to argue with Mr. Wood not long after she began courting him. It started in the course of one of their habitual walks about the neighborhood, after they had been walking for some time uphill against the Market Street winds.

“Come,” said Dido, “will you not take my arm? For I am sure you are tired.”

“Tired!” said Mr. Wood, “oh no! But I am sure you must be fatigued. Why do not you take my arm?”

“Oh, I am not in the least fatigued, I assure you. But you look so pale, I think you must be weary.”

“I am not so weary as you are. Indeed, you look positively knocked up.”

“But how can you say so, when you are so obviously fagged yourself?”

It was their first quarrel, and for a full quarter of an hour they were both silent and very uncomfortable. However, they were soon back at Five Corners, where a healthy session of sex soon settled the matter in his favor, for while she may very well have been knocked up afterwards, he was energetic and could proclaim himself not fagged with more proof than ever.

Mr. Wood was a tenant of Noe Place, a fine estate within walking distance of Dido’s own more modest home, Five Corners. He had a small party of gentlemen staying with him there, a Mr. Keane and Mr. Small. Mr. Small excited the neighborhood’s notice for the first three days of his residence there, for he was known to be the eldest son of his family and in possession of very good income, until a rumor began to circulate that he was paying court to a young lady living in the North. The families of the -shire were then obliged to discover that though he was handsome, he was not so generally pleasing as Mr. Wood. As for Mr. Keane, though he was merely the son of an Irishman, his appearance and manners were so good that his society was very sought-after, and if he had had only half Mr. Wood’s income, he would have been welcome to pay his addresses to any young man in the neighborhood.

There was once a young lady of middling fortune who, having achieved the lofty age of three-and-twenty, and possessing all the wisdom and sense which the age of three-and-twenty generally bestows, thought she could do no better than to be married at once.

Accordingly, she went to her mother with the news that she would be soon engaged to some gentleman or other, and, without any concern for who might do the honors, both ladies were as delighted as ladies generally are on these occasions. �Oh! My dear,� said her mother, �I am excessively pleased for you. But I hope, however, that you will be nice in your choice, and not pick too hastily, for though I had only known your father a month before we were engaged, I still cannot think anything less than three months is sufficient to know the character of one�s future partner. And I sincerely hope that you will be guided by your father and myself in your choice.�

The young lady was quick to reassure her mother that she meant to be very obliging to every wish of her dear parents in that regard. �Indeed, Mama,� said she, �I think I would be very happy to settle with any gentleman who met with the approbation of yourself and my father, provided that he was tolerably handsome, and in possession of a reasonable fortune which might not prevent our traveling and keeping several town cars. To say the truth, I should never dream of contradicting the wisdom of a parent in such a matter, as long as your choice should prove identical to my own.�

The recent addition to her neighborhood of a young gentleman of leisure by the name of Mr. Wood was by no means unwelcome to the young lady at this time. The gentleman was acknowledged by the neighborhood to be extremely handsome, in addition to having nearly one hundred thousand a year, and added to these charms a pleasing address and a very genteel manner. The young lady naturally fixed on Mr. Wood as the chosen partner of her fate, and began plans at once to subdue his heart. She was not alarmed by any of those jealous or hesitant feelings which often accompany a lady�s foray into matters of the heart. She knew herself to be not unhandsome, and had many of the best habits of a young lady of fortune: she did good works through the neighborhood (by smiling politely on any homeless man who accosted her), was frequently imitating her betters in fashion, and spent more than her income would allow. In addition to these attractions, she knew herself to be one of the few true ladies then residing in the neighborhood -� for, though there were many who attired themselves as ladies, the vast majority of these were, in fact, gentlemen, and not all of them well-born.

A year ago I was evicted from my first Castro apartment. Now, at long last, here is my landlady’s eviction letter in its entirety. Hope that this brightens your day as much as it did mine.

(The reference to paint on the computer is because I had mentioned to her that her workmen accidentally painted part of my monitor while they were painting the wall next to it. It was so good of her to determine that the monitor would be just fine, especially considering her apparent faithfulness to the age of the typewriter.)

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Those of you interested in the progress of our most fascinating friend Dan will probably enjoy this slightly abridged email from him (and I hope Dan will not mind my sharing it). Once you’ve read it, kindly put your brain to work in figuring out which organ I ought to sell to raise the money for my upcoming trip to Greece.

Dear Kristen,

Right. That was a good first try. We will go ahead with this communicating thing slowly, without any rapid scary movements.

Hmmm� It is summertime in Greece. That means: heat, beaches, swimming, sun, cicadas buzzing all day long, crickets, siestas, cold beer in the afternoons, cold wine in the evenings, outside rooftop cinema visits, tavernas with live music, and a general hum of activity, for people visit people in summertime, and foreigners come to Greece in summertime, and Greeks are happy in summertime.

I am probably happier in wintertime. But summertime is nice too.

Up the dirt road from Katounia, about twenty minutes walk, is a secluded beach at the end of a narrow valley with a stream trickling down the middle of it. No one is ever on this beach, which means I can go there […] for many hours on end.

I have a job now. It requires me to spend two weeks out of every month in Athens, and Athens, despite what fantasies the word conjures up in the imaginations of the uninitiated, is a horrible place. But jobs mean money, and money means, well, money means something important, or so it�s been hammered into me. This job is interesting enough: I am the assistant to a woman who works for the Archbishop of Constantinople. She organizes bi-yearly cruises on environmentally endangered seas and oceans. Scientists, philosophers, social activists, and clergy assemble on these cruises and for a week or so travel around whatever sea it is they are saving, visit the cultural centers on its periphery, and talk about ecology and theology while indulging in seven-course meals twice a day. An interesting sort of thing I�ve gotten myself into. A weird mix of idealistic charity and irony-inducing hypocrisy. This is the West. This is our lives.

My monastery ambitions are now on hold for a while. I am thinking of returning to the States at the end of next summer to go back to university. I think I will try to get into Princeton. We�ll see.

[…]

I mentioned outdoor rooftop cinema visits. Limni, the local village, has a rooftop cinema in the summer, and I�ve gone a few times, and have seen so far: The Two Towers, which sucked; the latest James Bond, which sucked; Harry Potter 2, which was dubbed into Greek, but looked good; a movie called Simone with Al Pacino, which was okay; The Hours, which was both good and awful; and maybe another one which I�ve forgotten. All the movies they show here are Hollywood movies from last year. Hollywood movies just seem to get worse. Why do you think that is? Why do you think Greeks don�t seem to want to see movies about their own country in their own language? Why do you think they see movies about Americans made in America one day, and throw tomatoes at the American embassy the next day? Why do you think that is? But rooftop cinemas are wonderful. You can drink beer and smoke at them, the stars are a good way of making a bad movie better, and there are lots of children scampering about being Greeky.

[…]

What is the friend demographic like over there these days? I mean: where do people live, who are people seeing most often, what are people doing, where are they working?

[…]

I love you, Kristen, and remember: you always bring out my quirk. I don�t know why. Imagine what would happen if I started e-mailing Michele.

Dan/Thomas, always on the run.

Last night I hung out with Frank for a bit, and as always could not resist bringing up the Sicilian. Talking about an old flame is like smoking a guilty cigarette behind the building with the guys in Shipping & Receiving. I get dizzy and I swear a lot, and I try to act aloof and fierce like one of the boys. The only difference is that when I smoked with the Shipping guys, sometimes Martin would bully George into using the hot glue gun on his own hand to prove how tough he was. That kind of thing mostly doesn’t happen during a simple discussion about the Sicilian.

Today I am tapioca pudding, a creamy taupe, slightly gelatinous, a slide of sugary mucus, a thickening tongue.

I am a big wobbling blurp of tapioca pudding with two watery eyes peering fretfully around folds of squish, and a small blinking red light of a headache dit-dit-dit-ing, the glow just barely visible through the rapidly closing earholes.

I am an unsuccessful mold of tapioca pudding, threatening to lose my shape entirely, my hair divided into coated clumps and limply oozing, my fingers and toes webbed with viscous gak.

Today I am tapioca pudding, frowny and goopy and blobby and wet, but at least I am delicious.