A good day

Yesterday I took Strawberry to Fort Mason for the first time. Here you see us looking at the Golden Gate Bridge, and a seagull.

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Word count: 1,160.

The sentence that was waiting for me from my last writing session: “Who knew Roscoe was such a film buff?”

I walked to the harbor to watch the yachts and saw a man climb right up to the top of a mast (not pictured).

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Word count: 405.

I stopped writing when I finally figured a way out of my current plot difficulties. It may, indeed, prove to be the key to finishing this goddamn book.

Hallelujah:

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Strawberry and I rode the #22 home. On the way, we watched a woman exfoliating her entire face using only her palms (not pictured).

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I stopped at Tazza d’Amore, my new favorite coffee shop, for some well-deserved lemon-blueberry coffee cake and a fake fire.

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Word count: 1,554.

A good day.

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Correction

When, in the previous entry, I said I saw no blue dicks, I forgot I saw Watchmen that evening.

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We all fall down

When you are trying to write a book about an empty city, you could do worse than pay a visit to the Sutro Baths.

Some flowers we saw:

Sticky Monkeyflowers

Cow Parsnips

Some flowers we did not, to my disappointment, see:

Shooting Stars

Ithuriel’s Spears

Cobweb Thistles

Blue Dicks

Coast Onions

Hounds Tongues

Tidy Tips

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Strawberry About Town

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On top of Buena Vista Park, looking at the tiny hunched spine of the Golden Gate.

Word Count: 1.

(It was too cold to write, and then I spent like four hours talking to a friendly guy I met and went home. “Oh,” said Lisa worriedly when I told her this story. “Was he…?”

“No,” I assured her. “I boyfriended him right away.”

“That’s important,” we told each other at the same time.)

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With a giraffe.

Word count: 1,029

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With a peacock.

Word count: 779

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With some flamingos.

Word count: 0

(I was getting cold.)

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An embarrassing truth

Sometimes I check Carthage for new entries, even when I haven’t written any. As if my alter ego were hard at work blogging while I am goofing off? As if someone else blogged here? I don’t know the rationale, I just do it.

The embarrassing part is that I do it two or three times a day.

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American pudding

Just phone-interviewed a woman for the dog paper. Her voice is Wimbledon-born. I am taking diligent notes but covered in secret goosebumps, helpless against the warm puddled pudding of an English accent.

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Adult fun

Kids at Disneyland are very constrained. They can’t get more than a few steps from their parents without being lost in the crowd, so they’re not allowed to run loose. Even on Tom Sawyer’s Island, the many cameras ensure that a cast member arrives speedily to chastise any kids who leave the trails to climb on the rocks or play in the dirt. There’s plenty to see and hear and smell in Disneyland, but nowhere to play: in fact, it’s an experience best enjoyed by lazy, under-stimulated adults. Like me!

Adult fun:

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Godmother [motions to Gene]: Is that your prince?

Me: Yep.

Godmother [in a serious tone]: He’s very handsome.

More adult fun here and here.

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Dickens or disease?

Some plants that sound like diseases or Dickensian characters:

Farkleberry (Dickens)

Pussytoes (disease)

Bloodroot (Dickens)

Toothwort (disease)

Dodder (Dickens)

Dutchman’s-breeches (disease)

Nipplewort (Dickens)

Sneezeweed (disease)

Seabious (Dickens)

Sulphur tuft (disease)

Bearberry (Dickens)

Black meddick (disease)

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Rosy Pussytoes.

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Equation

Champagne + fairy tales + fitting into a princess dress I thought I had outgrown = gleeful spinning.

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More Finer Things Club.

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Traveler returns

When I first saw Truly Madly Deeply, I thought Anthony Minghella (one of my favorite directors, now dead, along with my favorite singer and one of my favorite authors, you have to wonder why I bother having favorites at all anymore) was trying to say that the dead return to life all the time. It’s normal, just not something people talk about. Like piles.

This idea persists for me. I am pretty sure that a lot of apparently alive people have returned from the other side.

It’s probably not all that significant.

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Truly madly moustache. Alan Rickman can do no wrong.

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