DEAR READER

Wednesday, it rained and the short hair pinned to my head with 37 bobby pins turned into jubilant curls. It was a rainy day that held back, waiting in clouds, but everyone knew that on a whim, her mood could swing from silvered mysterious glaze to a cold rage. 

Hanging on a thrift store rack was a pair of wired frames with a 1.25 reading prescription--it was love at first sight, which is ironic since they help me see (I'm so sorry, my sense of humor is genetic). Although they are ridiculous and surpass the 'hipster' look to the point of ugliness, being thin silver frames that two Grandpa's ago would have worn plus they rest crookedly on my nose, but I don't care how ugly they are and I'm not a hipster besides. Let me climb onto my soapbox. 'Hipster' is just another label and it's saddening to me to watch as people so easily define themselves and long to box themselves up into the confines of such a limiting category or stereotype. Why can't an appreciation of new music, foods, and cultures and a development of eclectic or eccentric taste simply be understood as growing up--trying new things, becoming more cultured versus becoming an identity? Yes, I adore frequenting mom-and-pop coffee houses on city corners and wandering corridors of three story high book shops (musty attics especially), trying foreign food restaurants, even the sketchy ones, wearing sunhats and Bohemian skirts to free indie concerts, wandering art museums endlessly overwhelmed by the profound in the most unusual places, but no, I do not identify myself as such. 

On the corner of University and 15th, I met Rose with a smile and embrace, and she led me about to capture her world at the U with my long curious eyes. Exhaustively curious, it was wonderful; humans are marvelous and strange creatures to observe, I only wish that staring was not rude. The campus too; the rich lawns and vines climbing to spill around 1800's pillars and marble arches were admirable. Although my friend has had merely two weeks of Swedish class, when she reads simple sentences she sounds delightfully Swedish--those lovely diphthongs! (One of my simplest joys is when I am read to, especially by a friend and especially when their language is masked with foreign words like cursive to a child. Perhaps I could live without eyes or a voice, but without hearing, no, certainly not!) As she showed me the cityscape and we walked on the bustling pathways, I asked, "Isn't the Weisman Art Musuem near here?" Rose laughed (her laugh sounds like a handful of soft gems falling into a woolen pocket) and exclaimed pointing, "The Weisman Art Musuem is next to Moriah!" When Rose and I departed, a gold flower loosely pinned to my ear jumped into her hair in a triumphant tangling mess. It was awkwardly hysterical. I still laugh about it.

My favorite coffee mug has paintbrushes in it, so I dug through the dangerous-because-everything-falls-out-on-you cabinet to find my polka-dot Christmas mug. But no Christmas music for me yet. I'm practicing self-discipline this year to see if I can hold off until Thanksgiving (have never done this before, wish me luck). 

I forgot to tell a story, it takes place before the cold front swept across this great Midwestern state. I was smitten by a lazy morning, home alone with Narnia, the dog. We were laying side by side on the wood-flooring, the fan directly blowing on us, her tongue hanging out, the humidity suffocating and dissolving my bob into a mass of frizz, both of us eating dry Chex from the box. I wore my Green Bay Packer's #30 Ahman Green jersey, the one I earned for Easter when I was 12 (Mom had bribed me into wearing an Easter dress by waving it as a trophy in my face). I was supposed to work in two hours, but was expecting my friend Holly to pop by for a bit beforehand. When the doorbell rang, I rushed to the front door and swung it open, Narnia yipping at my feet too high pitched, on the verge of flinging myself into my friend's arms, only it was a young man whom I did not recognize.
"Hey..."
"Hey, I'm J's son. I'm here to get her keys, she'll need them." 
Her keys? I didn't follow, it felt like a scam--paranoia? Wait, O yes, that's right, Rebekah's been dog-sitting. "O sure." With Narnia in one arm, the other hand cracking the screen door open, I began to pull away to fetch them in the drawer above the Chex boxes.
"And--" He stalled me, his face clenched, becoming serious, "just between you and me," he lowered his voice and ambiguously explained a concern, then asked, "Could I get ya my number?" 
"Yeah, let me grab the keys, one moment," As I set Narn down on the other side of the glass door, snout against the smeared window, grabbed the key's from the squeaky drawer stuffed with old phone books, snatched a slip off the fridge's grocery list and a hardcover kid's edition of Sherlock Holmes, he observed the fan's low rumble and asked about our electricity through the screen, apparently his mom's was out and they live just one house down. Odd. I returned and in a juggling toss handed the keys and paper on hardcover, popped the cap off the pen, which flew into the air, but with weird unnatural Spidey senses, quickhandedly caught it. 
"Thanks," he laughed. "Yeah, she's just real sad and stuff. And it just makes me feel better to know you can give a call," Explaining as he handed me the ten digits, his name scrawled above them. 
"Absolutely--"
"Cause I live pretty far from here." 
"Sure, yeah, I'll let you know." 
"Great. Yeah, see ya!" 

(On the whole, I wish I hadn't been acting French and had been wearing the proper attire.)

Seated at a bench in the meek silver drizzle outside the library (where finally I paid off my daunting fine--I could have bought 52 books from the library's book sale with the amount I owed!), I met G. K. Chesterton--he is a lovely man with an endlessly fascinating mind. I wish he were alive, what I would give to chat with him or people watch together! I am thankful he is still alive through his words: I laughed an awful lot on that bench in the silver drizzle with my wire rimmed glasses and would peek up from my book at the people coming and going; we'd laugh together at nothing, just seeing one another and smiling made us laugh: I wish I had a home of my own, I'd have invited them all over for tea by the woodstove and a supper of fresh rye bread and ginger carrot soup. 

That young man with the long, auburn hair and the impudent face--that young man was not really a poet; but surely he was a poem. That old gentleman with the wild, white beard and the wild, white hat--that venerable humbug was not really a philosopher  but at least he was the cause of philosophy in others. That scientific gentleman with the bald, egg-like head and the bare, bird-like neck had no real right to the airs of science that he assumed. He had not discovered anything new in biology; but what biological creature could he have discovered more singular than himself? Thus and thus only, the whole place had properly to be regarded; it had to be considered not so much as a workshop for artists, but as a frail but finished work of art. A man who stepped into its social atmosphere felt as if he had stepped into a written comedy.

(Chapter one: The Two Poets of Saffron Park, from The Man Who Was Thursday)

Going to get started on lunch, m 

P.S. I am learning about Pablo Picasso, according to his granddaughter Marina, he was a spiteful man. 

P.P.S. Finally watched Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby--and being a lover of F. Scott Fitzgerald and his grasp of humanity and consequences, and though I found it at times superfluous and the music distracting, it did render such a powerful capturing of the story that I was moved tremendously and look forward again to reading the book.  

P.P.P.S. One last thing--! you must let me prompt you to look up Ólafur Arnalds, an Icelandic musician, whose music is fitting for days like these. I discovered him today and am smitten.