prev once was lost, but now am found next
2001-05-26 | 11:10 p.m.

Damn dog. She barks just often enough to make thinking impossible.

My Dad used to talk about the propensity for a car to come along at precisely the same interval at which the previous car had followed the car before it. He always calledl them pilgrims. He'd say, "They opened the gate," referring to the imaginary factory that was offloading these cars with such efficiency and precision from its assembly line.

When I think about something like that, it's hard to remember that my Dad isn't around anymore. How can he not be around, when his observations seem so ... current? So present tense? It's puzzling.

I liked my Dad. There were times when we didn't get along but there was always something a little thrilling about him, as if he were a movie star in the story of my life. I guess that's because I wasn't around him as much. My Mom was more of a fixture. Now it seems like I take her for granted, but that's not how I feel. I want to linger over her but it's hard to figure out just how to do it. She doesn't like to come to my house, because it's not her house, and because she has to smoke outside. I don't like to spend a lot of time at her place, because it's dark and the TV's always on and it smells like smoke. I ought to rent a cabana at the beach and take her there. We could sit under a big canvas umbrella wearing hats and drinking daiquiris and she could smoke all she wanted, then put the cigarettes out in the white sand.

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