Category: Before

Start with the grocery stores. Safeway was the only real show in town at first. Reynold’s was a couple of blocks east of Safeway, it was kind of dingy. I enjoyed going there though, because there was a giant swordfish mounted above the exit. The fish was removed when Reynold’s became Olmstead’s.

“In the first day or two the flags were plastered everywhere, seeing them was heartening because they indicated that we’re all in this sorrow together. The flags were purely emotional. Once we went to war, once the president announced that we were going to retaliate against the “evildoers,” then the flag again represented what it usually represents, the government. I think that’s when the flags started making me nervous. The true American patriot is by definition skeptical of the government. Skepticism of the government was actually one of the platforms the current figurehead of the government ran on. How many times in the campaign did President Bush proclaim of his opponent, the then vice president, “He trusts the federal government and I trust the people”? This deep suspicion of Washington is one of the most American emotions an American can have. So by the begininning of October, the ubiquity of the flag came to feel like peer pressure to always stand behind policies one might not necessarily agree with. And, like any normal citizen, I prefer to make up my mind about the issues of the day on a case by case basis at 3:00 A.M. when I wake up from my Nightline-inspired nightmares.”
-Sarah Vowell, The Partly Cloudy Patriot

Witnessed while walking home late last night:

A taxi pulled into the Paramount’s parking lot. The driver got out and walked around beside the front of his car where he stood and peed into the pool of light made by his car’s headlights.

Two women at a hot dog stand trying to force something out of under-filled Heinz mustard bottles. The first woman – Hot dog in her left hand, mustard in the right, jerked the bottle down toward the bun and squeezed so the outlet made a weak splattering noise. The second woman – making the same motions as the first, perfectly out of synch. The first girl’s mustard phhftt-ing on the downbeat, the second girl’s phhftt-ing on the up-beat.

At the Doug Martsch solo show last night, I’m disenchanted, not sure if I’m more annoyed and frustrated by the low rumble of people chattering behind me or the over-done distortion effect on Martsch’s microphone. I head off to a corner to sit down. All is forgiven when he plays “Twin Falls, Idaho” and I hear people around me singing along quietly with the chorus. I monotone along a bit.

“Seven-up, I touched her thumb and she knew it was me
Although she couldn’t see, unless of course she peeked”

And years after first hearing the song, I realize that this line is quite obviously about Seven-up, the old classroom game we played in elementary school.

The summery weather was broken this weekend by a few spells of nice clean-smelling rain. The clouds were largely gone by Tuesday, but we were left with a distinct autumn crispness in the air. While the summer weather regained a bit of ground today, it would be difficult to deny some fall influences in the light.

I walked out onto an unfamiliar pier this evening. A man was there fishing, pulling a basket up out of the water. He nodded hello as I walk up behind him, “How are you?”

“Good, How about you?”

“Pretty good.”

I was careful not to step on the two crabs laying on the upside down on the pavement behind him. They’re legs and claws were twitching around like they were struggling to flip themselves. I nodded at the crabs, “It looks like you got something.”

“No. Those are too small. I’m throwing them back.”

I walked a comfortable distance down the pier and looked out at the water for a minute, taking some photos.

When I turned my head back in the fisherman’s direction, he was dropping one of the crabs back in the water. (Splash!) He turned back around and reached for the second crab. But instead of tossing this one into the water, he jerked his arm suddenly as he was picking it up, and smashed the crab hard against the pier. (Crunch!)

• The light dims quickly enough that when I take my first photo, the camera sets the automatic shutter speed to .5 seconds, a couple of minutes later the next photo’s shutter speed is .6 seconds, and the third is a full second.
• I make an attempt to be especially chipper each time the waitress swings by, though she’s undoubtedly forgotten whatever blunt undesirable inflection I felt my voice may have had during our initial conversation.
• From the next table, I overhear, “Yes, I believe in evolution. But I think that aliens helped human evolution along at some point.” I can’t help listening more closely for a minute while he tries to explain his theory. It becomes clear that he’s repeating something second-hand and doesn’t remember his source’s supporting arguments very clearly.

I generally don’t mind eating tomatoes much – in salads, in sandwiches, on pizza. In moderation, I find tomatoes inoffensive. I understand, of course, that people have different tastes – I don’t begrudge you your tomato.

A couple of days ago I read this:

The Jer Zone – “Cherry, grape, pear…whatever they are, the small tomatoes are now ripening. Good for impromptu snacking.“

and this:

Tinyblog – “I saw Daniel off this morning with a kiss, three of the biggest sandwiches I’ve ever helped make and a sack of freshly harvested cherry tomatoes(his favorite garden snack).”

and today, this:

Sagbottom – “I have them [tomatoes] sliced with a little salt and pepper, tossed with a little oil and basil, popped into my mouth naked.”

Each time I read one of these blog entries, a minor impulse somewhere in the back of my head made me feel that the writer wrote about eating a whole tomato to make people squirm. These bloggers couldn’t honestly like eating whole raw tomatoes, I thought. They’re just being intentionally controversial.

It appears that I might be an intolerant and unreasonable person.

The sky is still the same blue it’s been since the morning, but the sun is low in the west. The next part of the day that I have a name for is dusk. It’s pre-dusk, I guess. One would expect long shadows, but there aren’t any. Streaks of yellow-tinted light are cast across everyone’s faces. The light source is the sunset more than it is the sun.

“My clutching a notebook while searching for the perfect one-liner will be a comfortable distraction from what might result in my feeling something, which is never my first choice.”
-David Rakoff, Fraud