i love being so taken by a book. i love being taken by anything, for that matter. american gods was many levels of amazing. i was reading it in half-setences between bursts of street lights on the way to tampa last night. i drove home today on my lunch break to get it because i'd mistakenly left it at home. finished the last fifteen or so pages in the parking lot after work because i didn't want to go anywhere because i was so close to the end.

and i was sad when it was over. i wanted to read it again. it's been a very long time since i was sad when a book ended. kinda like how i used to cry at the end of peewee's playhouse [every week].

the mercury program never ceases to be magnificent. i like standing in the front of the crowd, almost too close, and it's very intimate. very easy to close my eyes and disassociate from the league of people behind me. just me (and a tall broadshouldered boy nick to brush against when i dance [just a little] in place, of course), and those who craft the music. i don't think there is much that beats live music, and much else that beats the mercury program. i'd close my eyes on tom reno standing right in front of me--his eyes closed, his fingers gentle on the guitar neck, rocking back and forth with the music--and reopen them and he'd be standing across the room; repeat, and he was back in front of me like some blinking optical illusion. there's just something about that music and the vibrations and the groove i can't get from much else

except maybe textual (with the gentlemen of the bass and the drum (on the rhodeeees)from the mercury program, how could it not be)--which was fantastic to see in person

and it always is

and the rest of what i was going to write was going to be about this seeping meloncholy, but i'd rather try and pretend it isn't there while it is on its way out (though to be sure it will be back in and out and in and out again before the night is through) except to say that the kind of meloncholy you find in the grocery store is best combatted by a worldly conspiracy: a older man coming up the aisle and i make eye contact for a second, as we are about to pass he wheels his empty grocery cart in my direction as though he might run me over, and then quickly back on to his side--i look up, he smiles, and i laugh; and two small spanish speaking children in the car of a cart, the little boy fired his gun at me, his little finger moved for the trigger and he said pow! and i clutched my heart and threw my head back and stuck my tongue out of my mouth and we all giggled

delighted in the glow of the orange juice

but pointsettas and price tags and christmas songs droning at every edge of my ears

bah. i am listening to the mercury program and closing my eyes and you can not take me for i am safe here