I found out today that my good friends F. & D. are pregnant — well, F. is pregnant, but D. helped. They came up from NYC to announce that, come New Year’s, Kayen Manovil will be born into a bathtub in Argentina, which is pretty awesome, and unbelievable, and awesome.

This is the part where I go off on a diatribe about how quickly life blows through us, how suddenly there are so many weddings or babies or both, or divorces, or other big announcements. F. and I spent a semester in the Netherlands together in 1999, jumping in leaves in Vienna, clubbing in Barcelona, and taking photobooth pictures of ourselves in every train station in Europe. We were babies then. We wore funny clothes and obsessed over boys and generally had no idea what we were doing. I can’t believe she is reproducing! That’s totally amazing! I can’t believe she’s PREGNANT!!!

Ok, I’m done.

Anarchist kid on the train thinks
everyone should die

but he smelled the flowers on the hill tonight,
felt the orange sky hugging his skinny arms.
Something drives him on.

The city smelled like the sea today.
Night smells like life.
And in strangers’ livingrooms, the walls express
such a clear happiness, it makes me

remember to breathe deep
and walk slow, and not sleep, and recall
with renewed clarity the effect those early
years we shared had on me.

Everywhere I look, someone is loving something.
The grey sea, the green trees
keep us, at the very least, believing.

Now, this thick air, the sound of breaking
mufflers and someone’s rattling keys,
the way the train saunters its dirty way
to a bright platform

makes me realize nothing has changed.
Good comes, and comes again.

A man, a plan, a canal…

It’s hot, but I’ve got a new plan. I’m beginning Phrase One of a 3-month stint researching various options for the Rest of My Life, with the help of one of our directors at the office. I am going to make it or go down in flames. But first we have to clean the kitchen, pay bills.

My office is half-empty, digital songs are on repeat. I contemplated volunteering for the wikimedia conference at Harvard next week, but thought better of it. However, I’ve discovered the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, and its awesomeness is enough to make me cry.

These days, most anything is enough to make me cry. But in a good way.

Best part about July: Walking around Castle Island at night with a soft-serve ice cream cone.

Best part about being 28: Spending money on technology, food, and weird clothes. In that order.

Best part about not being pregnant: I have plenty of room to be consistently pennyless and make tons of mistakes while mapping out a major life plan.

Best benefit of my new 30-minute subway commute to and from work: Reading Queen Noor’s autobiography.

Scene: The backyard. My landlord and his male in-laws are standing around, planning out how to cement the patio. Suddenly, a racoon runs by.

“Whoa!” [Lots of dialogue in Creole]

“Makak?” [More discussion in Creole about makaks]

Makak resembles the Portuguese “macaco”, which DD knows from his ample collection of Portuguese pop music. He quickly figured out that our backyard of five men were guessing a monkey had infiltrated the property. And why not? Perhaps this isn’t out of the ordinary on Cape Verde. And really, how many racoons do you ever see in Dorchester?

“Dave,” my landlord said, a little sheepishly, “what is that thing?”

“That’s a racoon,” DD explained. “They have thumbs. They can open up your garbage cans and go through all the trash.”

“Is it ok to get near them?” he asked.

“Maybe, but I wouldn’t recommend it.”

The collection of perplexed men then began hucking stones at the tree in which said racoon had hidden. The stones cleared the tree and began landing in neighbor’s driveway, about two inches away from their shiny car.

“I have a BB gun,” our landlord said, after considering the situation. “I’m gonna shoot this thing from the second floor the next time I see him.”

I guess it’s really not as priceless a moment when I write it down, but if you were there, you’d appreciate it. “Why wouldn’t it be a monkey?” we asked ourselves later. “Monkeys get into food and climb through trees and have tails. It makes perfect sense.” I can’t wait to go to Cape Verde.

Reasons to paint your livingroom torquoise:

- It’s fun!
- It improves you biceps
- It makes you feel like you’re in a Mediterranean lounge
- Why not? You’re renting. Who cares?

We should probably buy stock in Home Depot and Mahoney’s plant store, since half our paychecks went there this weekend. The moral of the story is home improvement and budgeted interior design does wonders for uplifting the psyche.

We also bought a ridiculous orchid on sale for 10 dollars! Can you believe that? No, we can’t believe it either.

Meanwhile, our favorite Californian and her mini-Californian continue to thrive, in and out of water. In addition to debating the merits (and demerits) of various Latin American Socialist rebellion leaders, this is a time to remember the little people, people.

baltic blue!

People are fleeing Lebanon, or trying. I think of N., my former coworker, who last year returned to Lebanon with her husband and two little kids because, she thought, the violence was finally over. Now, even if they use their American passports to get out, the queue is over 15,000, and U.S. rescue efforts haven’t even gotten underway. What about the Lebanese without dual citizenship? Where do they go? And what about the Iraqis, too soon forgotten?

From Baghdad Burning:

Why don’t the Americans just go home? They’ve done enough damage and we hear talk of how things will fall apart in Iraq if they ‘cut and run’, but the fact is that they aren’t doing anything right now. How much worse can it get? People are being killed in the streets and in their own homes- what’s being done about it? Nothing. It’s convenient for them- Iraqis can kill each other and they can sit by and watch the bloodshed- unless they want to join in with murder and rape.

Buses, planes and taxis leaving the country for Syria and Jordan are booked solid until the end of the summer. People are picking up and leaving en masse and most of them are planning to remain outside of the country. Life here has become unbearable because it’s no longer a ‘life’ like people live abroad. It’s simply a matter of survival, making it from one day to the next in one piece and coping with the loss of loved ones and friends – friends like T.

My short vacation has come to a blunt end.

I had a marvellous weekend doing all sorts of vacationy things: swimming in Walden Pond (with tons of Russians and Latin Americans), going to a Sox game (we won), watching Pirates of the Caribbean (a letdown), and guzzling ale (ginger) at BB’s happy suaree. Best of all, DD returned from three weeks in the oxygenless land of incredible pollution (DC) and now the apartment no longer feels empty and pathetic.

It’s summer, and after 15 minutes back in the office, I wanted to cry. My human rights epoch has reached its apex and is waning now. In a sad, relentless way.

The word NADIR comes to mind as appropriate:

1. Astronomy. A point on the celestial sphere directly below the observer, diametrically opposite the zenith.
2. The lowest point: the nadir of their fortunes.

Most Memorable Moments With The Band on Block Island, 2006:

1. Getting woken up at 4.30a by Ry, crashing into the room, standing over my bed, yelling, “Bon! Bon! There is NO FIRE! Don’t worry, nothing is on fire!” — then running out, giggling hysterically.

2. Racing mopeds (backwoods motor scooter, actually) around a rented house of three inebriated fans at three in the morning. Ry won. Between the wet grass and the crochet paraphanalia in the yard, I was too scared of wiping out to go as insanely fast as he went. Afterwards, we both laughed at discovering our mutual thought, while racing, had been what our mothers would say if/when they found out how we severed a limb in an effort to pass eachother on a curve, full speed.

3. Driving the mopeds through the woods a little after three in the morning, through potholes on a dirt road with Mattie. We picked up D. and C. and revved back into the black night, two to a vehicle, Mattie shaking visably, me reciting the 91st Psalm into the darkness.

4. D., overwhelmingly stoned (etc.), asking me, in the middle of a too-loud set, about God and sin and Jesus and Truth and, in essence, explaining why I don’t drink or eat their pot cookies. Every five minutes he’d walk away, then emerge from the soundboard a few minutes later with another question about spiritual consciousness, or karma, or what life is about. This was a random, serene, oddly fun moment, in the midst of drums and guitars and wailing.

5. The Czech, Polish and Ukranian 20-somethings who were living in the same boarding house for the summer, serving bagels to tourists and learning English and blaring Eastern European TV shows long into the night, as I lay on the other side of the wall, fanatically reading and loathing Lolita.

6. The sun coming out just as we were leaving, the temperature rising 20 degrees overnight, and all of us getting horribly sunburnt (ok, just me; everyone else got butter-brown tans) on the ferry back, with our faces to the wind and the wind on the sea and the sun on everything.

…but fortunately, I bought a sweatshirt and longer pants the second we got here. It’s been raining on and off, like a distracted weeping child.

Block Island has been interesting…I naively forgot the myriad subtleties of the groupy band scene, all of which I notoriously loathe: the distribution of too many weed-laced pastries, drunk boys, late nights, a complete lack of itinerary, bleached-haired girls. I also forgot that Ry and I are different variations of the same person, and we get mad in the same inflammatory, annoying way; and we hold silent grudges of defensiveness until the other person apologizes for their inflammatory conduct, and by that time it’s late afternoon and we really haven’t done much with the day.

Ry is upset that his band isn’t hanging out altogether; rather, it’s become “every man for himself,” as he says, so he’s been pouting, justifiably so, as we each go off in groups of ones and twos to get sand in our toes and loiter too long in Java & Juice. We managed to make a day of it, though, and despite the cold air and grey clouds, I ran in the choppy ocean (mostly because I really had to pee and there was no bathroom, save the waves) and we threw a frisbee and picked up rocks and got lost driving and ate free bar food and, I dunno, people now are wandering around somewhere before the second show begins.

They sell salt water taffy here, which reminds me desperately of Philadelphia summers with my grandmother.

I’m reading Lolita, which, in all of its painstaking awfulness, I can’t disgard until I’ve finished.

Block Island, despite its hecatombs of loud blonde children from Somewhere Else, is beautiful. Weaving between the rolling hills and the bluffs, the 50-foot cliffed drop to the sea, I vowed to come back here someday, but not until I can afford to. Presently, I remain all too grateful for the unglamorous but free accomodations (an extra twin bed in Ry’s comped boarding room, no free soap) and for the coffee, which is excellent.

Ta.