The week they fell in love.

Last night in my jewelry case I found a painkiller that I filched (with the vaguest of permission) at a house party this summer. I took a quarter of it (because I am a total wimp and can't take much more than that), and I finally feel better, pinched nerve-wise. Two days of agony draw to a close at last.

The takeaway? Don't be afraid to look through people's medicine cabinets. It's informative, and may be useful down the line.

Speaking of theft and drugs, I just read Roxana Robinson's Cost, which is pretty much a perfect novel. There is not a word out of place, and the story thrusts you forward, and it is smart and deep and sad. It's about a junkie liar and his family that loves him, unconditionally, and with conditions at the same time. (As we all love our own families, obviously.) It made me cry exactly once, but I stayed up late reading it, and sometimes when I consume things so quickly and intensely I miss some of the emotion and get lost in the wordplay instead.

This was the paragraph which moved me so:

This was the silky, elastic skin of her child, that miraculous inner skin, so nacreous and fragile, which Julia had stroked and smoothed so many times. Here was the beloved body she had thought of as hers.

The love of a mother, it gets me every time.

Nothing I read lately has been satisfying me, and this book worked on me from start to finish. It's something like her ninth book, so she better know what she's doing by now.

Speaking of books working (...whatever), I will be taking some pictures tonight at the Fort Greene Indie Bookstore Initiative party. It's a fundraising event for this new bookstore that's going to open hopefully soon. Rosie's back from her European travels so she's going to wander around with me to help me get people to smile pretty for the camera so that their pictures may someday be posted on a blog thus securing their fame for eternity. Or something like that. Anyway: pictures of book lovers! Lots of people in glasses! Best. See you there.

(09/16/08)