I’m reading tonight at WORD at 7 PM with Adam Levin as part of Vol 1. Brooklyn’s Civic Pride series. (Check out the promotional image. It’s hilarious.) Molly Tolsky will be joining us. There will be free beer. I didn’t really have a birthday party, so if you want to celebrate me not turning 40 quite yet, this would be the time and place to do it.

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Yesterday I shared what I knew about writing about a certain pharmaceutical type of product with the very nice woman who will be taking over for me at my job while I am bed-ridden next week. It made me extremely giddy to think: No work! For a week! (And there was a sub-thought of: Painkillers for 48 hours!)

Then I took the train downtown and ran into my old friend, Michelle Orange, who was practically glowing because that girl, unlike a lot of writers I know, actually takes care of herself, which is truly admirable.

Michelle had a recent public dust-up with Justin Long (yes, that Justin Long) wherein he mentioned one of her bad reviews of him on a late night talk show. A few weeks later he commented on an essay of hers rather extensively and fairly charmingly.

I mentioned it to her, and she blushed. (It is not hard to make Orange blush.) We talked for a while about internet commenters, and I assured her that she (1) came off sounding very smart through all of this and (2) this was a funny and interesting way to achieve a brief moment of unasked-for internet celebrity if one must suffer through something like that at all.

Then I went to yoga with Molly and it was a hard class but the ninety minutes just flew by and it was extremely rewarding, even though at the end I was asked to think of myself as an angel, which, no, I am not. We went to dinner afterward, and drank red wine and ate octopus and bread and olive oil and had deep talks. (If you ever want to know what I really think about everything on this planet, go to yoga with me and then have a drink with me after. I’m like nine hundred miles above earth at that point.)

I feel like everytime I talk to Molly I say something like, “I am going to explain to you exactly why I am the way I am,” and then I tell her some mildly unsettling story from my past and it sounds like I have known this truth about myself for years as the words come out of my mouth, but in actuality it is the first time I am figuring it out, the first time I am figuring a lot of things out, and it is not terrifying at all really, though I am sure when I was younger I thought it would be.

I am not suggesting I am figuring everything out. That I know it all. Oh no. Only that there are some brand new truths on the horizon. I can’t tell if being aware of them is going to make much of a difference. It is nice to say them out loud though. It doesn’t feel like it happened to anyone else – I don’t feel a distance from them. I claim ownership of everything. But it doesn’t feel like it matters much anymore either.

How strange it is to just be. I am not always, but sometimes. And more lately.

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I am thinking about Uncle Tupelo this morning.

(11/05/10) | 1 Comment »