The one picture that documents my night with John Legend.

Rate-A-Concert

Artist(s): John Legend and openers, Consequence and Robin Thicke (son of actor Alan Thicke, who played the dad on Growing Pains)

Length of performance: 3.5 hours

What I did: I met Cade in a long line outside Nokia Theater in Times Square. We eventually got to go in and I had my bags and coat checked by the extraordinarily friendly people who work there. Cade and I endured two blah openers and an intermission before getting to see John Legend. Mr. Legend rocked the house, of course.

High point: Knowing all the John Legend songs and getting to really enjoy them live, and the a capella parts of "Ordinary People" that the crowd sang. John Legend murmured, "That sounds beautiful," and I had to agree.

Low point: Robin Thicke and his bad Justin Timberlake impersonation or act, whatever you want to call it.

Overall impression: "Holla! Holla! Holla! Aaah!"

Reason I went to the concert: I love soul music, and I love that John Legend has that neo-soul sound infused with gospel and hip hop (hip hop more so in Get Lifted than Once Again), and he writes his own music and plays the piano.

I learned: I can be one of those shrieking girls at concerts. Who knew?

I challenge Cade, Mr. Smarty McSmartypants, to try this.

Your Observation Skills Get A C

You tend to notice the big things in life... But the details aren't exactly your forte

How Observant Are You?

Grad Schoo' Haiku

She raises her hand;
the class sighs collectively.
The weakest link speaks.

*

Stupid will not stop.
It violently floods the room.
I've no dam to give.

*

One more wrong answer,
self-appointed smarty pants
fumes at correction.

*

Sleep with eyes open
for this I'd easily earn
an A via zzzzz's.

*

Someone in class snores
I can't hold back my snickers.
The prof calls on me.

April sent me this earlier last week. It's remarkable and strangely beautiful.

If I ever have an angsty multiplatinum album, I think this might be the cover:

"Tepid AND cold!"

Cade and I frequent Menupages.com, a website where one can access menus and customer reviews of almost any restaurant in NYC. We think the reviews of Good Enough to Eat, a popular homestyle resturant on the Upper West Side, are Good Enough to Blog.

"The rape occurred a mere two blocks from our ABC affiliate studio. The rapist escaped before police arrived. Police warn that the perpetrator appears to be an African-American professional."

Now this would be a good addition to the kid's future 100 Things About Me page on his blog.

Urban Autumn

I've been meaning to blog for a few days now, but this was the week that got away. The two times I sat down with the intention of writing this very sentence, Blogger wasn't working for me. I've found that the pressure at work fluctuates week to week. It tends to be on one week, off the next.

Except for the coming week. The other teacher I work with and I had two observations last week, Thursday I was out all day at a special training (a godsend), and today we had a day of professional development. I don't care how much a teacher may love his or her students - school is so nice without them. Next week, I'm going to be chaperoning a field trip to The Met. I've never been, as it's just been on the back burner, but I don't think I'm looking forward to it. The kids were atrocious on the last trip and I hate being with the same group for an entire day. My three worst advisees don't get to come along, though, so perhaps everything will be great.

After the field trip, I have the next part of my downtown training. It continues for five more weeks, so I get to hang out with two girls from work (one of whom is the ebullient and directionally-challenged Renee) in Union Square and talk about cognitive functions or lack thereof in our students. Before the field trip, Cade and I are getting lifted at a Monday John Legend concert in Times Square. Then Cade and my mom celebrate their birthdays on Tuesday. Wednesday, I hope to offend people with an off-color Halloween costume I thought of last night as I rushed to the train station en route to fun.

Post-epiphany, I listened to my ipod. It was on a random song that somehow penetrated the noise in my head. "We were looking for ourselves. We found each other..." It struck me that I've been meaning to tell Cade this, just to remind him. Life is cluttered and hectic right now, and I appreciate the way he kind of rolls around in the pile and doesn't mind getting dog-eared.

Then I thought about how I've never needed to look for myself - I'm right here. It's all about how we invent ourselves, and anyway, sometimes he may as well be someone I invented.

I don't know what I mean by that, either, but now is not the time for explication. I have another train to catch. Another song to hear. Another thought to think and remind myself to consider later.

Hot off the presses... I just got these pictures from my mom's blog:

All day I
carry a
secret
I wouldn't
know how to
reveal.

You gave
it to me,
rubbed
this balm
into my
skin.

I'm the
weakling who
lifts the
large weight
from the stage,
more shy than
triumphant.

The audience
whispering,
"How could
she do that?"
Only one
person
backstage
knowing how
hollow the
burden is, how
hollow
everything
that's
not me -
not me
with you-
is.

Happy Birthday, Flabby Abby!

My family's beloved Abby turns twelve today. For a bulldog, that's geriatric and nearly unheard of. I'm glad Abby's still around sleeping, eating, and brewing deadly farts. I just wish I were close enough to smell them. (I mean that in the most poetic way).

Mad TV - Ray's Grudge: A Blind Date with Terror

I thought this was funny my senior year of college, and it's still funny just in time for The Grudge 2. Oh, mainstream movies are so terrible...

Driving from Maryland to New Jersey last weekend, I noticed at least three billboards for the prescription sleep medicine Rozerem. Each ad features an interaction between a groundhog and an Abraham Lincoln impersonator. Does that seem as non sequitur to you as it did to me?

The only text on the billboards is www.theymissyou.com. Abraham Lincoln and a groundhog miss me? I couldn't figure out what was being advertised. Paul said he was pretty sure it was a new prescription for insomnia.

What a weird campaign. When I initially tried to make sense of it, I concluded that what Lincoln and the groundhog have in common is February. I now know that Lincoln was an insomniac. And yeah, groundhogs hibernate in the winter.

But still. Strange campaign, huh? Strange and curious enough to suck in possible consumers and advertisers like myself.

Ask your doctor if Rozerem is right for you.

Side effects may include - get this - drowsiness.

"Tonight I'll dream while in my bed
when silly thoughts go through my head
about the bugs and alphabet
and when I wake tomorrow I'll bet
that you and I will walk together again
cause I can tell that we are gonna be friends."
- The White Stripes

[A phone conversation with my sister, the astute observer.]

Megan: So I think Daddy broke his finger.

Me: How?

Megan: The shed fell on it.

Me: What?

Megan: He was jacking it up to put a board under it, and it fell on his pinky. It happened really fast.

Me: Oh my God.

Megan: Yeah, he just kept saying, "Damn! Oh, shit! Son of a bitch!" over and over again, like one of those wind-up dolls that only says three phrases.

Me: Oh my God.

Megan: "Damn! Oh, shit! Son of a bitch! Damn! Oh, shit! Son of a bitch! Damn...!" Blood was gushing everywhere.

The radiator woke me with its hot hiss. Alone this weekend, Cade away in Philadelphia at his college homecoming weekend, fall seems to have settled down over New York City. The hem of its yellow-orange-red dress lay crumpled on the ground.

At first, I nearly had to chant to motivate my solitude: "I can be alone. I can be alone." Friday night was dark and cold. It emptied the streets and amplified every impudent drop from my showerhead. Even the subway seemed to have realized it was underground for another reason and gone into hibernation.

I cleared the trunk at the foot of my bed of all the old, barely used school supplies I bought for my job last year. I found my winter clothes and moved them into the trunk. I remembered nights like this when I didn't really know much here. I read and went to sleep.

The radiator woke me with its hot hiss. I dressed and washed dishes. I imagined lusty snakes wrapping themselves around the pipes that heat the building. Then to the library I walked, the strap of my bag straining under the weight of five abandoned library books. Books that I would regret having spent time on, had I read them. Words on paper seldom make me feel this way, so Stephanie Klein must have a gift.

A book waited for me with a paper wrapped around its spine. Places I Never Meant To Be.

I never meant to be so surprised when a neighbor met me face to face when I left the apartment. "Hi! How are you?" he asked. I've never seen the man, nor do I consider unwarranted friendliness natural at this point in my life. "Umm...good." I walked away, feeling stupid and chilly as the hard wood floors when I swung my feet out of the covers hours before.

It happened again when another man on the subway followed me out the door at our stop. "It looks like you had fun shopping today," he smiled. I huh'ed him, because I usually don't listen to others unless I know they're going to say something. Sometimes not even then.

"It looks like you had fun shopping today," he smiled. "Ummm...yes." I looked away from him, because I no longer know how to have a conversation with a stranger without thinking, "Why is this person talking to me? What does this person want from me? How can I end this encounter?"

The man must have looked at the gold ballet flats on my feet. "Those are some nice shoes," he said. "Thanks," I replied like I was reading a foreign word in an otherwise English text. I achieved flatness and a question at the same time.

I took the stairs up to the surface two at a time to get away from the man. I suspect he wanted to get my phone number or something. He could be one of those freaks, though. Just making conversation to be nice. Too weird.

Back at my building, I saw Large Neighbor, the gigantic black man who sits on the stoop with his bodega fruit drink and a black plastic bag. I'm not sure he even lives in the building and we've never spoken, but he looks out at the traffic on Central Park West with such wistfulness that I think there are a million sad stories he recalls. He never helps me with my bags of groceries and just slightly scoots over when I'm carrying a bag of laundry up the steps.

I carry my bags; we barely look at each other. We ignore each other in recognition.

I'm happy to get home. I can be alone. I can be alone.

Now I don't want this to be construed as pessimism or naysaying, but I recently got a note from a new reader that has made me do a lot of thinking. Mark is a special ed teacher who wants to move to New York City from Texas to be a public school principal. Mark wants to make a difference. I don't want to be too quick to judge, but I think maybe Mark doesn't know what he could be getting himself into.

I've never regretted that I moved to New York right out of college. I took a teaching job in one of the most difficult areas to teach - Harlem - with the most difficult age group to teach - middle school - with no real experience to guide me. I had a dream that caring about the kids was enough to bridge the gaps of inexperience, ignorance, and politics inherent in the endeavor.

I was wrong.

I never understood that too many urban public schools perpetuate the vicious cycles of inequity, because no one in NYC knows any other way to do it. Everyone knows the schools are dangerous and many of the students are passed until they can drop out. Everyone knows that principals will flub numbers of assaults, test scores, etc. just to keep school doors open. But sometimes, sometimes doors have got to be slammed shut and locked forever.

Because I'm stubborn, I was impervious to the warnings I got about teaching in NYC from fellow educators (and really, anyone with half a brain), literature, and case studies. I wanted to be the change I wished to see in the world. This meant feigning not igorance so much as complete resolve and disregard of all the statistics. I had to see things for myself to get it.

Teaching at the public school where I worked last year was not rewarding. It's the craziest thing I ever did in my life, and I wouldn't wish it on anyone else. I especially wouldn't wish it on an idealistic person who really wants to teach.

But let me finish. After a grueling, painful year at a completely chaotic school, I got a different job. I still work in NYC with a population that has historically been denied a good education. I still work in a public school. I still teach middle school. The difference: I have some experience now and I'm teaching in a completely different type of school.

The school where I worked last year had something like 950 kids in three different grades. It was run by a large revolving door of staff members, many of whom I knew only by their formal Mr. and Ms. names. The school where I work now has 300 kids from kindergarten to eighth grade. The staff is small and everyone goes by their first names. My principal calls me Amanda.

My school isn't a cattle yard where teachers merely try to prod students from one pen to the next, shooting or abandoning those who get infected with Mad Cow Disease along the way. (I actually think a bovine metaphor is most appropriate in this case). There's always a focus on where the kids are going with their knowledge, including lots of re-emphasis, assessment, and reflection. I'm buried in paperwork now, but I feel like I'm actually a teacher.

This is what I wanted all along, and I guess I'm sharing this as a warning and a wish for my new reader, Mark. May you not be stunted by ineffective bureaucracy and social injustice, my fellow Texan. May you not fall for the same trap I fell for, but if you do, may you be agile enough to stand back up and dodge some of the danger. May you realize that you can choose where you go (or don't go) and that it's okay to change your mind about who you are and who you want to be.

May you do good work in a place that lets you.

[Vernon is taking his practice state math test beside me. I've been sitting by him for an hour, reading each question and answer choice. While he works on a problem, I lean back in my chair and crack my knuckles.]

Vernon: Ewww! That's nasty! You gonna get arthur-rita.

Me: Arthritis? Hmmm, maybe. But I love popping my fingers, and I've been doing it since I was a little kid.

[Vernon looks at me. He imagines his Reading teacher as a little kid so very long ago.]

Vernon: Dang, then. You a survivor.

Q: I am seventeen-year-old boy from Belgium. I love ur blog! While u write letters to me? Where is ur postal address?

A: Thanks for visiting my blog. I'm glad you enjoy reading it. However, I don't feel comfortable giving anyone online my mailing or home address. Email is the only way to communicate with me at this point.


Q: I emailed you awhile ago. How come you never wrote me back?

A: Sorry. I'm really bad about keeping up with personal emails. I do read them, though, and I appreciate your feedback/readership.


Q: You write a lot about leaving NYC now. Why?

A: While I enjoy living in NYC, my experience here has taught me to appreciate other parts of the world and other lifestyles a lot more than I used to. I love getting out of the city for fresh air and new experiences, most of which are cleaner and cheaper.


Q: Have you noticed your writing is darker in the fall?

A: Yes. Seasonal affective disorder is all-encompassing, I suppose. Ths time of the year also brings back a lot of darker memories from last year.


Q: Why do you make fun of other people's personal ads?

A: I think they're funny. Personal ads have fascinated me for a long time, because they're highly personal (of course!), succinct pieces of writing designed to help people take fate into their own hands and meet others, couple, etc. They're just so...human. And I make fun of some humans.


Q: Who do you want to win Project Runway?

A: I liked what I saw of Jeffrey's collection, but it looks like he might have been disqualified. In that case, I don't know. Michael is the favorite, but his clothes looked tacky on last week's episode. He'll probably win. I liked the belts Uli made. I don't remember Laura's clothes, so I'm thinking she won't win.

Me So Corny

Shadowfax is a thirty-five foot sailboat currently docked at Long Cove Marina in Rock Hall, Maryland. It (or she - should I call the boat a she?) has been in Paul's family for eighteen years and fostered countless weekends of sunburns, relaxation, and inebriation. Despite feeling achy and sick on Friday, I just had to stick to my plans to go sailing. I like to live my life like I may never have the opportunity to do something again. Besides, I'd never slept on a boat before or spent any significant time on eastern waters. Clearly, a land lubber.

Paul sealed the deal when he referred to Shadowfax as a yacht. I hadn't yet seen the boat and I have no real concept of numbers, so telling me a boat is thirty-five feet long isn't very helpful. I imagine thirty-five plastic rulers from school back to back. Then I start thinking about something else in my mathematically-challenged, scatterbrained way.

What I knew was this: If Shadowfax was a yacht, it wouldn't be anything like P. Diddy's yacht. Still, it's cool to talk about yachts. To say you spent the weekend on a yacht. To pack a bunch of sweaters and wait at Penn Station, sighing wearily, "I can't wait 'til we get to the yacht."

*A yacht is an independent boat that people can eat, poop, and live on. Shadowfax is definitely a yacht, albeit not one with linen sheets or feather mattresses or the trappings of la vida Diddy.

Cade and I scrambled to Penn Station, got separated somehow, reunited, met Paul in New Jersey, and started the long trip to Maryland. When we arrived at the marina, Paul's dad was hanging out. I tried not to fall off the dock and quickly got acquainted with the cabin. It's actually quite cozy. Paul's dad assured me that "what happens on the boat stays on the boat" with the exception of the the time the third stooge, Alex, clogged the boat's toilet and it had to be taken apart. That one is a story for the masses.

I was the one girl on the boat, and the one person that didn't get to enjoy the screwdrivers everyone was drinking. I sniffled and watched the guys play cards. Paul's dad showed me how to use the pump to flush the toilet. I willed my kidneys and colon to hibernate for the night, as the rest of us soon did once the cold medicine and alcohol (not taken together, mind you) kicked in.

The next morning, our crew awoke. I took a hot shower in the marina's shower facilities and proceeded to blow necklaces of mucus out of my nostrils. Mmmm, it was time for breakfast. We all rode in Paul's dad's beloved Jaguar to some cafe called Pasta Plus Breakfast or something like that. It was a very small, uncreatively named place. Cade was surprised to see that the coffee was self-serve. This was the universe's way of asking him to overstimulate himself to the point of near-death, so he did. I ordered eggs, bacon, toast, and other typical fare. The night before, I'd mentioned to Paul, "I wish we had Scrabble to play." Paul looked at me quizzically, "Scrapple? That's food."

Paul's dad perked up. "I love scrapple!" Have you ever heard of this before? Apparently it's an eastern thing, perhaps just in Pennsylvania. Scrapple is like Spam, Paul's dad enthusiastically explained, "except like, three notches down from it."

So yeah. A variety meat worse than Spam and hot dogs. The mateys insisted I had to have some the next morning for breakfast. Come breakfast, Paul's dad didn't forget to get me my side of scrapple. At one point, the waitress came by and asked why I hadn't touched the thin brown rectangle on the plate. "Oh, she's from Texas. She's never had scrapple. She's nervous," Paul's dad explained.

The waitress looked at me sympathetically, "Yeah, my son won't eat it anymore. He came home one day from school and said, 'Mom, scrapple is pig penis!' What can ya do? Do you guys need more coffee?" She beamed.

Pig penis? Gulp. I had the tiniest bite, because I felt I had to try it. What if I never got the chance to try it again? What if it really was a tasty delicacy? I shouldn't be such a sissy about it, I guess.

It wasn't. It reminded me of that time I ate dry dog food some years ago, only worse.

Post-breakfast, we went to the grocery store to stock the boat and then took off sailing. We were bound for Lovely Cove, which is somewhere near the Chesapeake. I really have no grasp of northeastern geography, so I need this whole blog entry fact-checked.

It had been chilly in the city on Friday, and was in the forties when we'd arrived in Maryland. Saturday morning and afternoon were windy and cold enough for jackets, but the sun was shining. It was really beautiful with the sun glittering off the water and the changing leaves in the background. I didn't play much of a part in getting Shadowfax sailing, but I did help raise a sail or mast (my nautical vocabulary is horrid and inaccurate, I'm sure) and unwind some rope. At one point, the boat tipped way to one side and most things on the shelves of the cabin fell to the center. Cade screamed and ran away. Exciting.

I felt sick, but I could've stayed on the deck for hours. I stretched out with a blanket and felt the clear air and sun on my face. It was soothing. I didn't relax in the quiet for long before some family friends of Paul's dad came by in their speed boat. We all had lunch on Shadowfax, during which we saw a humongous stinkbug on one of the guests. Photo opportunity!


After lunch, we went out on the speed boat and eventually watched the sunset and cooked dinner. I felt really tired at this time, but how cool is it to be out on the water and cook on a boat? Paul's dad and I talked while he grilled and decided that it was going to be too cold to stay out in the cove overnight. Docked at the marina, we could plug in the heater. In the middle of water, we didn't have that luxury.

I did some steering and managed not to run Shadowfax aground. We headed for the marina, visited the home of the family friends from lunch, and then went back to the boat to sleep. Paul's dad fell asleep pretty early. I was sick and passed out. Paul watched TV for a while and bundled up. I pretended to be a groundhog and curled up in my little boat burrow. The motion of the boat was relaxing and not at all sickening. Back in my own bed Sunday night, I felt like I was still rocking on the water.On Sunday, I took another hot marina shower. Cue mucus drainage. Cade and I spent the rest of the morning eating breakfast and walking around taking pictures. Sunday afternoon was a blur of managing the time and getting back to New York, which is sadly how weekend trips always end up. I could've done more sailing, had my white blood cells had better sea legs.

I enjoyed my yacht adventure, but for the sake of the Cap'n and the rest of the crew, won't be back until I'm not germing up the cabin. For that reason, I hope what happens on the boat doesn't stay on the boat. My berth needs to have that shite Lysol-ed out of it.

Rrrr!

*I recently checked out four books from the New York Public Library - a daunting amount for someone who adheres to a schedule of teaching middle school Reading and being obsessed with Project Runway and America's Next Top Model - but I finished all of them about a week before the due date.

1) The First Part Last by Angela Johnson. I read this book, because it's one of those books all the urban kids supposedly love to read. I think it's great that there are books that shows teens from all demographics, but it annoys me that a lot of higher-ups at urban schools think that students can't relate to anything other than "big cities, bigger problems," thus they can't attempt to read any book set anywhere else about any other kind of person. This is so limiting and offensive to our students! Okay, off soapbox now.

So the book is about teenage pregnancy, but with the baby daddy raising the baby. Nice! It is fiction. The mother dies in the end of pre-eclampsia, which I know happens, but I find of felt that Johnson's carpal tunnel syndrome was really flaring up when she decided, "Over a hundred pages... Damn, what do I do now? I know! Kill Nia!" This move kind of reeked of those morality novels from the seventies and eighties when knocked-up girls would die horrible deaths in childbirth or contract syphilis. It's also so different and you know, sexy to see an urban teenage boy raise an infant.

One thing I did love about the book was how the chapters alternate between Then and Now. It's cooler than telling everything chronologically and manages not to confuse readers and the title's called The First Part Last. Get it? Brilliant, brilliant, I say.

2) Free Gift With Purchase: My Improbable Career in Magazines and Makeup by Jean Godfrey-June. Clearly, I love the memoirs of journalists. First, Bonnie Fuller. Now Godfrey-June, the beauty editor of Lucky and formerly of Elle. This book is occasionally funny, and I liked that Godfrey-June doesn't come across as haughty or self-important. Still, she's a beauty editor. I wanted more tips, secrets, and juiciness.

3) But Enough About Me... A Jersey Girl's Unlikely Adventures Among the Absurdly Famous by Jancee Dunn. This very funny memoir is by a long-time writer for Rolling Stone. Dunn talks about interview tips and anecdotes she's accrued over time, but also includes tasty personal morsels. These two excerpts reminded me of the relationship I have with my parents:

"My father is the most genial Midwestern guy imaginable, but for him, disaster lurks around every corner - financial ruin, squandered health, pyramid schemes, airbags failing to deploy - so he tends to use fear as a parenting tool to goad his daughters into being more prepared. This inevitably involves Kissing Things Good-bye. 'Looks like mold,' he'll say, standing up and brushing off his knees after inspecting the wood underneath Heather's porch. 'Better get that sealed up, or you can kiss this porch good-bye...'

'Think it can't happen to you?'

'Then what?'

I never know whether these are rhetorical questions, or if I'm supposed to answer them. Instead, his doomsday predictions fan my eternal flame of parnoia, which is always at a low burn. I imagine myself in an airless room, covered in a body cast... The only thing I can move is my eyes, which are fastened on my home health care aide - a recent parolee, because with my dwindling finances I can only afford someone in a work-release program. He is telling me he is quitting because I haven't paid him in weeks. 'Don't make me mad,' he hollers throwing down my bedpan. 'My girlfriend used to make me mad.' I look on helplessly as flies gather on the pan to have lunch. Then they move to my face for an aperitif. 'Please,' I whisper weakly, through cracked lips. 'Get them off my face.' They crawl nimbly around my eyes.

'Bitch wouldn't shut her mouth!' he screams, upending my bedside tray.

The flies are laying eggs in my eyes."

***

"Exactly four days after I had moved in [to an NYC studio], my parents arrived - my mother holding a Tupperware container with a lemon cake inside, my father carrying his Stanley Jumbo Organizer Top Toolbox. Delicately, both stepped inside the door and took in the bleak surroundings: a five-hundred-square-foot studio painted the peculiarly dingy grayish white of all New York rentals. A few weak rays of light struggled through an airshaft window.

'Welcome, welcome,' I said. They stood, frozen. 'Sit down,' I said heartily, pointing to a fatigued pullout chair. There was no room in the place for any other chairs. I glanced toward the bathroom. The john was a companionable two yards away from the couch.

'Please,' said my mother. 'I'd rather you didn't sit on the toilet.' She gingerly lowered herself onto the sofa, still holding the Tupperware on her lap, while my father inspected the windows. 'The lock is broken,' he said. 'You'd better call the super.'

'He's never around.'

He crossed his arms. 'Well, then, how about the owner of the building?'

'He lives in Israel,' I said. 'I don't know if he even speaks English...'

He stalked out the door. 'I'm going to go find this super,' he said. 'He should be ashamed that he's not doing his job.'

'Dad,' I called after him. 'Shame is not a motivator in New York.'"

4) The Dive From Clausen's Pier by Ann Packer. I knew this book was some kind of Lifetime movie, which is exactly why I'd never thought of reading it. However, this writing project started thumping around in my head and I knew I had to look at stories involving major life change, relationships, and loyalty. I decided on Packer's work about a young woman who struggles to move on with her life after her fiance is paralyzed.

The book hit close to home, as my dad broke his neck in a horrible accident just like the man in the novel. My sister and I were toddlers and had no idea what was going on. My mom, who'd been a housewife, suddenly had to support a family of four. She had to make big decisions, and they were very different from, but also similar to, the ones the protagonist in The Dive from Clausen's Pier makes.

I hated the way the book ended and I didn't find the characters that interesting, but the book made me think. It would be a great book club read, because it covers such shady ground as when it's okay to leave someone and how we love, and the excerpts say it so much better:

"How much do we owe the people we love? How much do we owe them? What I had discovered was that I couldn't give up my life for Mike - that's how I saw it at the time, that's the choice I thought I had to make. And because I couldn't give up everything, I also thought I couldn't give up anything."

***

"'Guilty,' I said. 'I feel guilty. What does it say about me that I'd leave? What kind of person does it make me?'

She didn't reply for a moment, and I felt the long span between us, the miles and miles of wire. At last she spoke. 'The kind of person you are.'

A rush of laughter escaped me. 'What?'

'It makes you the kind of person you are. People have this idea that what they do changes who they are. A married man has an affair and he thinks, Now I've become a bad person. As if something had changed.'

'Meaning he already was a bad person?'

'Meaning bad isn't the issue. Meaning you do what you do. Not without consequences for other people, of course, sometimes very grave ones. But it's not very helpful to regard your choices as a series of right or wrong moves. They don't define you as much as you define them.'"

***

"It seems to me that we learn each other in stages: facts first, meanings later, like explorers who stumble on to bodies of water without knowing whether they've encountered fog-shrouded rivers or vast oceans. We press on until we know, but as we go something is lost: the new becomes old, and then taken for granted, and then forgotten. With Kilroy I wanted both to speed my way along and also to hold on to each separate moment of revelation.

This was what had gone wrong with Mike. I'd known everything about him but had failed to preserve the pleasure of discovery. Instead, I'd absorbed him. The landscape of his past, his mind: they were my landscapes, I'd traveled them so often."

Your Halloween Costume Should Be

Catwoman

What Should You Be For Halloween?

Because I like gummy bears and wearing dresses with heels? This doesn't jive.