and she was clapping and singing (what looked like) very loud.

i was way into this until

she started doing the worm. this shot me right past "way into", past "hooo boy, that's rich", past even "holy cow look at that, RIGHT ON!" straight on to "i think i love you, puffy paint and sequins woman, let us worm together to "who's zoomin who" by aretha franklin. the first one to put her back out gets a free dinner and unholy monster sized drinks at TGI Fridays from the other".

oh man, seriously? oakland is the best place on earth. for reals and truly.

beyond that, i am fantastically happy, even though i am still rubbing sleepy sand out of my eyes, because it is finally autumn. it is autumn people. this is my time of the year. my time.

last night, driving home from a fantastic sushi dinner with my brother, we could both feel autumn in the air, feel it all over us. the smell of the air, the soft scratching noise of crunchy leaves skating across the asphalt, everything everything everything. i took a nap yesterday and it was there, the silver-blue-grey on my walls and across my sheets and covering my face. the perfect autumn coolness came in through the window and danced with my curtains. stuart stretched out next to me and let me rub his tummy until his purring was all i heard and everything was focused in on this moment of quiet, everything felt like it was in place. i didn't need anything or anybody and it was enough to listen to my breath go in and out and to feel the blood in my fingers and toes and i felt totally alive. i fell asleep like that and i can only imagine the look of calm that must have been on my face, as if nothing else was happening in the world, as if this was all.

"what has history to do with me? mine is the first and only world"--ludwig wittgenstein

indeed.

this morning, i am stretching big feline stretches every half hour or so, tipping myself back and letting my arms and legs extend out as far as they will go, my toes tapping against the underside of my desk. i keep twisting my head this way and that, waiting for my neck to pop, to settle and feel my back line up with itself again. i need a good neck and back crack, and then a long hard back rub and then a nap.

actually, scratch that. what i really need is for someone to come kidnap me from my cubicle and drive me down the coast. i want to go back to new davenport and half moon bay. spend the day in santa cruz. park the car on the side of the road somewhere in between and just watch the ocean fold in on itself, imagining there is someone over in japan doing the same at that very same moment.

count the birds in the sky.