Infinite Summer

My boyfriend had a dream the other night that he and Mario Incandenza were smoking pot together and Mario was staying with us, sleeping in our spare bedroom. Oddly, the same night I had an IJ-related dream but I can't remember it anymore.

I'm the only one of us doing Infinite Summer, reading the book on his recommendation as a big DFW fan. I guess I've been talking about it so much, and reading things to him from the blog and the forums, that it's seeping into his subconscious as well!

or maybe he just hasn't figured out how to prop it up on the police lock while remaining upright.

I had an awful headache in Germany (round the corner from a business with Schacht in the company namename) and almost bought a bottle of Visine instead of my required ibuprofen. Turned out I had the money for neither, though.
A customer referred to my colleague as "Himself next door" which excited, too.

Just about every day I walk by a sign that has the word "MAPS" on it and nothing else. It reminded me both of faces and the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies. Finally one day I went closer to the house down the walkway to read the fine print on the window awning: Massachusetts Association of Portuguese Speakers.

Being reminded so often by the word on the sign, I have started to see faces in a completely different way, how they can reflect where someone's been as well as where they're going so to speak.

i was standing in line to get my picture taken for a substitute-teaching job; each prospective teacher was sitting down on the chair, signing their name, getting their picture taken no problem, and getting up.

when it was my turn, i sat down in the chair and smiled. the photographer frowned and told me, "smile." i smiled wider. she took the picture, then looked at the screen with an unpleasant expression on her face. she said, "um, let's try that again." then she said, "be sure to smile this time." she took another picture, looked perplexed, and said "well, i guess that's good enough."

After work today, I went to my local cable office to trade in my broken remote for a new one. There were about 5 or 6 people ahead of me in line, and it didn't bother me one bit. I read some e-mails and did some surfing on my Blackberry. I felt bad for the young lady in front of me though. In the maybe 10 minutes we waited together, she must have sighed loudly and melodramatically at least 20 times, as if they'd hear her and allow her to cut to the front or something. Is it weird that I thought to myself, "What would DFW do in this situation?" Maybe I should have tried to engage her in conversation to ease her tension, but I'm not at that point yet, I don't think. I did feel badly for her, thinking she must have been in a rush to get someplace, maybe wanting to pick up her kids at daycare or something. Whereas before I probably would have found her annoying, I now felt some empathy for her. I guess that's something I have DFW to thank for.

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"The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you." DFW