Tonight...

I am sad. (listening to: Ender softly purring on my lap)

It is a hopeful sadness, one that knows it is supposed to be melancholy and yet knows that it will end, giving way to a smile, a laugh, a clearing sigh.

Tonight's sadness is brought on my memory. But not mine. I get like this when I read a well-written book. I strive to make my own thoughts more articulate. More prosaic, more... meaningful. Speaker for the Dead does this to me every time, and I've read that damn thing dozens of times. Tonight, though.. it's a new book- one recommended to me by Natalie. It's her favorite, and whenever someone goes out of their way to tell me what their FAVORITE book is, I make it a point to read it. You can tell a lot about a person by their favorite book.

This one is called The Time Traveler's Wife, and I've had all 540 pages of it for just over a week. I couldn't put it down. It was incredible. I loved it. I just finished it, and it put me into this mood.

I wish I could describe this mood with a better voice than my own. Like Byron or Shelley. I want to describe it using words that make the reader feel it as though they were me. What I really wish is that I could bottle it, and savor it like a dry wine at some point many years from now. I love the way it feels in my head. Like a pretentious poet or philosopher. It makes me feel egotistical and florid, the way a robe and a leather-bound book instantly speaks with a british accent "This guy takes himself way too seriously." This feeling is done away instantly by anyone not completely in tune with it speaking to me, so I am somewhat glad that tonight, I am alone, with only my son on my lap, happily dozing.

I'm not actually even here right now. The open deck door I sit next to shouts at me every time a car drives by with the loud, incessant noise of rubber on asphalt; but that's not the noise I hear. It's a crackling fire, the sound of pine logs popping fast and loud, the sap melting and exploding in little puffs of white smoke. The ticking of my keys as I punch each one in turn is the long slow clucking of a grandfather clock, steadily meteing out each second of the time I have in this place. It's a room I know well, and I love the delicious bullshit that comes out of it. I do my best thinking here, my best self-reflection, and it always, ALWAYS manifests itself in things that would normally make my eyes roll, itself heavy with its own ego.

But to me, it's delicious. A savory fruit or a warm blanket, I can feel it permeate me in heady intellectualism. And what comes of this foray into mental masturbation? Usually, a piece of writing that is itself significant to only me. My favorite result of this place is an old story I wrote about a man and a woman seperated by a river. It never holds the same beauty and elegance to someone else, and I always end up feeling like a heel whenever someone reads anything I've done in this room. But to hell with it. This is me, and this is now, so it's real, and it's a part of me.

Please, join me here?

END TRANSMISSION...