whirlwind

days, these. Very old and true-hearted buddy up from Durham, NC, steering a black pick-up through the wilds of upstate and interior PA with a ladyfriend in tow to end up finally, wonderfully, crashing in the cordorouy-covered spare bed for four days, led to this, in roughly chronological order: a midnight dinner of soba noodles and sesame dressing; a drive down to the isle of Manhattan for lime popsicles in the Ramble, glorious vegan mock turkey mock thanksgiving dinners in the village, west, a ride uptown to revisit the tortorous youngster years with gloriously bereft sing-alongs courtesy of ani difranco, a ride down to Harlem to find friends and lovers stoop-sitting like profesh; informal contest to see how many watersports jokes can be made in one delirous midnight car-ride north, to home, with the company of deep-fried mock chicken and terrible kwikmart coffee and john darnielle belting in full-on stereospectrumstereophonic sound, busted sub-woofer be damned; no sleep, and no sleep, and no sleep, the best vegan chocolate cake in the world, and loading said buddys arms up with rubyfruit jungle, play it as it lays, white noise (brown, didion, delillo, respective) because it's good for her and she'll thank me for it later.

And now that the house is quiet save for the whirring of fans and the slow drip of sweat down my neck, it's time for book-cracking and brain-recovery.