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The sermon for Apr. 20, 2004 is: unbecoming 3:51 a.m. Dear Rebecca, in this my inebriated and garrulous and yet drowsy state, I had written a long, long entry about tonight, whereupon I wrote a pastiche of your writing (trying to approximate its thoughtfulness and perception, its minimalist poetry and curiosity, its straightforwardness reminiscent of Raymond Carver, Raymond Queneau, Raymond Chandler, someone named Raymond) and several abortive drafts of a love-poem/limerick chez vous (sample line: "Rebecca is going to Mecca---" I forget the rest [blush]). It was a failure; though I did like this one bit I wrote, where I compared you to "a smart, wary stray strung-out cat, whom one attempts to becalm and comfort by offering saucers of warm milk laced with oxycodone." When I tried to post it, however, my firewall had locked my internet access, and I lost everything I'd written. Usually I bewail such losses; but at this moment I'm so sleepy and discontented I think it a good thing. Firewall: good, good thing! But before I forget, and before my memory inevitably is overthrown by the brackish tide of time time time and I lose the green niceness of being with you, I wanted just to memorialise that moment in that crowded garage, when we sang songs from West Side Story. How can one fail not to become infatuated with another who sings from West Side Story? I still wish I could write like you, or like someone named Raymond -- write something that captures the immediacy and adventure of each moment in living; the sheer shrill electricity of travel, no matter however rudderless and vague the destination. I wish I wasn't so baroque, so enamoured with iambic hexadecametre and metonymy; I wish I was someone else, at least right now. But I shan't worry about that now. I'll worry about it tomorrow. To quote the 19th century American philosopher Scarlett Pansy O'Hara Kennedy Butler, "Tara! Tara! Tara! Tomorrow, tomorrow is another day." Goodnight.  
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