February 10, 2001

This day in history:

The day started out innocently enough: a massage at a gentle people-type healing center on Main Street in Venice. Unfortunately for my vertebrae, it was administered by a tough little Mongol named Peter, who nearly healed the life out of me.

That night Luke and I went to a cocktail party thrown by a tedious graduate student who sidled up to ask me archly who Luke thought he was -- when I replied that I didn't know who Luke thought he was at that very moment in time, but that I was fairly certain he had been my husband for the last 10 years, this person disappeared into the kitchen for another blue cocktail only to reappear 10 minutes later and, apparently forgetting that we had ever spoken before, backed me into a corner and harangued me about Jacques Derrida. Trying to end the conversation quickly, I gushed that Derrida had a sexy sparkle in his eye and lovely white hair and smelled of expensive French products and that it was for these reasons primarily, and not so much to do with his take on Sassure or Heidegger or juridprudence or Thoth or Oedipus or in fact not one single thing that he ever thought or wrote, that I loved me that French philosopher. And as we left the party, I palmed our host's copy of "The Silver Palate Good Times" cookbook and gave it the next morning to the Santa Monica number 10 bus gods. Hopefully, SOMEONE eventually got a nice time out of the experience.

Six years later, here I am: sitting here in this study that still, after three years, does not feel like mine, surrounded by pictures of people I may never see again and even more of someone I had not yet met but who was sleeping deep within me, shivering in the sub-zero loveliness of a Canadian winter night, trying to make stories and sense of what happened in a far-away place that memory has reshaped into a soft warm perfection that never really was. Are we more than the stories we tell ourselves?

Post-script: I noted on Feb 10, 2001 (with an astonishing lack of clairvoyance) that there were only 1469 days left of the Bush presidency. That seemed like a lot. . . .