The pace of youth is so dazzlingly hurtlingly accelerated it can render the background of youth -- the world and all the people in it -- seemingly static. This is an illusion, like the gentle list backward of the platform when the train starts. I don't know when the air around me became so viscous -- sometime in the past few years, I think. But now, back home, I perceive -- as if by means of a new sense -- the tracks that time has trailed through everything around me, the distance that we have all come, the subtle constant motion away from and then towards.

Get Rich Quicker

Officially open for business, my new carding venture: for a small fee, I will select, design, and/or write your cards for holidays, birthdays, special occasions, or just to let that special someone know you're thinking of them.

Prices may vary. Void where prohibited.

Sentences I have loved

A few doozies from the past few months:

"I like women from countries that have sustained political turmoil. Western culture seems to forge women that are valueless and inane."

That's from what is alleged to be Julian Assange's okcupid profile which now you need to sign in to be able to see. If it really is his profile, this seems a wee bit hypocritical to me. Isn't he supposed to be all about transparency?? But really, what can you expect from someone charming enough to write the above sentences in his quest for love?

"'If there was anyone who kept their calm, it was certainly me,' Mr. Sarkozy added."

From an NY Times article. It doesn't really matter what it was about.

"As a 16-year-old girl in the company of three adult men she was the least likely of the four to be carrying one, let alone two, heavy handguns. It is far more probable that she relied on the pocketknife found in her brassiere for any necessary self-protection."

This is from a 1979 Supreme Court case -- Ulster County v. Allen. I just think it's badass.

Commuting

6:50 am

Last night I rode the bus home and thought --

so dark and yet

so early, only 4:47 pm and already someone has pricked the skin

of the balloon of the sky and the light

has gone rushing out like air and the city

of San Francisco, Coit Tower, the TransAmerica pyramid, the Embarcadero Center

and all the blocky fortresses of capital with bay views

are zipping up their suits of silhouette.

But now the risen bits of sun are pooling on the bay's rim

and spilling out beneath the stuttering bits of cloud

and filling in the gaps between the interlocking fingers of highway on the east end of the Bay Bridge

where the 80 and the 880 and the 580 loop and ribbon

and a light that is one of the colors of the scarf I'm knitting with yarn remaining from a hat

edges up and over to shade the clouds on the other side of the Bridge

and I wonder whether this patchwork of vapor, this fragmented fog

always hanging over us is a mirror

or a screen.