2am

i tend to like things that are old. i am often wearing a tweed jacket i bought for a dime in oregon, one button long missing. to my left, on the lower shelf of my maple table is a box of square photo paper from my great grand father's photography business, still sealed in it's black paper wrapping. my house is riddled with trinkets and old junk requisitioned by my need for history. i am frequently looking for old records, ash trays and ephemera from decades i have never known personally. scraps of lives i've never touched, or had.

i do have some younger stuff. i am not posting this from a typewriter, although this guy figured out how to make that work. my wife is younger too, so that's cool.

im not really bothered by new stuff. i want to get a new power book, an ipod, one of those phone things like mb has, and some other cool new stuff. but there's just something about old stuff, from just about deco through the '70's that i am hardwired to seek out.

im almost done with kavalier and clay. it is amazing. you were all on the china clipper that is chabon, while i have been languishing with the dirty laundry here on this slow boat. but let me tell you, no matter how you get there, the china that is this book is amazing. i'm at that point where i can't wait to finish it, but i never want it to end. i kinda feel like rob gordon, when he's talking about jumping from rock to rock, but not entirely.

i think my desire to have old stuff, stuff that seems to have more permanence to it than newer stuff, is a lot like joe's desire in the book to kill nazi's. it's a bad analogy, but stick with me. joe wants to kill nazi's left and right in 'the escapist', and pick fights with the germans of new york because he is otherwise completely powerless to do anything to save his family stuck back in prague. maybe i desire to have a lot of old stuff around, besides the better design sensibilities, because i want to create family history that i feel like i haven't had, or has been lost. the stuff here seems to have a lot of history, and a lot of it does. the trouble is that most of that history is lost on me. there's no one left who knows.

i drink everyday from my papa's coffee cup. his camera is sitting on top of some old books on my maple table to my left. i wear his shirts, along with a couple from my dad. i have my mom's bowling towel in an old gutted silver ware case sitting on top of my dresser. then there's the endless pages of photo albums. events i have no idea of, pictures of people and places i can't remember the names of. sometimes it's just damn maddening.

i don't think i could ask for better though. this stuff feels right to me. it's light, and floats with me through my days. my white headphones are right where they should be. they were made to sit in front of my stereo. these records were pressed for this very living room. in the same way that my wife and i, born a thousand miles and more than a year apart, were made to become one flesh. at least sometimes, sitting here amongst the tossed about detritus of my relatives and other people lives, admiring the air of history about the place... it sure feels that way.