7.30.2003

Got kissed on the cheek by two tall dark handsome men and one beautiful blonde last evening, oh yes.

I had gone to friend R's home prior to our dance class, and she & her friends were sitting on the porch, flirting away in Spanish. Lou and Albert were leaving as I was arriving. R's friend Lou is Chinese and Peruvian, very striking, very passionate, and very in love with R, who likes him but has a fancy elsewhere. I didn't know Albert but he spoke very little English and was very handsome.

Oh, hardship to get kissed on the cheek.

Once the men had left, we went into R's little apartment in the funky old house, where we talked boys and travels and relationships and freedom and happiness and love. She just returned from an escapade in the San Juan Islands, off the coast of Washington near Seattle, with the man she loves best.

She wants to be with him but is not willing to lose herself to him, she doesn't want to move up there and end up being his couch ornament (which wouldn't happen anyway, since R never stops moving, but I nodded in agreement). Basically, she has her life here, and he has his life there, and they're both busybodies and neither is willing to pack up and change direction in life for the sake of being together.

I love her and she has a good strong mind. She tickles me but it was too hot to laugh in her apartment.

Dance class was fun; we didn't dance. We sat in the little air conditioned office and practiced our zils (finger cymbals) to the different drum rhythms. Much of Middle Eastern music is in Beledi, 4/4 time, like our Western music, but there are also some funky hard-to-count beats, like 9/8, which is characteristic of Turkish music, and 10/8 or 13/8, which is just weird. Boom tocka tock tock tock boom boom tocka tock it went to my head.

Boom! tocka tock boom boom tock it is really hot here.

Most people in Eugene don't have air conditioning, and usually the thermometer registers 100 degrees for one, maybe two days, and then it rains and cools off to 65 again.
Yesterday Eugene, Oregon was as hot as Phoenix, Arizona, but without the cool monsoon stormclouds and thunder and lightning. BOOM! tocka tock tock BOOM!

No there's no global warming. No.

If this keeps up I am moving to Alaska, which in ten years ought to have a pleasant, mild Pacific shore climate and will be a really nice place to live. I know I would not hear any argument from S; it wouldn't be the first time we were both willing to pack up and change direction in life for the sake of being together.

Boom boom tock ticka boom boom tock.