This Week In Not Surfing

1. I stare at the keyboard.

2. I tell my wife I've finally figured out the title to the book I'm writing about emotional partnerships. "Studies in Comparative Satisfaction Economics" or "How to Guarantee Success in Dissatisfaction" or (the French title) "Un Peu de Merde." She is stone faced for a moment, then smirks, then is very quiet, choosing her words particularly and slowly hissing them out in a kind of staccato squeeze, "Pedantic, pandering, boring."

3. I am routinely thwarted at gas station air pumps. They never seem to work, stealing my precious quarters with impunity. And I don't have a pressure gauge.

4. We are living, it seems to me, within the near universal embrace of a delusion of degrees. To the left of me I see conservatives, to the right of me, conservatives. The outrage is outrageous, poured out in opinionated, soft bellied opprobrium that shoots past any reasonableness with which it may be too impatient to contend. Hypocrisy is evolution's wiliest gift.

5. Plastic bags stuffed in plastic bags, waiting for a purpose, haunt my kitchen.

6. The Lyft driver has a Turkish sounding name. He is Kurdish. He teaches us: "Tchoi," how are you? "Abashu," well. "Spas," thanks.

7. A woman in my neighborhood sings a song by Radio Head to the trees in the park across the street from my house. She twirls a piece of braided twine ritualistically as she shuffles from tree to tree.

8. WFMU "Wake & Bake" : look it up. A morning salve.

9. I meet a friend for lunch yesterday and we talk. I see him so rarely, I always feel like I have more to ask him without enough time. After we part I wonder that I forgot to ask him five more burning questions. There is rarely a silent beat in our conversation and I question if this exhausts him. I wonder if I am exhausting. No, I am exhausting.

10. This opinion article appeared in the New York Times. As Lentini is quick to point out, "It's far easier to surf than not surf. Not surfing is the hardest thing in the world." I'm not sure you shouldn't read into that statement further than perhaps you are. I don't take it the way perhaps you are taking it.

11. On that note, may I grow old in the sea.