10pm-ish naps are not good for going to bed, later...

First of all, I have the sweetest baby (not so much a baby now) sister in the world.

Secondly, I am wide awake and have another day of work in a marathon schedule so I really should be in bed. However, I wound up taking a nap, late tonight, and was then too wide awake and wired to go to bed, so I decided to take my little book and head to my favorite little neighborhood bar to drink a little sparkling water. Just to read and observe the people and chat with my pal, the bartender, in between drink making. (He was making drinks. I was reading. Observing. Chatting.) It's nice to have this right around the corner watering hole, even though I don't really use it for the purpose for which it exists. I do, in a social context. Just being around other people is nice, especially since Shawn moved to Southern Cal. I find myself really craving something other than sitting in my apartment, alone, night after night. Sun Liquor is a cooling salve once a week, or so. Tonight I got to talk about Radiohead and their new album (freshly downloaded today) how much I LOVED the essay I read while sitting at the bar and commiserate with some other ladies about one guy who is a total jerk and I've watched/listened to as he tried to pick up girls, on more than one occasion. He uses the same lines EVERY time. It is kind of comical. Kind of. At least once you've given him the clear brush off, he leaves you alone.

But that essay...Joe Pernice writing about The Smiths' Meat is Murder, only it wasn't really about the album. It was about the experiences surrounding his discoveries of that band, and that record. It made me giddy. (That's how I felt when I first heard The Smiths. Omigosh! My mom said the same thing about their morbid, depressing sound!!) Only, he heard them when they were still a band and I only stumbled upon them after they were done and Morrissey was already recording his first solo album. But, gosh, I got that feeling back. I love writing that can take you to that place--that first kiss, first crush, heartbreak, first Smiths' song. I told Will that if I were a writer, I would want to write like that. It can happen in fiction, and it seems like the personal essay--the well written one--can have a true knack for succinctly distilling a moment that you, as the reader gets to say, "that happened to me, too!". Perhaps because I know that it's a retelling of a personal experience rather than the added element, in fiction, that even if it comes from an actual circumstance, ultimately it is part of a made up story. And I heart fiction. Truly. But a great personal essay...well, that just makes me happy.