Threw Jason a surprise 30th birthday party tonight at Waterfront. We got him good. He thought he was going to Hawaii yesterday, but instead his whole family showed up at the airport. He thought we were going to do something for him on his actual birthday, which was Thursday, but we didn't do anything. He was bummed. It was pretty funny. He came over to my house with Jamie to borrow some things from me for Hawaii, and he expected a huge surprise party, but instead he found me folding my laundry. Hah! I think he had a pretty good time tonight. Bought him these cool Adidas tearaway pants for basketball. I need to get a pair of those myself. Adidas clothes are sweet.
Rode with Todd and Rachael this morning. Did this ride up to Edmonds and back. It was about 62 miles. Got nailed by a rainstorm that just drenched me. My feet and hands were frozen, and if Rach hadn't let me a rain jacket I'd probably have pneumonia right now. Wind was blowing sideways, and the latter half of the ride home was slow, wet, and extremely painful. My legs were shot and I barely made it home. That weather made things really unpleasant.
I'm pooped.
It's been sunny and pleasant this week in Seattle. It was a long winter, in more ways than one, and I can't remember a time when I was more happy to see the sun. I love the feel of a cool spring breeze.
I think the long hours at work and my reclusive lifestyle these past two to three months have left me feeling, I don't know, nostalgic? Lonely? Tired, for sure.
Rode the Daffodil Classic on Sunday. You can read my account of it on my RAMROD blog. 70 miles in the rain and cold. Not pleasant, but maybe rides like that will toughen me up. I remember a few of those last year early in the season, and if you want to be a cyclist in Seattle, I guess you just have to get used to it.
But my cycling diet is leaving me grumpy. Salads just don't satisfy me. Still, I need to get down a few pounds for RAMROD. Blech.
Jenny asked me for a review of the X-files Season Three DVD on Friday, and she said she needed it Monday. So of course, late Sunday night, I finally open the DVDs and leave it on in the background while surfing the web for plot synposes. It was like cramming for a college exam again. I put on the soundtrack, put the DVD on, scoured the web, pulled out my fountain pen, and started just jotting random notes down. Writing short reviews aren't easy. I fell asleep on the sofa, then I had to whip out the review in an hour at work using all my notes. Don't tell Jenny. But I think it turned out okay, and now that I remember season three, I suggest you pick it up. That was good stuff.
Finally got around to reading this article about Microsoft and his inner cadre of technical advisers. It was in the business section of an old NYT. The article talks all about Bill Gates' inner cadre of technical advisors. Seems like Bill is the type of businessman who still derives more pleasure from engineering than from running the business. I think I might be that type of manager, if I stayed in business. Anytime I read an article about these Microsoft senior folks, I feel stupid. They all have PhDs in computer science, have written all sorts of crazy software, play chess in their spare time, random stuff like that. But then I encounter some idiotic feature of some Microsoft application, and I realize that it takes more than raw smarts to design a good application.
Case in point. The other day, I was using Powerpoint, and I went to the File dropdown menu and all the save and print commands were gone. How can you hide the save and print commands? Those should never be hidden since you have to use them everytime you edit a file. This is a new feature in Office 2000, in which the application remembers the most recent commands you've used and only displays those commands. Sounds potentially smart, but it's annoyed me everytime I've encountered it. I wonder if they even user tested it. Everytime I use those menus, the commands I want are in a different place. The idea of an interface that adapts to your usage patterns sounds good in theory, but no one's nailed it yet. Consistent user interfaces still rule in my book most days.
Of course, to turn off this smart logic, I had to dig all around the menu system to find the on/off switch which took me another five minutes or so.
Saturday, I played golf with Robert, Ryan, and Kord. I haven't seen Kord for years, since my college days. He still looks the same, and he's still doing the med school thing. Gorgeous day out at Gold Mountain. I still stink at golf. I will become good at that sport one day. Maybe this is the summer to do it.
I watched Yi Yi. Winstar, respecting good cinema, actually put their screener in widescreen. What a great film. It took me three nights to finish, it was such a long film. I've never seen anything by Edward Yang before, and it's always exciting to discover a new director whose work you enjoy. I definitely need to find some of his other work. Asian cinema holds a particular appeal for me because so much of it reminds me of my own family and childhood. Yang has a very distinctive directorial style. He definitely qualifies as a director whose work, as Peter Bogdanovich put it, lets you know "who the devil made it." Interesting use of medium shots. Very few closeups. Whole scenes are shot at a medium to long range. You see characters talking inside a house, and the camera is shooting in through a window. The camera rarely moves or pans. Almost like watching a play.
Watching that film by myself over 3 nights reminded me that I need a movie buddy. I am currently without a movie buddy, which makes it tough to keep up on movies. Maybe I just have strange taste in films. Rachael could have potential, but she goes to bed way too early. Same with Bill. That would never work with my schedule. Audrey loves to watch movies, but her problem is she stays up too late. Rich only likes movies like Cool Hand Luke. His tastes are pretty narrow. Dan's got the free time, but he would also drag me to see stuff like Tomcats. So would Jason. Aaron had pretty good taste, but he's in London now. Howie doesn't really watch movies; I have no idea what's wrong with him. Jenny was pretty open-minded about movies, but she's engaged now. Bean has pretty similar tastes, but everytime I watch a movie with her she falls asleep. I must bore her to death.
Oh well, maybe I don't need a movie buddy. Maybe I can get Karen to move out to Seattle. I used to drag her to all sorts of movies. A willing soul she was.
Jason bought me a new rolling backpack/luggage thingy. My garment bag, I have to admit, was looking pretty pathetic. The wheels don't roll, the side of the bag has torn completely open. It's the end of an era. I had that thing since my consulting days. It was the first piece of luggage my mom ever bought for me. Strange, how you'll replace certain things which are in perfectly good condition, just because they bore you, while you'll remain loyal to the most beat up, trivial things like a pair of bike gloves which would cost a pittance to replace.
Went to Peter's engagement party on Sunday. Finally got to meet his fiancee Klara. He's been staying with a woman who has been here in Seattle for years and has many ties to UW and the Seattle art community. That house was amazing! Some of the artwork hanging on the walls has toured through museums like MOMA in NYC. Chatting with all of Peter's acting friends, I realize I have a large gap in my life now that most of my friends are from work. I lack melodramatic, eccentric artist friends. Chatting with people like that is so easy. They're always on stage.
I wanted to just stay in that house. It was like an artist's womb.
Heard from Ken today. Haven't chatted with that boy in a while. Anyway, I have to reprint this rant from him. It was in response to a short, innocent line in which I suggested I should read something by Pynchon to be hip with modern lit. And off he went:
"DUUUUDEEEE don't get me started...because I can't seem to finish a Pynchon book. First, instead of smoking, I suggest injesting some magic mushrooms, peyote, or other "natural" hallucinagens. You have to be in that state of mind to read Pynchon. The dude is crazy. That's really the only way I can put it. He's like a shizophrenic/depraved/bizarre version of J.D. Salinger. No one knows what he looks like. There has never been a picture of him. Get this...before they found Ted Kaczynski...people thought Pynchon might have been the Unabomber. Now, that's crazy. Okay, ready to read him yet? I started Gravity's Rainbow three years ago, got through half of it, read 25% of it twice...still don't know what the hell is going on. I'm waiting until I finish Ulysses, Remembrance of Things Past, and the Oxford English Dictionary before I tackle Gravity's Rainbow again. His writing is virtuosic but it borders on innane rambling. He can give an introduction to a character...go inside his head...and then trace his backstory from his childhood and then return to the scene at hand. Of course it takes him 150 pages to get you back to the present setting. Another thing about Pynchon is that he's a allusory (is that a word) as Eliot. Unlike Eliot though, Pynchon does not use literary allusions, he has a encyclopedic knowledge of pop culture, not only of America, but of other continents. It's amazing what he comes up with. I bought a companion book just to try to straighten out the references.
Ready to start yet?
I'm such a sucker for self punishment that I bought another book by Pynchon over Winter Break. It's called Vineland. Want a brief synopsis? Written in 1990, takes place during the Reagan years. It's supposed to be a critique of the period. Okay, this dude is an old hippie who has been on the run from the federales all his life. He has a daughter and is estranged from his wife. Wife actually left hippie dude for dude's arch enemy, an FBI agent. Anyways, the FBI agent is on dude's trail again so dude has to send his daughter on the hippie underground to escape FBI agent. Daughter meets an array of characters including a female ninja with special powers who is currently her protector, members of a surf band, FBI agents addicted to watching TV ("Tubies"), among others. Vineland is supposed to be his most accessible book.
Critics say Pynchon is "funny." I say, Pynchon is crazy assed lunatic who has scammed the publishing industry into publishing his ramblings. However, when I finish Vineland, I will staple the book to my forehead and try to pick up chicks. I'll probably be one of five people in St. Louis who have read the book. There was a headline in the Onion a couple months ago..."Man on Subway, Blatantly Displays Copy of Pynchon Book For All To See." I thought it was the funniest thing the Onion has ever done because I'M THAT GUY. Sometimes, I went on the DC Metro reading Gravity's Rainbow, just so other people could see that I was reading Gravity's Rainbow. Finish a Pynchon book and wear it with pride.
So, are you going to read him or not?"
Okay, now I just have to buy a copy of Pynchon and display it on my desk at work.
You can bid on one of Lance Armstrong's Trek bikes. He used this one in 1999 racing and 2000 training seasons. Too bad cycling is not a bigger sport in the U.S. Lance should be a god at this point.
Finally caught up on some old Sunday NYTimes lying around. Had to take a break from work stuff after getting home. Interesting article on intelligent design. Didn't know too much about it, but was curious enough to surf the web a bit to see what Google turned up. Found lots. It's a hot topic which has spawned entire websites and some interesting articles. Whether or not it's a legitimate theory or just creationism dressed up in intelligent discourse, it did prove to me once again how limiting public school education can be. I look back on junior high and high school, and there's so much they never even covered. Never studied any world history, or barely any. Yet some of the things you learn in those days can bias you for life. I can see how some people just decide to teach their kids themselves (though who would want to deprive their children from the cruelty of their peers). You just need to get intelligent people to the point where they're brave enough to think for themselves.
Played volleyball for the first time in years on Tuesday night. Played with Katie, Jordan, Jason....folks from work who are in a league. Boy, I was rusty. Felt like I was in slow motion on the court, and my timing on hits was so off. Depressing. I was much more talented in my youth. I'm regressing.
Saw the play Art last night with Franklin, Bean, Juli, and Macho. It started a bit slow, but I warmed up to it during the night. Not brilliant, but entertaining in parts. About 3 friends whose friendship falls under pressure when one of them buys a completely white painting for an exorbitant amount. One of the characters reads a quote from his psychiatrist (I think) which I found interesting. And I enjoyed the way the play ends, with one of the characters talking about the painting as being about a skier who appears and then fades into the snow.
Went riding early yesterday morning, and got poured on. Miserable, just riding in the rain. But work colors everything. If I were living out in the countryside or something, and all I was doing was training on my bike, I would've been in heaven. My physical health is like my part-time hobby, the novel unwritten, the vacation never taken.
If I had a fortune right now, I'd buy the freedom of myself and a few close friends, build a small little commune where we would all live and attempt to be artists. Writing, painting, directing films, and working out.
Most days, I feel like an idiot.
At the last minute, Bill talked me into going to Whistler this past weekend. It was the last hurrah for skihaus 2001, as our lease ended this weekend. I really didn't think I'd go, because Mark and Marie were in town, and I had a ton of work to do. But at work, I just reached the end of my tether, and I just needed to escape. I rushed home, packed, Bill pulled up, and we were off.
It's a misnomer to say I ski with Bill. He's way too good. It would be much more accurate to say, Bill proposes we take a route which scares me to death, I concur and put on a brave face, he proceeds to ski to the bottom and wait for me to roll and tumble down the hill, then he skis off to the lift and sits there and waits for me. He was pretty damn patient. As usual, my legs felt like jelly after chasing him around all day, and my left big toe, sans toenail, was throbbing. It's still bugging me today.
The weather was beautiful. Sunny, unlimited visibility. So strange, to have snowy alpine conditions up top (at one point 3 degrees celsius at the top of Blackcomb), and balmy sunny weather down low (63 degrees in the village). Spring skiing is sweet. Dress lightly, no need to wear a hat or goggles, just shredding through snow the consistency of chunky mashed potatoes.
This happened to be the weekend Whistler was hosting the World Ski and Snowboarding festival. We caught the Orage Big Air competiton and the Alpine Slopestyle competition. Those skiers are absolutely insane. I watch them and immediately am resigned to the fact that I will never have the guts to do anything like that. Going in backwards, launching yourself 20 feet in the air, and doing a 1080 and landing backwards...and most of the contestants were in their teens. One entrant was thirteen years old! It's something I may have lost growing up, or it might just be something I never had.
Driving back from Canada, Bill and I reminisced about all those crude video games we used to play in the old days. TRS-80, Intellivision, Atari 2600. We cranked his stereo up and sang loudly and badly the whole trip back. The Clash, Bob Dylan, David Gray, U2...now that Bill's heading up music merchandising, he gets all sorts of free music. He even cranked up some Bedrock. Pretty hip for an old guy.
By the way, Bill is also the junk food king. He loves the stuff, he knows it better than anyone. He took me to A&W just before the border and introduced me to the Mama Burger. Everyone restaurant we passed, he could cite the gems of the menu by heart. Dairy Queen--hot fudge sundae. Arby's--they butter their buns. And so on.
Getting away was a good call. Up there in Canada, I don't really think of work. Bill brought up a screener of Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? and we laughed our asses off. Just sleep, eat, ski and board, listen to some tunes, roast by the fire, and read. I've been way too wrapped in work recently, and it was bringing me down. I've got to remember, no matter how tired I am, how busy my schedule, I have to set aside time to work out, read a little, listen to some music. I went for a quick ride at around 6 tonight. Zipped around Mercer. Then I went back to work. It felt great.
Have problems removing those damn seals on the top of new CD cases? Here's a little secret: just pry the front door off the CD case from the side opposite the sticker and pry the sticker off by flipping the front door over the top of the case.
I've noticed lots of people use the following phrase recently:
"Are you wanting to..." I wonder why? What effete sentence structure.
Don Baylor is just a bad manager. He publicly criticizes his players, he's not a great tactical manager...it's despite him, not because of him, that the Cubs are winning right now.
Little sis Karen got a job offer from a company in Boston. Her first year salary is insane! Makes the salary I made coming out of college look like minimum wage. Congrats to her. Both Joannie and Karen are pretty set for next year. Maybe they'll be ready to support the old man soon (that would be me).
Little babies all growed up.
Just returned from a business trip to L.A. I feel obliterated.
Lots happened in the world today. Borders turned over its web business to Amazon. Yahoo acknowledged that it has a pornographic DVD store on its site (a sign of desperation, or a smart business move, or both?). Kozmo closed shop. Lots happened at work.
But some days, you just want to turn your back on the world, crawl into bed, pull the sheets over your head, and RESET. Today is one of those days.
Mark and his girlfriend Marie arrived last night at around 2AM. Picked them up from the train station, and stayed up until the wee hours of the morning chatting. Got up reasonably early today and explored Seattle. A full day. Dropping them off very early tomorrow to catch the Victoria Clipper. It was fun to reminisce, and I was glad to take my mind off work, if ever briefly. Now however, I'm back at it.
The most efficient way to drive a car, if you want to maximize gas mileage, is to accelerate briefly, then put your car in neutral and coast to a stop. Then you accelerate again, shift into neutral, and coast to a stop. Driving that way, you can get amazing gas mileage, like 80 mpg. However, it would take you hours to travel even short distances. A reasonable compromise is traveling at a good clip, say 55 mph, and just holding it steady there.
Right now I'm turning myself on and off, flooring it, accelerating off of stoplights, braking hard...I can only imagine the kind of gas mileage I'm getting out of myself. I'm ready for an extended vacation far from the maddening world.
I take care of my car about as well as I take care of myself. Right now my car is filthy, covered in dirt. That's about how well I'm treating myself as well. I just realized that today.
For the first time in my life, I've lost a toenail. It's been hanging on for dear life ever since a rough day of snowboarding early in the season, when I didn't have my boot on tight enough. Now a long afternoon of basketball on blacktop in new shoes has done that toenail in. Left foot, big toe. The entire base cracked, and I'm holding it on with a bandage. Playing hoops on playground blacktop is brutal on the body. I left about a pound of skin on the base of my shoes, my shins are all scarred from several falls, and my calves and knees are aching. I'm not doing that again.
Had an engagement brunch for Jenny and Adam this morning at Todd's place. Todd is like Artie Busco from The Sopranos. Always cooking, able to whip together random dishes for every occasion. His former days as a restaranteur show through. That's a tough business, as he says. Retail where you own all your production costs.
Whenever waiters push the special on me at restaurants, I'm always curious what they're getting in incentives for each one they sell. But I never thought about the economic incentives. It allows you to buy ahead in bulk, or take ingredients you bought at bulk discount and generate higher profits off dishes made from those ingredients by calling them specials. Good business, but undermines the trust between a waiter and the diner.
Trying to stay awake to pick up Mark and Marie from the train station, but he just called and the train is running even later than anticipated. He was supposed to get in at 8:45, and now it looks like 2:30 to 3:00 a.m. I was going to go to the Tractor to see Todd Gehman's band with a big crew, but I've got too much work to get through before tomorrow. Need to show Mark and Marie a good time. Haven't had too many of the old Stanford crew visit me here in Seattle. Need to make a good impression. I hope the weather's nice.
It's strange, how you can think you have forgotten about certain things, or that you're over some event in the past, but then you fall asleep and you dream about it, as if it's the only thing in the world you care about. I had one of those dreams last night. I woke up in the morning and it was so vivid. Our bodies are like giant hard drives. Who knows what you'll uncover cached away in some random directory out there when you travel that terrain in your sleep. If an event causes enough emotional amplitude, it just sears itself on the walls of your mind. Sleepwalking through your subconscious, suddenly you glance up and it's burned in the ceiling there.
Work is kicking my butt. I haven't had a chance to get out and ride or work out all this week. I'm just logged into work all day, trying to keep momentum on a project launch. It's fun, but I'm also just drained. I feel a long vacation in my near future.
Karen got two job offers today. Congrats! I remember coming out of undergrad, thinking grad school, and then having to scramble to look for a job when I decided I needed a break from school. Nailing that first job offer is a huge relief. I look forward to the day when I can retire and Joannie and Karen can support me in my career as a starving, alcoholic artist.
I keep hitting back or forward and losing this blog post. They really need some autosave function. It's driving me nuts. Sigh.
Rich thinks I'm biased because my roto team has a whole bunch of Asians on it. I think I have every Asian in the National League. Byung Hyung Kim, Chan Ho Park, Bruce Chen.
The Asian influence is evident in Hollywood, and Crouching Tiger is just a culmination of sorts. Now, sports. Hideo Nomo pitched a no hitter today, the fifth pitcher in history to do it. 7' 1" Yang Zhizhi became the first Chinese player to make an NBA team, joining the Mavericks. He could play tomorrow. 7' 6" Yao Ming could be the first pick in the NBA draft next year. Asian invasion.
Yesterday, I saw Ichiro Suzuki play for the first time at Safeco Field. He looked overmatched with his running slap swing. Still, he had a crazy fan base. Tons of Japanese fans shouting his name. Ichiro must find American fans to be strangely apathetic.
(in a good sign, I managed to follow the ball under the three moving hats, that electronic scoreboard puzzle they do between innings; last year I lost my ability to follow it and thought my vision was fading)
I'm in with Bill on a few of Chris and Kirk's season tickets this year. They have great seats! 6th row, right behind the Mariners dugout. I could hear the manager shouting at the umpires.
If you receive a lot of e-mail from friends, you're probably already aware of Internet memes, like Mahir, or "all your base is belong to us." From another weblog, here's a timeline of the life of an Internet meme, this one the whole story about the guy who tried to order custom Nike shoes embroidered with the word "sweatshop" and was rejected. Memes (rhymes with dreams) are fascinating. Recently, I received this URL with dance steps in Flash from 5 different people in the span of one hour. That's a record. Why was that message so sticky? Because my friends are all bad dancers? Is information the basis of the world? Or just a metaphor we use to explain phenomena?
Another cool and somewhat related story is this, about viruses and how they spread on a network like the Internet, and why this differs from how medical viruses spread. I'll just grab this post straight from Ars Technica:
"In a paper (subscription required for full text access, I'm afraid) to be published in the April 2, 2001 Physical Review Letters, Romualdo Pastor-Sattoras and Allessandro Vespignani investigate how epidemics - of computer viruses, say - spread across networks like the Internet. Pastor-Sattoras and Vespignani point out some problems with the current standard virus model (called the SIS epidemiological model), arguing that while it is instructive, it is not quite as accurate as could be desired when applied to real-world situations. They argue that the Internet is something called a scale-free network. What this means is that on the Internet, "each node has a statistically significant probability of having a very large number of connections compared to the average connectivity of the network." This is different from a so-called random network, in which each node has about the same number of connections.
They then study the SIS model in the case of scale-free networks. The results are quite striking. It turns out that with a scale-free network, there is no epidemic threshold. In random networks, if the number of infected nodes is less than the epidemic threshold, "the infection dies out exponentially fast" (the infection threshold is determined by such things as infection spreading rate, and how quickly nodes are cured, by anti-viral software, say). If the number of infected nodes is higher than the threshold, "the infection spreads and becomes persistent." But the infection threshold is zero for a scale-free network, so an infection will spread at whatever spreading rate it may have. The theoretical predictions are shown to match real world data on computer virus epidemics. This is doubtless rather alarming news, but it turns out to be tempered by the finding that on technological networks like the Internet, most infections have very low effective spreading rates."
Isn't the world interesting?
In other cool and interesting news, MIT has promised to make all its course materials available via the web for free in 10 years. What a noble goal. I'd be on that site all the time, trying to follow along in as many classes as possible. Someday, we'll hear about a genius who learned everything from a computer, surfing sites like that, or interacting with computer lessons like Nell in The Diamond Age.
Neil Gaiman has a weblog. Cool.
Just got a wedding invitation from Rob in the mail. Peter just got engaged in Prague. I think every off year is a wedding year. I went to five weddings in 99, and this year is going to end up as a big year as well: Kristin and Greg, John and Irene, Rob and Ruby, Peter and Klara, Adam and Jenny...wow. How do we explain marriage using information?
Listening to the new Stephen Malkmus CD. It's pretty good.
Oh my gosh. Rich's girlfriend is watching Sportscenter with him. He should marry her.
For the first time in my life, I joined a Rotisserie baseball league with a few friends. Noam Chomsky talks about how we are conditioned from youth to talk seriously about sports, while completely ignoring fields like politics. Maybe he's right. I'll have to find that essay of his. For me, I think it's the math. The chance to use an understanding of statistics and the laws of math to fathom truths to which the overly enthusiastic fan (read: the other members in the Rotisserie league) is blind. It's the same appeal of gambling, the belief that a mathematically literate person can face the reality of the odds before him and act accordingly, regardless of the money involved.
Why, then, are so many gamblers superstitious? Either they are unable to face the odds, and cling to superstition in their insecurity, to convince themselves that their success or failure relies upon some arbitrary yet just process (Lady Luck, usually a cold mistress but sometimes receptive to bribes)...or they treat their superstitious habits as an example of the methodical routine to which they must assess each hand, each card they're dealt, each spin of the wheel.
Because I don't really gamble anymore, perhaps Roto is filling some gap in the role I've written for myself, the emotionally detached statistician, never acting on emotion or faith.
Interesting, isn't it, to watch Phil Jackson trying to work his magic out there in L.A. with the Lakers. Divorced his wife, started dating the owner's daughter (who once posed for Playboy), and now accusing Kobe of all sorts of selfishness in the press. He's coaching a pair of kids out there, and he's acting like one himself. Sad, because he gave off this aura of mystic knowledge when he was coaching the Bulls, and now he seems quite mortal. I have no idea whether or not that's true, it's just an observation from afar.
Duke won the Final Four. Lots of rumors going around that Duke gets all the calls. I've seen them play lots this year. Believe it. Intentional or not, they do. A good team. But they don't deserve those breaks. Dick Vitale is a buffoon.
I saw Memento last weekend. An entertaining film. I recommend watching it in the company of observant friends, so you can stand outside the theater and conjure explanations and theories as a group. I won't ruin the film for anyone, but I do want to reveal the basic premise of the film, so don't read the next paragraph if you want to go in fresh.
The film's scenes are shown in reverse chronological sequence. So the last scene of the film is showed first. Then the scene that occurs right before the last scene is shown, and it ends when it hits the beginning of the last scene. And then the next to next to last scene is shown...
It got me to thinking of perhaps another of Einstein's Dreams (if you don't know what I mean, then pick up and read the short but interesting Einstein's Dreams by physicist/writer Alan Lightman):
A man forced to live his life in reverse, while all other humans live life forward. His memory also works in reverse, so he can only recall the events from the future, and nothing of the past he travels into. Cause and effect also are reversed.
He begins alone, detached, and perhaps somewhat bitter. Follow him into his past, and he learns why he feels this way. The woman he loves (loved? he has yet to find out) is living with some other man. Perhaps she sends him a letter, a postcard. He doesn't know this other man yet, and is uncertain whether he has reason to dislike him, but he does. He recognizes her handwriting, even though he has never seen it before, and its familiarity evokes a sad, distant longing. He waits for more time to pass.
A period of time passes in which he doesn't think of her at all. And then, suddenly, one morning, he wakes up and senses the sorrow, the loss, faint, but unshakable. And it grows over the coming days, stronger. Each day details start to come to him, nagging questions to which he has no answer: why? why not? At first he does not care what the answers are, but soon he finds himself pondering them all the time, until he finds himself unable to sleep, or eat. He begins losing weight, hiding from the world. He is a wreck.
She shows up suddenly one day, trying to explain herself. He throws her out, angry over how she has left him (though he has no idea what she's done, exactly). She shows up again and again, calls and writes, and he finds himself softening for a while. Still, though, it is unclear to him why she's explaining herself to him.
Finally one day she tells him it's over between them, that she is leaving him for this other man, whom he's already met. He is heartbroken and yet he hasn't even spent much time with her. Beyond a few brief conversations, he barely knows her. She moves out.
But in the days to come, they do begin spending time together. He awakens one day and her things are all about the house. At first, she is aloof, somewhat quite, seeming pre-occupied. She stops in occasionally. Over time she becomes more and more cheerful, intimate, and communicative. He starts to learn more about her. One day he awakens and she is lying next to him, and in the days to come she becomes a permanent addition to his house, cooking, reading, working on her laptop, renting movies for them to watch. He falls in love with her, with the open and candid way she treats him.
And then, many days later, he realizes that she is withdrawing, becoming more and more cautious. Her things start disappearing from the house. He notes the strange excitement with which she regards events to which he has become accustomed. The preciousness with which she treats the occasional home-cooked meal, the night on the town. The new found pride in her voice as she introduces him to friends they've spent plenty of time with. Then the embarrassed blush the first time she spends the night, and the way his heart races as he lies in bed and remembers what it is like to hear the footsteps of a stranger in one's own home.
And then one day he wakes up alone.
In the coming days, he slowly realizes with some dread that she knows him a little less well each day, and he is becoming a stranger to her. And he realizes that he is losing her, that the day he has dreaded for so long is approaching. One day, as he cooks himself breakfast, he sees her phone number on a scrap of paper, affixed to the refrigerator with a magnet, no name, just a number. It is not a scrap of paper, it is the business card of local art store.
Two days later, he is out at a dinner party with friends, some of whom he knows, some whom he will meet once and forget forever. And then a friend introduces him to her, and he realizes that she has never met him before. And he realizes that this night will be the last time he ever spends any time with her. This is the night they meet. The next day, she will not even know him anymore.
Knowing this, he ponders for a moment saying hello and walking away, letting it all go. But he can't. He knows what she will become, what she will do to him, and yet he holds no grudges, just a sense of awe at the shy, cautious way she describes herself and the wonder with which she regards the things he reveals about himself, even though she has known all these things for years. He knows it, and so he speaks openly and without the usual embellishment to which men resort when first meeting women, or in the company of men.
They sit outside on the balcony all night, while the rest of the party carries on inside, and they joke and laugh, and it is the most memorable conversation of his life, because it is the last one they will ever have together, and for all the unhappiness behind him, they will end their time together on this moment, on the cusp of romance, drunk with an irrational sense of promise and possibility.
The party is over, and the host, wearing a silver pointed hat, covered in streamers and confetti, drunk with wine and giddy over the triumph of a successful party, comes outside to the balcony to shoo the two of them away. They walk out, and as they stand outside the front door, he shakes her hand and they part ways, headed in opposite directions. But halfway down the block, he turns and runs back towards her and flags her down. He would like her phone number, perhaps she'd like to go see this art exhibit that will be in town on Saturday. And she laughs and says of course, and pulls out her wallet, and oh she doesn't have any paper but ah! this business card will do. It is for the art store she buys her supplies from. She writes the number on the back and hands it to him.
As she walks away, he looks down at the card. He ponders for a moment the idea of spending time at the art store, waiting for her to come by so that he can meet her again, for the very first time, but realizes that he will not. Tomorrow the card will be gone, and he will not bother remembering the store name or address. Perhaps in time, he will even forget her phone number.
But still, he keeps the card, because for the few remaining hours until the sun rises, it will give him something to remember her by.
