Today I was running long, trying to work hard and flirt with the mythical wall. Toward the end, my hands curled up into claws. This is how I know I'm working too hard: claws.

It's only happened a few times running. Today I got a strange nostalgic feeling, because sometimes in graduate school, late at night, at my desk, my hands would curl up into claws, and I could hardly write with a pen anymore, it feeling like I strangled the bloodflow to hold it. That only happened a few times, too. Those times I always stopped and went home.

I was in San Francisco, sitting around a table, and we were all drinking wine out of huge, out-of-proportion glasses. “Hey, did you know Josh is from Tennessee?” someone said to the girl next to me.

“Are you from Tennessee?” I asked.

She swigged her wine and smiled. “No, I’m not from there, but I went to Vanderbilt. I just graduated.”

“I used to live by Vanderbilt,” I said. “Right down the street. Did you like it?” Everyone else had another conversation going on, and she and I were only talking to each other.

“Yeah, it was great.” She leaned in to tell me a secret. She stage-whispered, “Don’t you think everyone there is racist?”

“What do you mean?”

“The people in Nashville. It’s so racist down there.”

I rubbed the stem on my wine glass. “I don’t know.” After a given amount of silence had passed, we slipped back into the general conversation, something about a winery. For a few seconds I had a feeling of emptiness in my chest, and I missed home.

cassettes with me

i have a small box of old cassette tapes, which are never played because there is only one cassette player--the portable radio in the bathroom. although, perhaps i should play one. go hang out in the bathroom, listen to music.

these are amulets with obscure powers. not clunky utilitarian sound recordings, but through the rabbit hole of year 2000, they became dormant recordings of 1989. a cd of these very records wouldn't be the same, because it wouldn't be the obsolete item i laid hands on, in the young, deceased version of myself.

no matter what al gore does--my childhood senator from tennessee--i will continue to view him with suspicion. give all the speeches on climate change that you want, al, and a look of distaste will continue to cross my face when i see you. i remember the PMRC and the senate hearings from 1985, and that's the first thing i think of when i see this collection of tapes. but perhaps i should thank you for making the liberal joey ramone and the conservative frank zappa my teenage heroes, because both of them took the time on an album to explain what a twit you were.