After a long bike ride yesterday, lunch with a couple of friends, and a little time in the garden, I came home and even though I wasn't that tired I knew I had to have a nap. It was just the perfect time of day, the perfect weather — there's nothing like napping with your windows wide open, the golden afternoon sunlight pouring in, birds twittering outside, the sound of the wind in the trees, the church bells clanging out the hour, far-off voices on the street below...

I'm sort of a nap connoisseur. I can't pass up an opportunity when all of the elements are in place like they were yesterday. I had actually started day-dreaming about my siesta while I was still on my bike, making plans for it. I'd need water on the bedside table. Should I have a little snack first? Boxers, briefs, boxer-briefs, or go native? Take out my special sheets? Try out my new Tempurpedic pillow? Maybe put on a little Satie — Trois Gymnopédies or Vexations, barely audible, on an infinite loop? As my plans for my nap grew more elaborate, I pedalled faster.

As soon as I got home, I ran upstairs, tore off all my clothes and leapt into bed, and just sort of floated on the surface of a dream, occasional voices piercing my lightly submerged consciousness. In the strange synethsesia of my napstate I could see and feel them, like someone drumming light blue on my chest, buffeting me with bright red, pouring honey-yellow in my hair, pelting me with lime green.

There is an awful, awful woman who lives across the street. Awful. All summer long she occupies the stoop, presiding over our little corner of the neighborhood, screaming into her cell phone and shrieking insults at her young son. "Shut up! Can't you see I'm on the phone?!" And when she's not she carries on interminable conversations with the neighbor's cat.  But in the sweetest, most affection tones. And she's not one of these white trash crackheads, like you might be thinking, either. She's an Ivy League termagant. A highly-educated harpy.

She has been indoors all winter, and has obviously built up a concentration of spleen that could easily propel the next probe to Mars.  So she was thawing out on the lawn yesterday, thrashing about and speaking in tongues, sounding a lot like Linda Blair getting exorcised.  Spring does funny things to people.  But it happened in the middle of my nap.  I was not about to wake up over it.  It's got to be, like, Defcon 1 for me to get up in the middle of a nap, grab my slingshot, and take up my position in the parapet.

But as I floated on a placid lake in a volcanic crater at the top of my pristine naptide world, she would swoop down, screeching like a pterodactyl above me, and bombarding me with great, grizzly, oily balls of flaming flying dinosaur poop.  The skies of my naptide world turned an angry purple, the wind began to howl, and the waters of my volcanic lake got choppy.  But the storm blew over.  And in the end my nap was a success.  I woke up after about three hours, totally refreshed and ready for whatever excitement a Saturday night in Somerville had in store for me.

Actually, I make it a point to stay in on the weekends.  Weeknights are so much nicer in these parts.  Students are all stuck in their little habitrails with their noses to the grindstone.  Summer will be here soon enough and everybody but the tourists will be out of town on weekends, too.  It's not as permanent a solution as bird flu, but it will do until the pandemic strikes. 

I had just gotten Lars and The Real Girl from Netflix, and popped it in after my nap thinking, guy falls in love with a blow-up doll.  Whatever. What an unexpected treasure this movie was! Such a sweet, wonderfully written, superbly acted film. And all the more so for how easily it could have turned out to be complete garbage. 

I watched The Italian Job the other night, and that sure turned out crap.  Like a youtube version of Oceans Eleven.  If you can't get Don Cheadle and Bernie Mack, forget it.  Don't bother. So The Italian Job was a B movie, but the thing of it was, it wasn't exactly a B-List cast.  I mean, Charlize Theron? Mark Wahlberg? Ed Norton?  They've all done their share of dogs, it's true, but they've all done Oscar-caliber work, too, and Theron very deservedly won one for Monster. 

And Jason Statham's on board for heist movie cred.  I mean, that's what he does.  He could turn a Merchant-Ivory piece into a heist flick just by showing up in it.  His range is minuscule but who needs a range when you're basically pure, highly concentrated machismo? 

The problem comes when you throw Mos Def and Seth Green and a bunch of Mini Coopers in the mix. 

But whatever.

Lars and The Real Girl, on the other hand, did everything right.  Ryan Gosling (who plays Lars) hits the right notes without fail.  And his was a character that could so easily have turned into nothing but a sight gag.  And the whole cast was right there with him.  The movie just shines with humanity.  So sweet I cried and cried.

Scruffy, unshaven Paul Schneider's Gus was a dead ringer for an ex of mine, too, by the way ...


... which reminds me, Friday I got a job offer — a post in South Africa with an international aid organization — I'd been waiting for for some time, and realized I didn't really want it anymore, if I ever really did. I could still say yes. But there's no fun in it now.

Initially, although at the time I didn't tell anyone, I'd set it up as a fuck-you to this aforementioned ex I'd been dating for two years who kept telling me he was going to dump his other boyfriend for me. I kept telling him not to, but who doesn't want the guy you're seeing to dump the guy he's seeing for you? FOR YOU is the operative phrase here. I mean, once he's done it, then you can dump HIM if you want, and claim TOTAL VICTORY.

As it happened I did dump him in the end, but I felt he'd forced me to. It's like when you're a kid and you can see someone's about to win at Monopoly, so you fling the the board across the room. Game over. Not that I'm like that.  (Monopoly does bring out the worst in some people, though.)

Anyway, to underline how over the game really was, I applied for this overseas job. It's not like it didn't make sense for me on many other levels — I have all the relevant experience, and the cultural sensitivity thing going on, and I've done work like it in the past. Nor do I have anything it would be very difficult to leave behind here. Boston's only been full-time HQ for me for about three and a half years, since September '04, I think, but it still doesn't feel quite like home. 

Don't get me wrong.  I have plenty of friends here, but for one reason or another, everything seems provisional.  It's like that line from Serpico.  All my friends seem to be on their way to being someone else.  People here are always in flux.  That may be the times, but it's especially true of this place.  It was hard for me to make the transition from my Be Here Now existence to life in a place where if you stop to smell the roses somebody's sure to blare their horn at you, scream at you to get out of their way, and call you a douchebag as they screech off.

You're not only bound to be in somebody's way here, but you're also a douchebag.  That's Boston.

So while I have begun to put down roots, the soil here is rocky, shallow, and dry, and it forces you to conserve your affections like a cactus conserves water. You're prickly on the outside, and if someone wants to get to the juicy stuff it's like they have to cut into you for it. Occasionally you put out a blossom. It lasts a day and falls off. It reminds you of what's still possible, and you wait for next year, working on that next little blossom. I'd rather not be that way, but when in an emotional desert, do as the cacti do, right?

Still, in talking to people I know about this job, I've begun to realize that I know more people here I could talk to about something like that than I thought I did. Good people. Smart people. People who are a part of my world whose world I'm a part of, too.  It may not be love, but it's some of that good old-fashioned human kindness that gives you just enough energy to eek out that next little blossom you're working on all winter long.

I've picked up and left for parts unknown enough, I think. What I'd like now is what old Candide had — my own little garden to cultivate.   And the truth is, I've got it, I just need to get down to weeding and seeding it.  Douchebags be damned.