The woman in line in front of me at the liquor store had no business to be wearing that halter top, but she was, which always appalls and impresses me. She didn't give a damn about love handles. She had two tattoos on her back: "Coretta" on her right shoulder blade and a leafy vine snaking downward from the base of her neck. It was kind of a cool vine, simple, with an interestingly irregular path, asymmetrical. Because it was taking a while and because I like to gawk at strangers, I looked at this tattoo for a long time, and suddenly I could see that it was camouflage for a long zigzaggy scar.
---
I don't understand how some Truman Capote stories can be so wonderful and some are so brain-gougingly dull. (like Douglas Coupland, who I adore but who should seriously stick to tables and sculpture until he loves words again) Last night I was trying to make myself sleepy so I read one of the awful ones, which didn't work, so I read "A Christmas Memory," which I remembered liking in high school. I remembered thinking I would probably like it more when I was older, which was true because this time it just blew me away. The ending got me - not so much what happened as the way he told it. Gentle, precise words that bear a kind message are as good a reason to get teary as anything else.
---
It's raining sacks of hammers.
