"Listen to the rain on the roof go pit-pitty-pat (pit-pitty-pat)
Sit kitty cat, we won't go home for hoouuurs!" (S. Sondheim)

It's raining in New Jersey and I love it. It's only San Francisco when it rains that I hate it. It's also after three in the morning, which is just after midnight PST, so that's not unusual. And the only thing they have in this house is Budweiser, blech! I guess I could sneak some of that Remy Martin Cognac and no one would notice, but hard liquor was never part of my experience in this house, and just doesn't feel right. Let's see if I'm saying that after a few more days of Bud, blech!

My anxiety about coming here disappeared soon after I left my apartment, when the prospect of being lifted out of the amniotic fog of complacent, comfortable home became exciting. My ghost does like to travel, it just hates the getting-motivated-to-leave-on-its-own-accord part. My flight was delayed again, but I guess 10 years of having good flying karma is running out. And lifted out of the fog I was. I took a bunch of aerial photos of San Francisco with the fog just burned off at the coast that I'll upload to an ofoto album after I get back home. I think Joyce also had similar shots from when she went to Chicago.

So I take it stuff has been happening around here. Apparently my oldest brother who works at my father's office has stopped coming here, maybe a forced expression of independence. Not even to do laundry! If that's not a declaration of independence, I don't know what is. And the other brother, the one getting married, is coming up from Philly tomorrow with his fiance, and the two families are going out to dinner. What the hell? Whatever. Usually his arm needs to be twisted for him to make an appearance and then he'll swoop in and swoop right back out as soon as possible. I think he's taking the wedding more seriously than he's led on, and tomorrow will be about making sure we're straight about our roles. And apparently they are going on a honeymoon after he gave the impression that they weren't and would later on. Dysfunction delight. Not that any of this bugs me. I'm so un-neurotic about this family that it's bordering on neurotic.

So my brother didn't pick me up from the airport and I haven't even seen him yet, so it's just been me and the 'rents. We were saved by a call from Liz, my last remaining high school friend, and I ran upstairs with the phone, and they ran off to their room. I've been rummaging through the rooms of the empty nest, getting twinges and echoes of meaningless memories that still somehow are able to sting. Someone left a crappy Spanish guitar that won't tune, but I sat in my closet and played several tunes because the closet sounds great, acoustically it's almost completely dead because of the wall of clothes my mother has packed all of our closets with since we left, some of them still having price tags!

I finally settled on listening to my childhood LPs to see what they evoked, not only the material, but the LP medium, albums that were recorded for LP, not CD. Wings' "Venus and Mars"; Phil Collins' "Hello, I Must Be Going". I even did the proverbial ransacking of my older brother's record collection, embarrassing since I'm supposed to be the musically in tune one. Not in high school! While I was listening to prog and suburban white boy rock, he was listening to the stuff I "should" have been listening to. Siouxie and the Banshees, Echo and the Bunnymen, the Stranglers, the Replacements. Christ, da bastard has Throwing Muses' "The Fat Skier" EP on vinyl. You can't even find it on CD (I don't know if it ever was released on CD). For 80's college rock, my brother had serious cred in his collection.

But! In my collection, I have Japanese pressings of the first two Peter Gabriel albums that Shiho Nakai sent to me after she returned to Japan after Junior year. Japanese and German presses were reputed to be far superior to U.S. and U.K. pressings. Acts of love that I ignored until it was too late.