Short Week

I know that I've been laying on some heavy blog posts recently, but I suppose I've just had a lot on my mind for whatever reason.  I use this blog space as a means of articulating it.  And, if you don't like it, just remember that if Tolstoy were alive now that he would be using a blog to articulate his own rambling and misconceived ideas about the universe, time, love and friendship. Besides, its the basketball offseason anyway, there will be plenty of basketball posts in the upcoming months that will drive you crazy and bore you to death - especially after the LeBron's Choice Special airing on ESPN at 9:00 PM tomorrow night.

This is a short week and I am actually very busy these days.  I am going to give you a Nadal column tomorrow evening and I would like to get a podcast up on Friday, but I don't think that its going to happen.  We have a few good ones coming up that just need to get done, but I urge to all you listen to the Lauren Gidwitz podcast, which is just gold in my opinion.  As well as this podcast, which is one of the most underrated and one of my favorites.

Before I leave you to take on my other projects (podcasts, revising my second novel, submitting sketches to Saturday Night Live), I just want to wax poetic briefly on the Fourth of July.  This past weekend I had a bunch of friends come to my parents home on Long Island to watch my father and I roast a lamb on his birthday, July 3.  Now, they also were able to swim in the pool and avoid the heat of the city, which is crucial.  However, it was a very happy occurance for me to have so many people I cared about in the same place and enjoying each other's company and the lucky fortune that I have been able to stumble across in my life.  It was a day where a lot of people were  united and even reunited.  The next day, a few of those guests stayed and I was able to show them the beauty of Long Island in the summer and on the Fourth of July, as I took them to my friend's humble, amazing and cozy apartment on Thatch Meadow Farm in the town known as Head of the Harbor.  There, we raked for clams at low tide in Head of the Harbor, watched dogs swim and huff with their heads above the salt water, we sailed on a Hobi-Cat sailboat while tugging a canoe, we swam, we watched the sunset surreal colors of purple, pink and then eventually that graceful periwinkle grey of the evening. Finally, the fireworks went off all along the horizon on the harbor, some exploding far out over the sound, some just over our heads from the shadows of some secluded wealthy lawn.  As a fire burned and our clams cooked on a pot with beer, garlic and butter, I watched the reflections of the fireworks in the water.  I thought about how there is nothing that I am more thankful for than these privileged glimpses of nature and natural beauty that I was able to grow up with and now show my friends; the people that I love.  I thought about the sound of fireworks over a body of water on Long Island and how, no matter where you may be sitting, if you sit by a body of water on Long Island, in the summer, while the heat of the day slowly turns to night, that there is the sound of chatter and the slight shimmer of gold forever in the air.  I thought about how that lasting sensation and image is always riding somewhere deep in my gut, and is always searching to be given word in different representations, objects and perceptions. 

All this, while the smoke of a summer long gone, floats away, like the dying of our conversation in the adjacent room.

That last line is from some funny idea I have for a very eloquent and elegant novel called The Adjacent Room. Sounds pretentious, no?

Anyway my Puddlers, no matter how serious I may get, there is always a joke, there is always gold around the corner.  So stick with me.  I will not let you down.