In Santa Cruz for Teri's birthday party, I sat with a glass of whiskey in my hand talking to some woman Teri works with. I was yapping about letters and emails, and how the letter is dead, we can say goodbye to the letter, because already the email has taken over, and in 20 years, I'll be surprised if you can even buy stationery at all. I was saying, "People share very intimate information over email, this much is true. But we've lost something special, something unique, in losing the letter." I was slurring my words as I pronounced the letter dead. "Why, I used to write letters of such beauty, such magical things..." I was sad that we have lost the letter, or at least I appeared to be. But I was blaming the email that night, which was a little unfair, and anyway what I should have declared dead was something else, something inside me that used to flourish indignantly in youthful abundance. What was that thing? Back then I wanted a conversation to reveal the truth. Now I'm just looking for a conversation.

The fact is, all the easy truths have been uncovered already. There isn't much left to talk about except the weather. I was in line at the movie theater the other night, getting some popcorn. Some woman standing behind me expressed disbelief at how many people were in the popcorn line. "Is it always like this?" she asked. I told her yeah, the Embarcadero cinema on a Friday night is pretty much always crowded. "There's just too many people in the Bay Area," I commented. "And too many cars." "Oh, we're not going to have that conversation, are we?" she said. And she was right. Yes: there's too many people, too many cars, housing costs too much, the yuppies are taking over, yadda yadda yadda. It's old news. And that was it, I was out of ideas. I had nothing else to say to her.

I was on the phone to my friend Aaron who recently moved to Austin. I'm going out there to visit him and his wife for a couple days next week, and we were talking about things to do and such. I suggested we see some bands. Austin's supposed to have such a lively music scene, but according to Aaron all the clubs just have blues bands. So, I said. What's the weather like out there?

I don't just talk about the weather because there's nothing else to talk about. The thing is, I actually care about the weather. I care about what the temperature is, and how windy it is, and whether it's hot or cold. Because the weather is about the only thing that changes on a consistent basis. Everything else is pretty much like it was the last time I talked to whoever I'm talking to.

I'm thinking about my friend Barbara's Aunt, this story Barb tells about her. Apparently the woman is a gambling addict and goes up to Reno every chance she gets. All she does is play the slot machines. For hours and hours and hours, just dropping quarter after quarter into the slot machines. The way Barb tells it, it's like her Aunt thinks those slots are the most exciting, most mesmerizing things in the world. She comes back from Reno and talks about playing the slots, telling it like: "And then, I put a quarter in. And I pressed the button. And I got a cherry, and another cherry, and then an...an orange. No, wait, a banana. I got a banana. And then, I put another quarter in..."

I'm thinking about those slot wheels spinning...

So I've started saying "baby" all the time. I'm calling everybody "baby." I think I do it because it reminds me of Another Country by James Baldwin, where everybody calls each other "baby" while they're out living life until 5 a.m. in Paris in the 1960s. Things were happening in the 1960s. Nowadays everything closes early. Everybody goes to bed at a reasonable hour. Not like in the 1960s when you had to stay up until 5 a.m. just to finish what you had to say...