The worst thing one could possibly do, I think, on April Fool's Day, is tell everyone exactly what is going on in a series of sentences containing precisely one negative concept. More than one negative concept would not be confusing at all, since double negatives, etc would certainly not come into play, and would never leave the reader wondering whether "Mrs Jackson peed on a green sweater in a hot room" really meant that Mrs Jackson did not pee at all, or that Mrs Jackson peed but on a red sweater in a cold room, or that it was Mr Jackson and not Mrs Jackson who peed, or perhaps that really it was Mr Noskcaj who did not pee on a red sweater in a cold outdoor area, or perhaps pee is meant to be an opposite of some kind, so really what they mean is that Mr Noskcaj did not drink under several red skirts (or brassieres?) in some frigid marshes. All of this is a picnic to understand, so we will not limit ourselves to honoring today's dubious holiday with one negative concept per sentence, by which I don't mean per clause.

But it does seem inappropriate to bring everyone up-to-date on the fantastical workings of my life on a day that celebrates farce: things, while not in the least tragic, have been nothing to laugh at these days. To begin with, there is all this peace business, which in its terrifying ridiculousness is nothing at all like some kind of grand guignol all gushing with blood, and there are these pundits in magazines asking frankly disingenuous questions (like this one from the New Yorker: "When did Bush decide that he had to fight Saddam?") that it certainly had NEVER occured to me to ask in January of 2002. January 2002 was when the Axis of Blessedness was dreamed up and slipped into our morning oatmeal like a little vitamin tablet or a soupcon of arsenic. Anyway, I didn't do any marching in the brilliant sun that followed the train of blizzards like a lamb after the proverbial lion, and the Misnomered Brunette did not impress me with her tales of being threatened in California by the brutal hooves of establishment horses, and I am entirely certain about how useful being threatened by horses is for bringing about world peace.

This is not getting tiresome at all, but anyway, I have been mostly morose & unoccupied by work projects & anthropological investigations, and have not been learning to move through the park in my neighborhood like a hamadryad, & have hated the taste of my own sweat on my lip after one afternoon of hamadryading & have been given good dinners by Cromwell & his father & brother complete with little bowls of olives and wine and movies with empurpled titles about ice-nymphs and the lovely company of two complementary additional friends from college w/ whom we walked along a real live misty evening river across from a metropolis, and have not also at Cromwell's house met his new (finally) girlfriend in all her blonde angles and 80s black prom dress and also thrown enormous rubber balls across the room as if it were a real live gymnasium. And I have not entertained my sainted mother for almost a week & allowed her to clean up after me and conduct me to her friends' townhouses where I have been fed fennel and cheese grits and been entertained by sweet & ludicrous six-year-old twin boys. Who did not set the biological clock gently chiming. Which means that I really shouldn't be over that business with Stephen, but I am, and I won't tell you why:

The bastard refuses to call me. He really did lose my telephone number, even though he told me that night (the night when we didn't have wild, pre-marital, post-marital, unmarital sexual relations) that he had not lost it, and I know this because I have not received a single telephone call from him. Not a series of calls, messages on my voicemail, et cetera et cetera, alternately pleading & funny & ironic & drily reasoning & tender & sexy & vulnerable. And when I don't hang up on him, he doesn't call back. And he does not insist that I'm overreacting to what he says, and he most certainly doesn't tell me that there is really something between us that is crystalline & yet dynamic & electric and that he can't help thinking about me when he does almost anything. And this hasn't changed at all: he has started calling a little bit more lately but only recently. And he did not somehow get Eunice to tell him my address and send a huge fucking bunch of peonies to my apartment. I know exactly what's going on.

I've never used the above method before to usher in my own personal opposite day, and it has never ended in disaster, so if you don't understand then neither do I.

Entirely related to my odd romantic anguish is my new interest in Bikini Kill, & even more related is my horrible shameful passion for that Heather Nova song from the earlyish nineties, which was not powerful when I was almost sleeping with pale skinny nervous athletic recruits in college.

the beginning of this one, for now.