So I was going to wait to start this blog. I certainly wasn't going to start it this morning, hung over, a little high, running on no sleep, with fresh blood brewing down in my belly. But today's the day.

This morning, biking back from Marielle's place, the Santa Cruz river path was rife with lavender and Indian paintbrush and aloe vera and tiny ground squirrels popping in and out of holes like those puppets you hit on the head with a stick. A cat cautiously crossed the path, narrowed its eyes at me, and vanished. I was biking back in a low-cut dress and sweat pants, no shoes, and made many a man's morning with my breasts, which are heavy and pendulous right now, and my bare feet, which excited many of the early-morning traffickers to the point of distraction. Men are funny creatures, liking feet so much. I read once that the feet and the genitals are close together in the map of the brain, and cross-wiring is the beginning of the foot worship that has a few guys overlooking the mounds of glandular fat in favor of a glimpse of white toes peeking out from the bottoms of my leggings.

My last few weeks here in Tucson. I guess I have decided it's time to get drunk, have sex, and make out in public. I don't know if Tucson is ready for me. As self-consciously cool as the kids are here, you'd think they'd be more open about all this stuff. In Europe I climbed in and out of beds like some kind of sexy Goldilocks, trying each one on for size, rumpled blue sheets, black pillows, hard and soft, small and tall, hairy and smooth, drifting lazily from one to another's arms. I don't feel the same freedom here, can feel my reputation clinging to me like a scent (indeed, like the scent of pizza, which has become a part of my body now, an effluvium I carry about my head in a small but very really cloud of yeast, flour, cheese, and tomato sauce).

I can hear my sister playing guitar in the garden, singing out with her gorgeous soprano. Joni Mitchell, "California"...I will think of that song when I'm in Japan, as I often did in Spain.

Time to go join her in the garden, take my clothes off, and stare at the sky. The pine tree with the hawk, the pool, blinding white with its new coat of paint, the red roof of the house, framing the blue, which continues past the trees and up to the edge of the atmosphere, where matter of a sudden ceases to fall and starts to float.