Saturday, 04 August 2001 | Lost

In my left hand, I'm holding a shoestring with a stuffed shark finger puppet attached to it; in my right, I'm cupping the mouse, except when I'm typing, of course. The kitten is not satisfied. She's been jumping and climbing and standing exactly in the way and walking across the keyboard of my laptop, in dadaist fashion.

I'm in a hotel room in DC, motivating myself to take care of that flat tire (no, it isn't my car this time) and to ignore the blisters that came last night walking around Adams Morgan. Somehow when we were ready to go back to the hotel, we completely misplaced the car, and ended up walking up and down hilly, winding, zig-zagged dead-end streets (yes, they were all all those things) in unending residential neighborhoods. It would've been nice, had it been an intentional stroll; the streets were quiet, muffled by green, thick woods, and the houses loomed above us, dark and old and remote, separating themselves from the sidewalk with steep angular stony paths. Finally, defeated, we rode around in a taxi and retraced in order to find the car. I'm certain that if we would've watched ourselves from above, turning and backtracking and dead-ending like confused rats in a maze, we would've been yelling at ourselves like you yell at dumbly brave people in a horror film. Today we're bringing the map.