I am normal.

Went to Cosmos tonight with Katelyn and Brian. As is the case on Tuesday nights, Brian was playing for open mic. I've gone a total of three times since July. "Dead Last Brian" as he will henceforth be called, of course was slotted to play the grand finale. The picture of the day comes from the first ten minutes of our three hour wait at the coffee shop, and I just love Katelyn's face so much here that it beat out a picture of Brian actually playing. Such is life.

So while waiting for Dead Last Brian to do his thing, I hunkered down at a corner table with a book just in from the library: The Forest for the Trees (An Editor's Advice to Writers). It's good. Definitely kept me entertained for three hours and about 10 not very good performances. (Seriously. One guy was singing about dinosaurs.)

According to this book, I'm exactly the type to be a lifelong writer:

1) Have a new idea almost every day for a writing project? Check.

2) Begin sentences in your head while walking to work or picking up dry cleaning? Check.

3) Everything strikes you as a story to be told? Check.

4) Always writing, if only in your head? Check

5) Impulse to write at a very young age? Oh, those long, lone ten-year-old nights with the typewriter.

6) Intensely verbal or intensely withdrawn? I am both of those things to an extreme, in case you were wondering.

7) Accused of being too reflective? Do you people not know me at all?!

Congratulations to me! I am normal by the writing standard!

I really liked this quote, by Martin Amis: "You develop an extra sense that partly excludes you from experience. When writers experiene things, they're not really experiencing anything like 100%. They're always holding back and wondering what the significance is, or wondering how they'd do it on the page." Is Martin Amis reading my mind?

I guess that quote translates into my life somewhat like this: I often wonder how differently I'm seeing things from other people. For instance, when my roommate and I are in the car, driving through the neighborhood, and there's a boy and girl walking out of their house and disappearing behind a vine covered wall off the side of their yard, does my roommate automatically come up with the story that the vine covered wall is their secret passage to a secluded and restful garden, one where, in the midst of all the slummishness and graffiti covered signs of our La Mesa neighborhood, they can find a truly peaceful atmosphere to share their deepest secrets and past histories, because they are best friends in the truest sense of the word, having met only a week prior through a series of destiny defining events?

Or does she just see a boy and girl walking across the yard? Or does she even see them?

Cuz that's my thought process all the time.

Maybe it's just me and Martin.