“I knew what was about to happen, but I did not stop to think, except to think that I knew what was about to happen.”

-Michael Chabon, THE MYSTERIES OF PITTSBURGH

Coming home today from interviewing a series of candidates for a job-share arrangement whereby we can partage in an administrative position and still pursue theater, I took the wrong train to the wrong stop and had to walk from Spring Street Station to the identically named Spring Street Station. On the way, I passed by people speaking French, several groups of them, and two young men at a table full of paperback books. It was about to rain. This did not deter them. I looked over the table with the deliberation of someone who knows she is going to have to buy a book. I walked slowly down the table, very slowly, but didn’t pick anything up until I picked up this one.

I picked up this one and opened it to the page where I read ” I admit I have an ugly fondness for generalizations, so perhaps I may be forgiven when I declare that there is always something weird about a girl who majors in French.” I bought it immediately, read it on the C, read it on the G, read it on trains full of other young men from New York reading Michael Chabon, Kavalier and Clay in their hands with their arms wrapped around the striptease-surfboard poles, read it walking home and read it until it was over. It’s over but I’m still there. I am floating now, somewhere in Pittsburgh.

“No doubt all of this is not true remembrance but the ruinous work of nostalgia, which obliterates the past, and no doubt, as usual, I have exaggerated everything.”