Burn

I will detail this night not because it is essential or I expect more of it but because this is my journal. I should not only chronicle crucial story beats, though I do that enough through the nature of writing for decades. When I look back at this at some point -- I can't imagine when -- I would like to know these small joys as much as the foreshadowing.

Amber and I go to the bonfire again. The hostess points out that this is our third in a row. Amber worked earlier in the day and said she might not want to go as it would be too much activity on the weekend. A few days before, she asked what I was making to share for dinner. (I tried to create cookies from scratch. They turned out to be okay pancakes, so I made cookie brownies from a box again.)

We sit on the back porch with our food -- chicken, salad, and roasted potatoes -- and are trapped for some minutes by a hungry skunk crunching on cat food. The conversation is lively, which is to say that I continue participating in it. I cannot say why, but that pang of anxiety when speaking to people I do not know well has abated all at once. I do not yet feel these are my friends, but they accept my presence there enough that we are all friendly. Aside from the host, hostess, and her sister, guests have not repeated.

There was the suggestion of a new moon ritual, but it boils down to my picking the Ace of Pentacles from a deck, then deciding what it meant. I skim the meaning on the phone. I have several decks and have never bothered to learn official definitions, but I've always intended to when I have a few minutes to myself (which I then spend drafting another book). It means that it is an opportunity for which I must work. The hostess scrutinizes the imagery, a leisurely bear coming out of a cave, and says it is something to do with what nourishes me, as though I've come from hibernation and am ravenous. As both dovetail to the same topic -- keep writing and publishing -- I am willing to accept either. (In fact, most things with me tend to terminate in my writing more. What a coincidence.)

We had heard music from enough distance that it had to be from a party, not an overzealous car stereo. While chatting around the bonfire, we hear an explosion, followed by another. We turn from the fire and see the fireworks that would delight us on July 4th. Given that a minor league baseball team milking their game well past eleven deprived me of my due fireworks, I am all about seizing the opportunity, as the card suggested.

I stand on the edge of their yard, bouncing on my toes as the fireworks reach a respectable crescendo after ten minutes. Someone mentions that there might have been a wedding, which fits with the facts of the music -- though it is rude not to invite me to any wedding I can hear. Another, that this show cost several thousand dollars.

"Why didn't we have fireworks at our wedding?" I ask Amber in a fake pout.

"We did," she says. "Don't you remember?"

"We had someone else's red paper lanterns."

Amber considers this. "It was good enough."

The next day, we go to a picnic at Ferncliff Forest, held by Amber's job. This would already infringe upon her "one activity per weekend" edict, but we cannot avoid it.

An overwhelmingly friendly doctor introduces himself, though I suspect I have encountered him before. Not when I visited the hospital, in which circumstances I would have only been looking for Amber or there because something tragic was happening/has happened with a pet whom I love. I've been to a few of these events -- at the Bronx Zoo on a rainy day, at a beach -- and we would have crossed paths. He gives the feeling that we are old friends, and he is pleased to be seeing me again. I do not think this is personal, only his personality, which I cannot deny is charming. I wish I could be as boisterous as he is, but I might also have to be as tall. I assume the charm comes from gaining a few inches in height and thereby seeing farther.

I wander rather than cleaving close to Amber, though I lean over occasionally and ask her who one person or another is. I've met them, but I didn't retain such ephemera as their names. Once Amber gives them, I know them fully from Amber's work stories. They, in turn, know me because I am the man against whom Amber cuddles from time to time. If I am not by inference Thomm, Amber might have some explaining to do on Monday.

When I later begin to explain a story that I feel needs the preamble by saying, "I teach at a high-security juvenile detention facility," Amber cuts me off and says that everyone knows that.

"I don't know how much of my life you tell your coworkers."

A few people at the table seem surprised at my profession, so Amber grants that maybe everyone didn't know that. There is a slim possibility I do not come up as a topic of conversation while they are cutting open kittens.

There is Thai food, which we can all agree is the ideal picnic food. I overeat more because I want Thai food and something to do rather than because I am hungry. (The doctor will later tell some teens they should do him a favor and finish it off since they are growing boys. He doesn't look that much older than them, but they are still all shy smiles that he has directly addressed them.)

The doctor suggests a cornhole tournament, going as far as to draw up a bracket, but this doesn't happen. He then jokes(?) that there might be a smore-making contest or a pumpkin carving competition, though these do not materialize either. There is a smoky fire and forty pumpkins unloaded from someone's trunk, but people seem to want today to be more casual.

The two activities do not seem too much for Amber, and she is not sorry to have done them. I could do with more weekends where I do more than write at home.

last watched: Inside Job
reading: The Psychopath Test