pretty little homes.

- photogenics: last week i went to cvs to have a passport photo taken for my visa application. at several moments, i should have taken the opportunity to go elsewhere. the first occurred when the photostation girl said (with skepticism), "you really want a passport photo?" then when she fiddled with the camera for five minutes and finally ended up holding it about eight inches from my face. then when i stood reading people magazine for 20 minutes while she tried to get the computer to work, muttering, "this is so ir-ri-tat-ing." then when she had to re-start the computer and said, "this is why people don't get passport photos at cvs." needless to say, on the bad-passport-photo-spectrum, my pictures are astonishingly, laughably hideous. incidentally, i don't think i photograph well. i am accustomed to the idea that my self-image never appropriately corresponds with the moment the lens picks. but in this photo, i look like the frightened, ornery love child of yoda and an ewok.

- mulling: at a stanley kunitz celebration last week, marie howe quoted kunitz as saying, "To be a poet in an age of the super-state is itself a political act." hrmm.

- experienced with my own arm hairs: the nomadic museum and the faint (the second at webster hall, which is not nomadic).

- gaming update: scrabble intensity rising (game count - ewok: 2, bacca: 2). and spades was learnt last night, in delightful ambiance.

- consumed: a burrito containing tater tots and grilled hotdogs. not bad.

- listening: bloc party.

- longing, envious: classes at the center for the book arts.

- received: six smooth stones from the other side of the country. gratitude, creature comforts.