small_world monadh rotating swirling crushing freeing falling waking in dream 010727 ... ever dumbening i have had so many small world stories in my life, connecting new orleans to los angeles to beijing to south bend to manhattan to saint louis. but tonight, at my second new year's eve party, i met a man who is a long time friend's sister's friend. he lives in my old apartment on mlk jr. way in berkeley. i can't really explain to you how strange this is. 070101 ... nom my dad saw a guy at the general store yesterday who he hadn't seen in thirty years 070101 ... nom i shouldn't've written that. i have to stop blathering about my family. 070101 ... nom i mean if my dad wanted everyone to know that he would've written it himself. 070101 ... starboy maybe he wrote it on his private blog. maybe he also wrote below it: "i wish i knew of a place where more feasting eyes could hear of my strange encounter. maybe by some other strange coincidence, it will be known elsewhere by another hand of type. hmm." 070103 ... ever dumbening subtitled: berimbau [the author recommends, as a musical accompaniment to this blathe, that before you begin reading you direct (in a firefox tab) your browser to myspace.com/cutchemist and click on the song called "the garden" which features a sample of astrud gilberto's song "berimbau." ——E.D.] in the spirit of needing to do_more_stupid_shit, i re-enter the world of small (which seems apt since as i squeeze through this needle's eye of workchange homechange lifechange i feel an unhealthy inward draw, full of the tentative). so three weeks after meeting someone who moved into my old place, i have yet another crazy coincidence related to housing. i am, with quite heavy heart, needing to move from my current fantastic place—the place where i can sleep one minute and bend pound shape melt merge metal the next—because of roommate incompatability. on tuesday, i met with some friendly folks to look at a room they have and see if we'd be good housemates. upon entering the living room, i look up to the wall to see a berimbau. i ask nia if someone in the place does capoeira. she replies that she used to and then mentions the names of people i don't know who also do (one name is rachel). continuing the tour we enter the kitchen. nia gestures past the gauzey curtains down to the area below and outside saying that they keep their motocycles down there. brain clicking brain clicking. clicking. rachel, capoeira, motorcycle. whoa. i think i know this woman. i think i desired this woman. i tell nia the first of these two facts. back in the living room, after having looked at the vacated room, i realize that rachel is the former roommate and indeed my erstwhile object of affection. the fact of my longing is still, as i write, unknown to any of the others. and despite my current lack of my usual attacking spirit, i feel i must do_more_stupid_shit and pursue this. here is why. i met rachel just over one year ago at a christmas party (coincidentally about two blocks from my old apartment) being thrown by my friend gabby's ex-roommate's ex-girlfriend. as we pulled up in front of the house on a cold rainy night, a woman has just dismounted her motorcycle and is climbing out of her riding leathers to reveal a lovely qipao beneath. wow. later, inside the party, she sits down next to me, or i next to her (i can't remember, does it matter). we talk. i started thinking, as i often do, i could like this woman. we talk of art and work and portuguese and capoeira and sisters and. gabby has another group of friends having a party on the same night (apparently a sore point between the throwers of the two parties, as normally they would all be at the same place at the same time). we leave. the next day i post a "missed connection" on craigslist: "rachel the motorcycle-riding capoeirista." no response. thirteen months later my circumstancing brings me to her empty room. 070125 ... ever dumbening why do i even try. fuck. 070130 what's it to you? who go blather from