Spending large amounts of time with my dad seems to inspire me to write, or to at least think. I don't know if it's because he's kooky, but it's certainly not because he's a writer. As much as I admire him and hope to emulate his success someday, I nevertheless find it awkard now to be in his presence; I feel very put off. Scared almost, but of what I can't figure out. Maybe scared of not living up to him. Hum.

Yesterday Danny and I went to Oleta River State Park to go mountain biking, or as close to "mountain" biking as you can get in the excruciatingly flat, flat land of south Florida. If the nation was a set of stoveware, Florida would be one of the skillets. Right.... So, we picked our way through the awful afternoon traffic that consisted of young wives, who Fitzgerald would have called in The Great Gatsby "new money," driving their overly expensive and unnecessarily large mountaineering vehicles (which, I'm sure, will never see nature's palate of greens and browns; these overbearing monstrosities will only encounter contrived soccer fields and delicately navigate square, gray parking decks). Luckily, I felt my frustration melt away with every inch we crossed into the park. The speed limit in the park varies from 5 to 25, and I strictly adhered to those posted signs, much to Danny's chagrin. He compained, "Come on Jen, why are you going sooooo slow??" For some reason, these normally-pesky metal signs seemed to be friendly reminders (instead of a hassle or nuisance, another impediment imposed by The Man) when found scattered along a beautiful stretch of loblolly and long leaf pines; almost as though the signs were gently telling me, "These speeds are posted for a reason--remember, this is a family-friendly park, where unassuming children might accidentally bike across the road without looking in both directions, or an endangered animal might try to dart in front of you--we're just doing you the service of trying to prevent you from the guilt that you'd be forced to live with if you were going over the speed limit and KILLED A CHILD OR A POOR, HELPLESS, ENDANGERED ANIMAL!!! So I went the speed limit.

High school is a strange, strange creature. Danny and I went to good ol' Stranahan HS (Home of the Mighty Dragons, by the way) in the morning (before our exciting and adventuresome bike trip) to visit old teachers and friends. What a strange, strange sensation it was to walk through the halls that are still saturated with the exact same smells that were there 2 years ago and feel transported back in time by these offenses to my nostrils; I almost thought that the "Wild Boyzzz" were going to be around the next turn in 3rd hall, banging beats on the wall and dancing (with the sea shells that adorned the ends of their hair braids click-clacking together) to the floor. It was great to see all my old favorites, great to feel like a superstar, great to feel like the proverbial big fish in the much smaller pool. It was shameful, at the same time, though, because it reminded me of how successful and "cool" (translation: doooooorrrrkkk) I was back then, back before I knew what I was like to not have over a 4.0 GPA. It made me feel like a failure, kind of, like I had let down my former self. What a stark realization: I have failed myself. It doesn't get much worse than that.

But I rationalized to mend my college-fragiled ego; I told myself Tech was a different world. But still.....anyway, not to dwell anymore...

A Widow for One Year, by John Irving, is currently absorbing me. Irving is not only my favorite author, but also the author of my favorite book, A Prayer for Owen Meany. Excellent, excellent novel. Wow'd me. I've also read Irving's The World According to Garp, parts of The Cider House Rules (it got to be very slow and boring, so I stopped), and The Fourth Hand. They all seem to share themes of love that goes against conventional social morrays; copious sex between these illicit lovers as symbolism for something bigger; dysfunctional family relationships; infidelity; time; and testing and exploring the idea of fate to see how much of life it controls, how much does "tempting" it matter? Irving's favorite literary tools seem to be cruel irony, foreshadowing, and the frame story. There is always a woman character who pushes the boundaries of the gender box society longs to confine her to -- she is always tragic and misunderstood. I love that Irving's books all feel like conversations with random people on a park bench, where the random stranger feels compelled to share with me every detail of their life (including all the sexual experiences that molded and affected them), and the lives of all the people this stranger has ever come in contact with; by the end of an exhausting read of the novel, I feel as though I might be in the next edition of the story the stranger tells to his next bench-mate. Widow is enthralling, to say the least. Disturbing might be a better description, though.