Inspired by a feature in yesterday's Post, I paid a visit to Arlington National Cemetery. I wish I would have had more time to spend there-- to saunter a bit and to think. Instead I trudged quickly up the hill to beat the sunset and only managed a little meandering on my way back down, not much off of the main path of Roosevelt Drive.

I haven't been since I was very small. And I only remember that the sun was much brighter (and hotter) the last time I was there and there were people people people. Yesterday, after closing time at 7pm, there were almost no other tourists-- and I was all alone for a time at the Kennedy grave site, which I imagined to be a rarity. The quiet combined with those last rays of the day's sun glinting atop the Potomac as I cast my gaze down across the Memorial Bridge to the Lincoln Memorial felt both stately and sad. Just like my mood.

Bruce was partly right. At 32, I have considerably slowed the club-frequenting. But thankfully, it hasn't disappeared completely.

I'm smitten with shiny, rainy nights and parking spots right in front of the club. With Grandmother's vintage umbrella tapping against my leg to the dreamy pop sounds of The Sea and Cake. With the welcomed brisk air inside 9:30club and the clove cigarette smoke passed on by brooding boys in horn-rimmed glasses and plaid pants. With the Barbie and Ken hanging inside of their Plexiglass box homes on each bathroom door.

The crowd was very unisex, with pigtail braids and big pullover sweaters and creamy, unblemished college-like complexions. I wore my new slip on black sandals with third-season Carrie Bradshaw frizzed curls-- creating that girl-alone wonder which I observed from out of the corners of my eyes. The band was engrossed in their technical layers upon layers of captivating sound-- the music fashioned a bright sunny day on the Mediterranean coast and the rigged ceiling lamps cast separated rays of sunlight catching the dust of a brilliant summer afternoon.

And though I may have been woozy and faint, I felt charmed and free. The perfect result of a first night out in a very long time.

Just when I'm mired in all of the guilt and envy and apathy that surrounds my distinct lack of whirlygirl posts and creativity spurts and kismet connections as of late, Mom comes to the rescue with the following quip:

"Good girls keep diaries; bad girls don't have time." ... Tallulah Bankhead

Feeling like quite the bad girl. Not epically or scandalously bad, that would also require time that I do not possess. But I definitely feel kinetic in that bumpy, nauseous, jeep-on-a-desert-dirt-road way that makes it hard to write at the same time.

I really want to call to apologize. I have that sinking feeling deep in the thick of the ribs and those red stripy muscles that you stare at on the posters which hang on the back of the doctor's office examination room door while you're covered with a tissue waiting for that knock. I was unintentionally cruel. A slipped giggle. A wish. I could hear it in his voice. He's so damn tired of this. And he's just so damned tired. So tired that I hesitate to wake him with my selfish contrition.

Instead I insert the salvation jazz which turned me around in the middle of last night's torrential downpour-- I apply it like a salve. I push that little blue "on" button-- satisfied to repent in the ether. Owing him a million connections. Owing him a million apologies and sweetnesses and attentive conversations that do not end in cruel hysterics. He sleeps in frustrated fits-- losing his anger in the abandon of implacable dreams. I sit in the hazy glow wishing for a do-over. And soon I'll drift to sleep just so that I can awake in a different place-- a little gem of a place with possibilities rather than liabilities. Somewhere in the future fully unconnected to this despair that has successfully swallowed me whole tonight.