Sei and I had dinner Friday night. It was divine: wild mushroom soup, Chilean sea bass and seafood risotto, and Grey Goose cosmopolitans at Pisces in Burlingame. Among other things, we talked about what diaries we had stopped reading in the last few months. I've given up three or four I once considered essential to my happiness; it's the same for her. She went right to the heart of the matter in talking about one diarist specificially.
"She's lost her authentic voice," Sei said sadly. "She's been reading too many other diaries."
That struck me as painfully true. The endearing freshness, the unique perspective on everything, the marvelously unstudied observations are gone. Now this diarist is hard to distinguish from any other diarist. It never occured to me that the diarist was being influenced by other writers but I think Sei nailed it. The diarist stopped writing on a fairly personal level in favor of a slicker, more superficial style. And that's a real shame. It's something I try to watch out for in my own work.
Of course, slick is not a word that anyone would apply to me if they saw me right now. Insanely perky, maybe. I got my hair cut on Saturday and apparently I was too enthusiastic when telling Masako how much I looked forward to having the back of my hair all one length. I went in to get my bangs trimmed. I walked out looking like Dorothy Hamill.
It's okay, though. I kind of like it in even though it is slightly surreal to have a haircut I wore throughout grade school.
Michael got to preview the hair when he spent the afternoon with us at the zoo. We got a late start because I was still fixing breakfast when he showed up. By the time we got there it was tremendously crowded. We visited the meerkats and prairie dogs right off as they are my favorite exhibit. The meerkat babies were not out which was disappointing, but the adults were as entertaining as ever.
Then we walked back past the musk ox to Gorilla World. There were a lot of people jostling to see the gorilla family which includes a two year old baby gorilla. People were crowding around every viewing station. I thought one of the apes seemed disturbed by it. She was giving us the evil eye pretty intently. The family moved around the perimeter and we followed. There was much gorilla playfulness. It was fascinating, especially when the baby started thumping his chest in imitation of his big silverback daddy.
That's why no one paid much attention as the cranky gorilla knuckling her way over to our crowd on the upper level. She had something in her hand but I couldn't see what it was. As she sat down and rotated her arm in an all too familiar gesture something clicked in the back of my mind and I thought, "Oh, no..." but it was way too late to react.
She flung a big handful of gorilla poop at us. My shirt got spattered front, side, and back. I don't know what they feed them at the zoo, but man, gorilla poop is rank. It's also impossible to wash out using a paper towel and soapy water. I was fragrant for the rest of the visit and I had to sit on Dixie's dog bed in the car going home so I wouldn't stink up the seats.
Michael thinks the Giants should sign her.
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