First, Proust on (not) writing:

"If only I had been able to start writing! But, whatever the conditions in which I approached the task (as, too, alas, the undertakings not to touch alcohol, to go to bed early, to sleep, to keep fit), whether it was with enthusiasm, with method, with pleasure, in depriving myself of a walk, or postponing it and keeping it in reserve as a reward for industry, taking advantage of an hour of good health, utilizing the inactivity forced on me by a day's illness, what always emerged in the end from all my efforts was a virgin page, undefiled by any writing, ineluctable as that forced card which in certain tricks one invariably is made to draw, however carefully one may first have shuffled the pack."
-- Proust, The Guermantes Way.

Several times in the last few days I've recalled things that have happened a year or more ago and thought that they were surely this year. Time is flying by and I'm suddenly overwhelmed by the sense that I no longer have the luxury of putting things off. There is not always time.

Am I the only person who understands how perfect coffee and pretzels are together? Of course there's coffee and dessert, cake and coffee, donuts and coffee. But coffee and pretzels. . . the thin man's treat.

The thin handsome young man in black beside me has just left. I've been seeing him the last week at my coffee hangout. He's always engrossed in a thick Tom Clancy novel which he holds with both hands as if, within his hands and on those pages, are the very secrets to life itself, as though he, a handsome young man with a two-day growth of dark beard and a well-groomed haircut shorn tightly around the side panels of his head, he, the unspoken young man of solitude, earnestness, and finely sculpted facial features, has somehow uncovered the Delphi oracle and is resolved to grapple with the universal truths therein before they can be disclosed to the world at large. He's burdened with the cosmic forces of good and evil. A veritable Jesus at, oh, say perhaps 24, except that his text is a Tom Clancy paperback.

I had lust in my heart today at the gym, nearly overcome with a rush of desire to worship the ass of some Abercrombie model look-alike doing power dead lifts for an approaching body-building competition. He was tall, muscled, with light brown hair and rosy cheeks. And from what I could tell, beneath his gym shorts was the most perfect, taut, rounded, muscular ass that any man has ever seen. Having overcome that scene, I walked into the locker room and unexpectedly caught just a quick glimpse of another young man's ass, framed as it was by his shirt tail above, and beneath, the jeans he was pulling up and fastening without underwear. It was an ass bonanza at the gym today. Mine got a good workout as well.

For the last several weeks I've been working with Marilyn on paper pricing. Price lists, mill direct orders, merchant paper prices, qualifiers, price modifiers, promotions, bids. This is Marilyn's world, and she secretly desires companionship and other inhabitants. She's a quiet, good, hard-working soul who's lost all sense of proportion about what is important and what is not. We are unable to finish editing any document. It's an endless cycle of writing, revision, and rethinking. We sit in groups of three and scrutinize pages and paragraphs, phrase by phrase. "Do you like 'The checkbox should be unchecked' or do you like 'The checkbox should not be checked'?" "Dennis likes 'price list price' but I find it awkward. Don't you like 'price on the base price list' better?" These are the questions and issues that haunt Marilyn. With her, every document is like writing the Magna Carta anew. It's exasperating, yet I can't seem to get angry with her. I'm reluctant to admit it, but yes, I prefer "The checkbox should not be checked." Marilyn agrees.

I guess "The Apprentice" has found a winning formula, so one can't harp on minor things too much, but must Trump, at the end of every board room, turn to his button-down female underling and say, "Boy, that was a tough one." She of course responds with, "It's never easy." With this exchange, somehow, the world is set right.