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Excerpt from mail sent in 1998:
There was the night when I got home, lay down to sleep, and figured out why I hadn't successfully checked out "Captain Hornblower" from the library: I'd left it on some other shelf in the library. Some random other shelf. Hopefully, I hadn't actually left it on some random other shelf. Hopefully, I'd shelved it in the place of "The Collected Stories" of Paul Theroux, which I'd meant to put back on the shelf, but which was now, inarguably, in my possession. Hopefully. Hopefully I hadn't just lost this book, a book I wanted to read.
I didn't sleep well that night.
But the next morning, I found "Captain Hornblower" in Theroux's place, safe and sound, with no librarian the wiser of my misdeed.
There was the night I walked home from BART. I was crossing a street atop Nob Hill and was nearly run down by a taxicab making a left turn. I'd always known what I would do under these circumstances--jump into the air like Jackie Chan and run up the hood. So I was surprised when my legs locked into place, when I put up a shakey hand, when I yelled "Hey!". The taxicab screeched to a stop; the driver apologized.
Crossing the street by USF, there was another pedestrian crossing the street, walking the opposite way, walking towards me, who nearly got run down by a car making a left turn. He sprang out of the way, too shocked to even manage a "Hey!"
Walking past Golden Gate Park, someone asked me for a cigarette. I said, "Sorry, don't smoke." And all of the sudden I was thinking of starting. I mean, what were cigarettes going to do? Shorten my life expectancy?
I didn't sleep well that night.
Really, that turkish coffee milkshake yesterday evening was a bad idea. The skin around my eyes, never my healthiest feature, today look like an eyeliner misheard and thought it was an "oil liner," perhaps the Exxon Valdez, and decided to dump ink all over the place. Oh man.
Today I am a sleepy boy.
During a long compile, I started channeling [then-President] Clinton: What are they going to do? They going to impeach me? What, they want [then Vice-president] Gore in there now? You think Gore wants to be president? What would he want to be president for? Hell, that robot wouldn't get any nookie if he was the gawddamned Emperor.
But I got over it.