  Tidings,  all,  and a Bon Mardi Gras,  tout le monde.  Today was a great day,  and it was all because of outside.
 The climate was simply stupefying,  and it cleared up a lot of accumulated woe over the past few days.  And it looks like a light rain tonight which should be nice,  as long as it clears up by tomorrow.  And,  I should be audioblogging starting this Sunday,
 if all goes to plan.  I get my ten dollars allowance,  nine of that goes to BLog and I get twelve calls a month at three dollars a month for three months.  So I'll be set for a while.  Then,  with the next three weeks' allowance,
 I'm saving to buy Jerry's new album,  Degradation Trip Volumes One and Two ,  which features all of the Degradation Trip songs and eight new ones,  including Hurts Don't It?  ,  Sidhartha ,
 Pig Charmer ,  which is about Layne,  whose deathday is coming up with Kirt Cobain's this April 5th,  and others.  It promises to be a great album,  and I can hardly wait a month to get it.
 To the thing I found fascinating tonight:  I was taking a bath just for the sake of soaking.  I was ultimately tired and looking for something relaxing to do to ease my caffeine- induced body,  and I happened to come upon the idea of taking a bath.  It's been a while,
 but in I went,  turning the water to a flinching degree of heat.  I slipped in a sat for a while,  then became bored and got out.  Then I took the towel to myself.  The towel,
 that was the thing.  This was a new towel. at least,  new to the upstairs shower.  The main one is a thick,  blue monstrosity,
 reeking of long- washed out cat urine as they had the gumption to find the towel fallen in the tub and somehow took it as their perogative to piss upon it.  Past the ammonitic smell,  it is also quite cumbersome and takes quite a long time to dry,  so naturally every time it is used,  the new towelee takes a goodly amount of time in getting dry,
 as the towel is already soaking.  So,  what a surprise to find this towel,  one stictched by my parental step- grandmother for my mother ages ago,  with half the personalization stitches ripped out by my mother for some reason or another (
MA"  it reads)  But I took the towel about me,  at first not noticing the difference,  and then inhaling slightly. no cat piss.
 It was an oddity,  but I chanced a downward look and found that all- too- familiar half- gone stitch of " MARY"
 Another whiff smelled of cologne. what is this,  Grey Flannel ?  That Man ?  It was my dad's old cologne.  It reminded me of warm summer days where five year old boys would wake up and waste that same day in front of a Nintendo-
stricken TV,  but nonetheless make the entire day worth it,  because he was busy having too much fun to notice the outside.  And all the while,  his father next to him,  only a few feet away,
 sitting leisurely in a creaking office chair with sunlight illuminating his face from below,  pouring in through three windows in the room,  and each was open,  giving off a scent of tree and grass and sun and wind and sky,  and his father was languidly staring at a computer screen,  sometimes looking interesting,
 sometimes laughing at some joke of his son's,  or one of his rantings about losing his Nintendo game.  Then the evenings came,  and the boy would go outside and the summer was suddenly around him everywhere he walked,  and it was pure heaven to run in that slighty humidified but sweet air.  It was summer,
 he was young,  and the world was something else every single time.  And then,  I turned the towel and I smelled the sea.  Sea salt,  sand,
 it was Florida,  and the same boy,  although he was older now,  his face a little bolder,  his frame a little taller,  and he was laughing with his cousin and sister as he ran into the waves,
 choking on rushing salt water and still wide- mouthedly howling with mirth.  It was sunset,  and here the boy found what he thought was love for the first time with a girl he had met there,  and they drew hearts in the sand all the way down the beach.  Eventually,
 the girl would leave and,  in a trail of hearts,  the boy was applauded by all on the quieting beach,  cheering and wooping,  clapping and general appreciation at the sight of young love,  a sign that the whole world was just fine.
 He would never see the girl again for the rest of his time there,  and three years later,  when he saw her again,  she remembered him with a shy smile and restrained glances,  saying little and blushing much,  staying near him but keeping her distance,
 and this time there was only one heart in the sand,  hers,  a farewell present to the boy,  who,  knowing this time,  would never glimpse the face again.
 And as the boy types he cannot remember her face but he can remember that day all too well,  the day he figured out that there was something to the idea of love,  something fascinating,  that while it ends one day,  while it is there,  it is magic,
 forbidden and wonderful magic,  the sort that actually does inspire men to jump cliffs and float all the way down,  to run fire,  skip sea,  dance sky,  slide earth,
 it moves him to hysteria,  and in it he is content,  and all around him are somehow not illed by this flagrant show of emotion,  but somehow wryly enriched at seeing it;  there is love,  so powerful a force,
 so fleeting,  but yet it strikes with the fury of colliding worlds and the quickness of cobras made of lightning.  What a strange fate to have had a towel and remember the two best times in my entire life.  It was warm,  then.
