Lydia Davis

What makes me feel good is Ashley's wedge salad and throwing my granddaughters up in the air and catching them before they fall to the ground.

I don't know why I can't feel good all the time. There's nothing I can find in the Greeks for instance, and I'm trying to read Aristotle now, that puts a limit on feeling good.

Aristotle talks about 'striving', that form exists not merely as a realized state but exists as a 'striving' toward that state. I suppose this presumes a certain uncertainty, the possibility of things going wrong. I suppose this could also presume that Aristotle is saying that if you're striving toward the good, then you're doing your job and the feeling of that striving should be a good feeling.

I have a love affair with feeling good that's sometimes disrupted by an urge to get a small tattoo on my bicep or to buy a pack of American Spirit cigarettes and smoke tbem. When these feelings occur there's consolation in the feeling of knowing how bad I'd feel immediately after indulging these feelings.

The other day I was walking around Portland, Oregon in the industrial area between the east side of Morrison Bridge and E. Burnside. I was feeling good, a little lost at times but lost in a good way, when the feeling of wanting to be someone else came upon me. I wanted to be a famous writer like Lydia Davis, a writer who gets not one but two reviews of her new book in The New York Times, but I fought it off with the whole force of my being.

I've learned that if I wait 5 seconds before acting on a feeling the feeling will go away and I can be happy once again.