Do you smoke enough weed?

Today was a right lovely day. I managed, with the help of Dean's incessant wake-up calls, to roll out of bed no later than quarter to one, when I threw on a sweater and scarf, listened to some Macy Gray (my breakfast of choice), and began the journey over to his flat--a trying, albeit familiar, journey. At least once a day I find myself shivering at the bus stop, waiting, for what seems like a very long time, for the 29, which I always seem to miss by about two minutes. Once on the bus it takes about 15-25 minutes to cross town, depending on the traffic and level of hustle-bustle in the city. Today was a busy day. By the time I reached Dean's the morning sun was beginning to segue into the prolonged dusk that arrives every day at around 2:30, and seems to last for hours. Hours of dusk. Later, I would comment on how lovely it is to be able to exist in that kind of light for such a lengthy period of time, and I would realize that I'm actually beginning to love it, just a little bit. But not now; now I was feeling the bottle of wine that I topped off last night and trying to figure out whether to suppress or give into the ever-growing urge to tell Dean "fuck it," and just borrow his bed for a very long, marijuana-induced snooze. But going to the Modern Art Gallery had been my brilliant idea, and I'm trying not to be lazy. I'm trying to have integrity, or at least convince my friends that I do. I brought some of my mom's Fed-exed homemade cookies with me, a token of my appreciation for him letting me cat around his apartment all the time

So, yeah, we went to the Gallery. And it was absolutely wonderful. We walked the back way, along the river, through a damp forest of sorts, the path carpeted in wet, yellow leaves and mud. We went up moss-covered stone stairs, crossed wooden bridges, stopped to observe the ducks and trade whatever duck knowledge each of us had filed away in our brain. Runners sped past us and old ladies puttered about with their dogs, who all looked very pleased. At one point a brigade of three boys on bikes made their way past us down the path, and when we caught up with them, they had discarded their bikes and were now intricately observing their environment. One was taking pictures. I liked to think that they were gathering clues, like the Hardy Boys. The path finally spit us out right onto the back of the Gallery. We saw just enough art, didn't overdose (it's easy to do that with modern art). Then we sat on the terrace and indulged ourselves with big vats of coffee and cake, talking shit and gazing out upon the lawn and the trees beyond it and the tops of buildings peaking up over the trees and their silhouettes against the faded, amber sky, and that's when I realized how lovely the dusk is.