I'm beginning to hear unconfirmed rumors from family members a local grocery store might close. I hope it's just rumors - we've lost enough independent grocery stores in the neighborhood already. I know people talk badly of the story, and largely that's fully justified. The best way I know to describe it is that it's a secondhand grocery, where a decent amount of their business comes from selling overstock from other places. There's a lot of stuff they do firsthand, and when it's a product like canned tomatoes or dish soap or beer, there's very little concern about who got it first. That said, every so often, something from Whole Foods or Target shows up, and I can't begin to guess how it got there.

Within the last four years, three other grocery place - one bodega corner store, two organic markets - shuttered for various reasons. Rent's a big motivation. Wanting to retire's another. The unconfirmed rumors include that the owners can't find someone to carry on the business. I know it's not an easy way to make a living, and it's not something I'd ever want myself. It's something I want others to do, and it's something I'm happy to support.

Worst case scenario, I'd like to know ahead of time to stock up on things like salt. Best case, the unconfirmed rumors never move beyond neighborhood gossip.

Before tonight's screening of Collateral - still astonishingly good and an excellent crowd, plenty of laughs and gasps - I spoke to someone else who'd also gotten there early, but instead of being early for the 7PM Collateral showing, they were early for the 9:15 screening of something completely different. They're both on the same night, both in the same screening room, and it's an easy, understandable thing to get confused. This person also had time to head out and grab some food, and their friend who was meeting them was understanding about the situation.

Weirdly, though, this person didn't say things like "how foolish of me" or "I've got time to grab something" or "this is an easy mistake and I'll remember this to attempt to avoid such things again." What they said were things like "I can't read" and "I'm such an idiot" and generally insulting themselves. It's got me baffled as to why someone would take that route and go for those reactions, and I can only hope they grow out of it.

August 26 to October 8 for five seasons of TV isn't as fast as I've done some shows, and it's still nice to log how long these things can take. It's been an excellent run of TV and I'm still happy I watched it when I did.

Now, to find a time to tackle the DVD special features.

When the clouds clear enough, and the moon comes out, it's almost a surprise - only almost, because you've seen it for ages, you know exactly where it is, but it's only when the clouds clear enough and the circle of the moon shows itself that you see it for what it is and not the light it gives. Because until the clouds clear, all you see is the moon's light. You don't see the moon for itself, for what it is, not quite yet. Standing up on the roof, looking skyward, all you see are the clouds and the light, not the moon. You see the reflection, not the thing itself.

Standing up there, the second night of Sukkot, the second night of the yearly harvest festival, the celebration that comes with the night of the full moon, I could see where the moon was by the light that pushed through the dense, dark clouds. Not the celestial body itself, but its light, its reminders and indicators of where and what it was. I could see where the moon was, and I could see, farther south, the breaks in the clouds that I knew would let me see it. I'd come from a Sukkah party of sorts, a dinner at a local synagogue that wasn't so much choreographed as it was loosely hosted: a sukkah built on the rooftop, with people bringing food of their own to have dinner in a sukkah and fulfill the requirements of the holiday. I talked about Greek museums, and riding the metaphor to work in Athens, and Hadrian's wall, and Los Angeles' architecture, and probably a dozen other topics, all while eating food and drinking wine in the temporary structure on the rooftop. There was some wine left over. I took the bottle with me to another rooftop. My parents' building doesn't close its roof the way my own building's does. My father wanted to see if he could see the moon.

It wasn't so much that he could see it as it was that he could see where it was. The clouds were moving south to north, along the eastern part of the sky. To the north, it was largely clear; to the south, the nighttime clouds loomed dark and uncaring, taking up as much of the sky as they could. I could see where they were thin and weak, and stayed to watch. My father had to go, satisfying himself by seeing where the moon was. I waited to see it, if I could. I knew I could, if I waited. I waited to open up the bottle and drink its remains when I saw the moon. I didn't wait long. The spinning of the earth and the motion of the clouds had them thin out and open up so it was more than seeing the light behind the clouds telling me where the moon was: it was seeing the moon itself. Waiting and watching, the darkness stopped for the light to come. It wasn't cold on the roof, not with the thick dress I was wearing and not with the wine I was drinking. The clouds weren't enough to hide the moon from me anymore. The faint spectrum around it, the blues and reds reflected by the thinnest clouds making a rainbow halo, told me exactly what I was seeing. The faintest reflection of sunlight turned into the strongest moonlight.

I watched the moon, and drank the wine. I looked at the clouds, and drank the last of the wine. I left when I was ready, and I don't know when next I'll see it - just that I'll remember having seen it tonight.