Livestock, Sore Feet, and Fried Pepsi

What a day. After waking up and making breakfast, I found myself having some sort of Celine Dion moment, watching various performances of Lara Fabian blasting her way through Je T'Aime, a song I first heard and couldn't get enough of when I was in Paris. Both Lara and Celine are too pop/Adult Contemporary for me, but I like Lara better. She tears this song up. After watching three other shaky amateur cellphone vids of the same song, I truck outside and mix some mortar and work on tuck-pointing the remaining bits of the foundation that I hadn't gotten to yet. While I am filling a crack in my porch steps, I evidently got too close to a nest of yellowjackets, who reside in my hollow metal porch-railing, which necessitated immediate evasive maneuvers. I managed to keep skin, mortar, trowel, and mortarboard (it ain't just a hat, folks) intact while doing the Daffy Duck dance all around my front lawn. No doubt Doreen the neighbor took note. For the rest of the afternoon, the phrase "I'm covered in BEES" was on endless repeat in the Mental Jukebox.

In spite of assurances that a cold front came through last night, it was still hot as blazes outside, so I spent the rest of the afternoon parked as near to a cold-air vent as possible. From there, Holly and I went to the Indiana State Fair, which is always good for people-watching. This year's models sport neck tattoos of girl- or boyfriend's names. The guys wear boxer shorts under basketball shorts, the waistband of the latter completely under their asses so they have to walk straddle-legged to keep things from falling in the cowshit they're walking over. Regarding the ladies, I swear I saw Britney Spears 15 times today. This is her kinda place. Rascal Flatts was playing to a packed grandstand as Holly and I walked to the Midway. The Fair Food Exhibition Dish this year is Fried Pepsi. You heard it. Fried Pepsi. Under the sign was a list of steps as to how the delicacy was prepared. Essentially, it's fried dough using Pepsi instead of water, with the finished fritter drizzled with undiluted Pepsi syrup, waffle style. If it doesn't slip right out of your hand, it'll surely slip right through your GI tract. I opted for a smoked turkey leg, which ended up being over a pound. I gnawed on it for at least half an hour, feeling like a cross between Henry VIII and a dingo. It was good, but even after flossing, I still feel like I've got at least enough for half a turkey salad sandwich wedged between my molars. Of all the food to buy at the fair, the turkey leg is the most mileage for your buck.

In the Bunny and Poultry pavilion, I did my best to take decent photos of the fauna on display. The fowl were rather difficult to capture, not least due to the fact that their legs appear to be attached to their neck muscles, making each stride a full-body experience. Finally I found a couple that stood still long enough not to be feathered blurs in the limited light. The hen at the top of this post was fully determined to kick my ass. After two shots, I left for tamer fare.

The rabbits were hot. No denying it. It wasn't the walking around that made pix difficult, it was their panting. One proud young owner of a Rex offered to take her entry out of the cage so the wire wouldn't be in the way of the pic. I forgot to get her name, but here she is. She's even got a bunny t-shirt.

Oh, and I almost forgot the sheep in their disturbing protective outfits. And the first sheep Olympic Bobsledding team.

Bye, Bye, Birdie

Last night was my farewell to the Parakeet from the Sky a/k/a Bertie a/k/a Moonbat a/k/a The Bird. School is coming up and my apartment, among other things, would not be able to accommodate the cage, the grad office would not be able to accommodate birds in general, and the house would be empty save for the bird for days at a time, which would be a horrible fate for the poor thing. Transporting wouldn't work due to how cold things get up here in the wintertime. Alice, who was kind enough to loan me a cage to begin with when the bird fluttered down from the neighbor's big oak tree back at the beginning of June, will be taking over custody of the bird. Her daughter looked very excited about getting a bird and I'm sure she will be wonderful in caring for him. After only almost two months it was harder to put the cage in the car and wave as they drove off than I thought. I was thinking that somehow I'd be able to swing having him in the grad office, but I'm sure I would have gotten in major trouble for that...

Rock on, Moonbat, with your 80s-music-lovin, aloud-poetry-readin self. Hope to see you in May back here in the living room...

Parakeets and Internets and Heatstroke

It appears I have found a stopgap happy pill for the parakeet, whose droopy, sullen presence here in the house was getting to be almost more than I could bear. It wouldn't sing, wouldn't sit on my finger, and would only move either to the top of the cage to eat, or to the dining room curtain rod to look down on his hopeless, halflit domain.

This morning, as a last resort, found a website that had example soundfiles of Arizona songbirds. I played them. Found another on the songbirds of New York. Played those too. I swiped them off the interweb and combined them on a CD with soundtracks from various Youtube parakeet videos. Result--instantaneously happy parakeet, flying around the room, chatting back at the speakers, perching on my finger and eating foxtails pulled from the weeds in the garden. Considering that meteorologists are predicting the longest string of 90+ degree days since 1988, it's a good thing that I found at least this. The A/C is not likely to be off for some time. Let's just see how long I can handle hearing badly-edited birdsong sound files...Davo may end up being the sullen one.

The Burden of Memory

One thing that has weighed heavily on my mind over the past few years has been the idea of memory and how it is valued. Some of the other first year poets can likely remember my 4 or 5 page series of notes regarding a novel/long poem sequence. The notes were tremendously overburdened with detail and were overmuch by even those likely to write a large novel. Those involved in the reading were quite diplomatic regarding my glut of material and structural thoughts. Most of the bits in my notes had to do with my upbringing and the importance of keeping a historical context on things, as well as experiences of my family with Alzheimer's and how it affects memory.
I was concerned at the time primarily with the personal aspect of memory and how it is vilified or valued, but in the current political climate, memory also happens to be on center stage regarding various hearings. Memory of the people that are testifying--if they actually show up to testify--is rather consistently faulty. Gonzalez had his famous "I don't recall" testimony not terribly long ago which has morphed, in later testimonies to "I can't answer that question" now that the President is the Big Block to Governmental memory. Phrases of the past year tend to orbit around "I'm not aware" and "I don't know." But memory and its forms are a major obsession at present and the governmental problems of late are only a small part of that.

In bed at my grandparents' house some years back, I was reading a book before falling asleep when my grandmother opened the door. The room had been, over thirty years ago, the room she shared with her husband.
"Where's Gilbert?" she asked.
"He's in the room across the hall, gramma." She blinked and thought a second, hand still on the doorknob, then looked back at me. "Well, good night, then."
"Good night," I said.
She had no idea who I was. She had walked from the bathroom to go to bed and in her bed, in the place of where she thought her husband was, a stranger was reading, a book held under the shade of the lamp. Based on what the stranger said, she closed the door and said goodnight and went to a different room. I'm not sure how many of us would have done the same thing and not caused a ruckus. And in the eye of newborns I can't help but see the same expression of newness and wonder that I kept seeing in her eyes during that and subsequent visits.

Forms of memory are seen everywhere. Hugo's thesis in Notre Dame that architecture is literature, and literature is seen as a form of memory, that same architecture as a backdrop to the interplay of Esmeralda and Quasimodo and the evil Frollo. Literature is, in its own right, memory. Any form of repetition as a form of memory, from the repeated arches or triangulations of a bridge or building to the repeated arches of wires between posts along the highway, to the fact that so many people have been named David or Michael or Frederick or Alice or Theodore before us; the fact that the names we ourselves carry are a form of memory. And in looking forward in the moving car one sees in the same field of vision the receding perspective of the countryside in the oblong mirror glued to the glass.

Memory is, currently, worth both everything and nothing. Politicians wish they could forget, and dear relatives either wish desperately they could remember or live in a present that no longer is, with surrogate sons and husbands, and acquaintances that no longer exist. The past and near-present are the current battleground of society. If one has the power to control history, one has great power. Without that, it's a frightening place to be. Its a frightening place to be nonetheless.

picture adapted from a still from The Life and Death of 9413, A Hollywood Extra

I've done my part...A Rationalization

I kinda like our ozone layer. I don't drive much, took Indy public transport (arguably the worst for how large the city is in the nation--even Lafayette has better busing) for over five years before getting my car. Had a non-engine-driven lawn mower. The usual. I've spent all but three days this summer not using my air conditioning, but after yesterday's weather, and with today expected to be five degrees hotter with more humidity, I'm in hunker-down mode with the curtains closed and the A/C on. This is the first house I've lived in that has had central air, and for a substantial part of my formative years, I've been of the school that A/C simply makes you wimpy. One can be hot, even with the A/C on, and going outside simply becomes intolerable. So, then, why have it? For days like this, when it's gonna be over 95, with humidity in the over 80s category.

The parakeet can't cling to the screen, can't hear the birds singing, can't respond to the outside, and so today sulks on the curtain rod. But at least isn't panting due to the temperature.

In the half light the curtains admit, I've got plenty to do--books to read, much to write, and a semester to plan, pondering questions such as whether I should make the freshies read French Futurist/Cubists and Dostoevsky, or should I do something else.... Plus, the huge amount of Haydn I've been putting off for months is still hanging over my head. The lawn can wait, the weeds can wait, the windows can continue to cook in the garage.

Update...

Speaking in my earlier post of conveniently-announced terrorist plots and large bricks of cheese, we have the following story. It's this sort of thing that cheapens government. It is irritating that people in such positions in society think in such terms about the individuals they have been elected to care for. If one can't believe terrorist alerts from the government, what can one possibly believe? And the bow keeps scraping across the same ol' violin.

Ah, Freedom...

This from Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus:

"...for a while [Freedom] achieves what one expected of it. But freedom is really another word for subjectivity, and there comes a day when it can no longer stand itself, despairs at some point of the possibility of being creative on its own, and seeks protection and security in objectivity. Freedom always has a propensity for dialectic reversal. It quickly recognizes itself in restraint, finds fulfillment in subordinating itself to the law, rule, coercion, system--finds fulfillment in them, but that does not mean it ceases to be freedom."
"In your opinion, that is," I said with a laugh. "As far as you can see! But in reality that is no longer freedom at all, no more than a dictatorship born of revolution is still freedom."
"Are you sure of that?" He asked.

(Woods translation)

Impeach!

Ok--I'm mad as hell and ain't gonna take it any more. Anyone with an objective mind can see that the crap we've been fed for over 5 years has been nothing but grade B Bullshit, and, though I know quite a few people that were very much for a Clinton impeachment for keeping a blowjob hush-hush, I've noticed far less vehement a response in the face of the staggering crap going on in Washington. Folks, I'm thinkin it's past time for impeachment. Cheney, Bush, and that weasel Gonzalez ("Would you permit the U. S. Attorney to carry out the law, or would you block the execution of the law?" "Mr. Chairman, your question relates to an ongoing controversy which I am recused from. I'm not gonna answer that question." Oh, and don't forget, he's also the one that says that American citizens have no Constitutional right regarding Habeas Corpus--who needs something like that?)

Shall we look back on the last 6 years? The call for Visqueen and Ramen Noodles and duct tape (a corresponding sale of which was obligingly given by community Kroger stores immediately after Cheney's announcement), the well-timed terrorist threats over the past years whenever enthusiasm flagged, the fact that, assurances to the contrary that we can trust the government, we still had wholesale warrantless wiretapping of the general American populace. You don't have to worry, of course, if you've got nothing to hide.
Gay folks can't marry (sanctity of marriage? I haven't seen an outpouring against atheists and agnostics and non-Christians getting married. Perhaps because they already have that right. We don't want to give out new rights if at all possible), and their parenting is certainly going to be substandard, but Cheney's grandchild is off-limits for such conversations, evidently because the child is related to the Vice President.

People can't board a plane with bottled water or Power-Ade or nail clippers, but people can cross unobserved (or observed but without follow-up) the borders of New Mexico, Arizona, Montana, and North Dakota. In spite of this, the rules and requirements for non-Americans to legally get into the country are absurd enough to give one insight as to why people don't bother with it.

And now, terrorists are putting large blocks of cheese in their luggage. Cheese, people. Cheddar, and not good cheddar at that. Be afraid. If my legislators cave in in upcoming votes, there's gonna be hell to pay. If there's one thing that this past term has done, it's made me an active member of this electoral process, and politics is gonna be a part of this blog. I don't particularly want it to be, but the conditions require it. Grr.

Difficult Listening Hour, Part Three

I got a packet of CDs from Musicweb International for review not terribly long ago, but haven't really been in the state of mind to give proper attention to them, though I found them all intriguing. It was this morning, though, that put me into gear, when my editor sent me an email asking for a review on a CD that I'd been holding on to since, oh, um, April. I sat down and looked at the notes I'd written during a casual listen. I put the disc on and listened more. And in true Davo style, once I got going on the first review, another wasn't too hard to start right in on. Currently on the playlist is a trio of feature discs from Musiques Suisses, each focusing on either a specific composer, a performer, or an ensemble. The first in the set is a disc of the compositions of Mela Meierhans, a Swiss composer born in 1961, the second is a program of works performed by a violinist I'd never heard of until this point, a certain Hansheinz Schneeberger. Upon further research, this man performed the world premiere of Bartok's first Violin Concerto and all but two of the works on this disc are dedicated to him by the composers. The oldest composition on this disc was finished in 1960, and three others were finished in 2000 or more recently than that. The parakeet likes this disc not at all. Not at all. It's been harder than I thought to write impressions on the works and performances of these pieces while my parakeet in the next room is in a non-stop AACK-fit, as if to say "makeitstopmakeitstopmakeitstop." Parakeets, therefore, should not be consulted when looking for a good contemporary disc of recordings for solo violin. The third disc focuses on the performances of a group called aequatour (with the first two letters merged). I do like that their name is a two-way pun, from "Equator" to a sort of multilingual English/French phrase meaning "a quartet." They make a point of playing works that are brand-spankin'-new, and I've not heard of any of the composers on that disc. To up the ante, all the works here are for soprano and quartet. I've listened to parts of this disc in the car, and let me tell you, Moonbat the parakeet will not be at all amused.

But my big discovery has been the re-release of BANG! by the Hafler Trio, which is an amazingly strange collection of sound collages that have not the slightest resemblance to a pop song or music in general. The tracks are heavily weighted toward found recordings such as news broadcasts and machine noise that have been treated and looped to fit the demands of the group in these often rather short pieces. The closest analogue would be the wonderful tracks that Talking Heads singer David Byrne and all-round genius Brian Eno came up with for the amazing 1980 album My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, which is a disc that should certainly be in any collection. The Hafler Trio are less concerned about making their pieces fit into a pop music mold, resulting in some often rather disorienting tracks filled with voices. For example, one track is made up of a multitracked newscaster, giving political news, a phrase gradually makes itself known over the stretch of the piece that says "All Largely Propaganda." It's a disc well worth looking into.

--picture adapted from Brian Griffin's Video Only When I Lose Myself

Local Bookcrawl--the Damage Done

Well, the Half Price Bookstores in the area did not disappoint this weekend. Yesterday I managed to pick up a brandy-new hardcover volume of the Samuel Beckett set. Today I found two volumes from the Library of America for $5 or so, as well as David Eggers' new novel for $3.50. In addition, I found the newest novel by Maxine Hong Kingston for a buck and a couple of other things. And on the way I hit a garage sale and got a garden rake and a mortarboard (and the non-dayplanner version of such, for you Purdue peoples) for a total of $1.50. It's been a fairly good day.

It appears that the parakeet enjoys being read to aloud; will sing right alongside whatever it is you are reciting. It has to be from the page, however--reciting from memory or simply talking to him gets a rather stiff response. Experimental electronic music and Big Band stuff are genres that the bird does not at all enjoy--something about the machine noise or the compressed sound of the brass always results in an extended series of AACKs from the persnickety bird. Classical and 80s New Wave seem to be the faves.

I'm going to get some reading done, dammit. I was happy to have a pen while I was slopping at one of the interchangeable Chinese buffets this afternoon--I actually got more writing ideas and notes put down. Let's see how that progresses.

--Photo adapted from L'Etoile de Mer by Man Ray

Hellfire and Allegory

For those who must buy for those who have everything, might I suggest...

Hieronymus Bosch action figures.

Don't even tell me you don't want one.

From Camus' Notebooks

Considering I can't seem to string words together on my own, I'll at least keep somewhat close to the idea of writing by typing the words of someone else.

"The happy thinker is the one who follows his inclination; the exiled thinker is the one who refuses to do so--out of truth--with regret but determination."

"One must bave the strength to choose what one prefers and to cling to it. Otherwise it is better to die."

"Milton's Satan is morally very superior to his God, as whoever perseveres despite adversity and torture is superior to whomever, in the cold assurance of an unquestioned triumph, takes the most horrible revenge on his enemies."

"'I withdrew from the world not because I had enemies, but because I had friends. Not because they did me an ill turn as customary, but because they thought me better than I am. It was a lie I could not endure.'"


--Picture adapted from Jonas Akerlund's video Good Boys Never Win

Further Chain Personal Disclosure moment--You are Not Alone

Ah, another trope, this time with some freedom along with its restrictions. First, the small type:

1) We have to post these rules before we give you the facts.
2) Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
3) People who are tagged need to write in their own blog about their eight things and include these rules in the post.
4) At the end of your post, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
5) Don't forget to leave them a comment telling them they're tagged, and to read your blog.

I tend to only deal with chain stuff if it 1) involves thought, and 2) tends to not talk about angels, paying it forward, and my mom dying if I don't respond. This did none of those things under section 2 mentioned, so here I am. I'm essentially taking the lead of someone before me, who chooses the items specifically toward what is desired to be made public, yet to keep them marginally interesting. These are in no way put together as a survey that encapsulates the blogger as a whole. These are random facts, folks.

Considering that the government, thanks to wiretapping and the PATRIOT act (how much that sounds to me like a person with delusions of persecution, yet how likely it actually is) already knows these things and would be willing to make them public were I to run for office, I throw these eight out to the World At Large:

1) I was filmed for Czech national television, in the Cathedral of St. Bartholemew in Plzen, at a performance of Mozart's Requiem, in memory of those who died in the 9/11 attacks.

2) The longest-held job I held before my last position as a corporate trainer was my 4+ years as a professional egg-gatherer at Stoppenhagen Eggs.

3)I've pretended to be a street musician to pay for lunch, singing on public streets in Moscow for money in my year after graduating from college

4) Was threatened with immediate arrest due to unlawful assembly at the base of the Statue of Liberty for singing the National Anthem.

5) As a child my most terrifying dream was a regularly recurring one: I float over a flat screen-like field that has ever-changing black-and-white geometric patterns that run across it, while I have the overwhelming sensation that I am being taken over by an evil force. I find out decades later that I was part of a study that gathered information toward my father's dissertation, which, in part, uses an experiment that explores extending very young children's attention spans (and therefore increasing their intelligence) by putting the subjects in a darkened room with nothing else visible other than black and white geometric patterns projected on a screen. I was around 2-3 at the time.

6) I sang, as a member of the oldest existing Glee Club in America, for the prime minister of Fiji, who was later held hostage by men wielding lawnmower blade machetes as weapons. He remained a hostage for over three weeks.

7) People I don't know have tried, in at least two ways, to set my apartment on fire while I was sleeping in it.

8) Has dreams in full color, which evidently is unusual among the general populace. These dreams have voice-overs and soundtrack music like fully-produced films.

My list of possible subjects for blogging candor is rather short, considering I'm at the end of the blogging foodchain. I shall forward the challenge to as many as possible. They, being the quality people they are, will have interesting responses, I;m sure.

--Photo adapted from Anton Corbijn's video Never Let Me Down Again

Just Gonna Read Today...

Folks, it's hot. Hot. I'm not working on windows today. Won't do it. Moonbat the parakeet (I know, I know, it was Bertie earlier, but names can't be chosen lightly. Typical writer; even my pets have working titles) is cranky. Flies listlessly from chair to window to chair. I'd read that parakeets like sharp, consonantal sounds, so I click my tongue in greeting whenever I approach him. He's taken to replicating the sound, which from him sounds like a sort of cough as reproduced on a gramophone. He scolds the owners of subwoofers as they thwomp by.

The heat finally claimed the Lusitania fan, a 50s turquoise beast so-named because it looked like the product of someone hacking off the back end of a boat and wiring it to move air. Two propellers. A grille like a Buick. One of the motors froze and baked. All other fans are now aimed in my direction.

One more hot day, according to the weather forecast, and then it should be cool enough to get some things done without panting. I feel like I've been coated with a layer of something half-oil, half-silicone. But hey, this all comes with an upside: I've only had to mow the lawn twice all summer. Which I certainly wouldn't do today even if the lawn needed it. I'm not planning on doing much motile activity today. From chair to couch to bed.

Cars of a Smart and Small Variety

Hey all--

Holly called on the 6th to inform me that there was going to be a SmartCar test drive opportunity at the IMA grounds on the 7th, so of course we simply had to go. No way around it. I've fallen in love with these things since a trip to France and have been hoping that they'd show up here in SUV land pronto. It now appears that they finally have. The cars will be available for next year! They're great on gas! They're easy to maneuver! You can park-em anywhere! They have more leg room than my Accord! You can change all the body panels for a SmartCar makeover! And darn it, they're cute as buttons, they are. It's like a driveable Rollerblade boot.

The line for test drives was two hours long. Much of it in the sun. The crew there had tents for us, and water too (Smart Water, so to speak, only minus the vitamins). Holly and I held up well. As we neared the front of the line, we got to inspect one of the display models. Over 40 mpg and a trunk big enough for your subwoofer so you can cronk out in the parking lot.

The meagerly airconditioned trailer had a rather disturbing video that looped constantly of a SmartCar in slo-mo collision with a full-size Mercedes. The idea I'm sure was to show that you wouldn't turn into tinned salmon if you got in a crash with big cars, but I wouldn't have minded a wee bit more of a focus on the thing driving through curvy roads in forests and mountains and driving under city lights in this or that exotic urban area. When the time came to actually test drive the things, it turns out that my license is expired. Bad bad bad. So, after all that time waiting in line, I could only test ride, rather than test drive. The ride is quite smooth, the seats comfy, and the top-of-the-line model has a cool roof that disappears, which was way nicer than my moonroof. I had no problem whatsoever in fitting comfortably. There is less headroom in my car. They aren't for everyone, but for city driving single folks like me, it'd be perfect. Every time I have to parallel park in Lafayette, I wish I had one. So who needs a hybrid car when you can have one-a-these?

From Notebooks

Dream:

I'm looking through a book of photographs--a monograph book, all of the same photographer. The pictures are of town scenes (East Europe?) near a slaughterhouse. One, a very arresting image where a woman stands in the middle foreground. In the background are people rolling barrels/drums from the slaughterhouse, the speed of their roll and the force of their impact on the pavement is shown by the sheets of bloodred that fly off the rim of the barrels, caught in the evening light.

This appears to be the motif of the series, as these red midair splashes appear in almost every photograph. Outside the slaughterhouse, blood evidently stood in the potholes: another photograph of a 60s car approaching the camera. From each front fender is a splash that extends; two red blood batwings through which the sunlight comes. Another shot is taken of the driver from the passenger seat. A young woman is at the wheel. Past her shoulder and appearing over the sill of the door, one of those bloodred wings. The whole series a set of casual scenes with these ominous shapes spreading themselves out somewhere in the frame in that captured instant.
---
In looking around the internet and in various reading, I came across the work of Felix Gonzales-Torres, a New York artist whose installation pieces didn't impress me much, focusing mostly on draped light strings, such as could be found in just about any college off-campus house, and candy spills. I read about some of his later pieces put together when he was sick, composed of piles of light blue candy that the exhibition-goers were invited to eat. "The artist told X that weights and numbers in his pieces was arbitrary, but he also told friends that the weight of the candy pile was the combined weight of his and Ross's bodies, slowly disappearing, being consumed. ...Also, X repeatedly questions [Felix] about the shade of blue that appears in so many of his pieces, the artist evades the question even though he had told close friends that the blue was the blue of Ross's hospital gown."

Top photo can be found at http://renaissancesociety.org

"We Always Float to the Top"

Found this in Dostoevsky's The Insulted and Injured, in Constance Garnett's translation. Dostoevsky always did an amazing job putting himself in the position of those characters he used to argue against the position he himself chose, often to the detriment of his own position. Here we have Prince Valkovsky, a man of means and position, telling us like it is. It certainly isn't far from the gist of what appeared on CNN today:

"'I tell you what, my poet, I want to reveal to you a mystery of nature of which it seems to me you are not in the least aware. I'm certain that you're calling me at the moment a sinner, perhaps even a scoundrel, a monster of vice and corruption. But I can tell you this. If it were only possible (which, however, from the laws of human nature never can be possible), if it were possible for every one of us to describe all his secret thoughts, without hesitating to disclose what he is afraid to tell and would not on any account tell other people, what he is afraid to tell his best friends, what indeed, he is even at times afraid to confess to himself, the would would be filled with such a stench that we should all be suffocated. That's why, I may observe in parenthesis, our social proprieties and conventions are so good. They have profound value, I won't say for morality, but simply for self-preservation, for comfort, which, of course, is even more, since morality is really that same comfort. [...]
'...you charge me with vice, corruption, immorality, but perhaps I'm only to blame for being more open than other people, that's all; for not concealing what other people hide even from themselves, as I said before.
'[...] All is for me, the whole world is created for me. Listen, my friend, I still believe that it's possible to live happily on earth. And that's the best faith, for without it one can't even live unhappily: there's nothing left but to poison oneself. They say this was what some fool did. He philosophised til he destroyed everything, everything, even the obligation of all normal and natural human duties, til at last he had nothing left. The sum total came to nil, and so he declared that the best thing in life was prussic acid. You say that's Hamlet. That's terrible despair, in fact, something so grand we could never dream of it. But you're a poet, and I'm a simple mortal, and so I say that one must look at the thing from the simplest, most practical point of view. I for instance, have freed myself from all shackles, and even obligations. I only recognise obligations when I see I have something to gain by them. You, of course, can't look at things like that, your legs are in fetters, and your taste is morbid. You talk of the ideal, of virtue. Well, my dear fellow, I am ready to admit anything you tell me to, but what am I to do if I know for a fact that at the root of all human virtues lies the completest egoism? And the more virtuous anything is, the more egoism there is in it. Love yourself, that's the one rule I recognise. Life is a commercial transaction; don't waste your money, but kindly pay for your entertainment, and you will be doing your whole duty to your neighbor. [...] I'm looking at your face; with what comtempt you are looking at me now!'
'you are right,' I answered.
'Well, supposing you are right, anyway, filth is better than Prussic acid, isn't it?'
'No. Prussic acid is better.'
'I asked you 'Isn't it' on purpose to enjoy your answer; I knew what you'd say. No, my young friend. If you're a genuine lover of humanity, wish all men the same taste as mine, even with a little filth, or sensible men will have nothing to do in the world and there'll be none but fools left. ...and there are legions like me, and we really are all right...we shall exist as long as the world exists. All the world may sink, but we shall float, we shall always float to the top.'"

Sicko--Brief Observations

I went to see the movie today on a whim--got in the car about 3 minutes after deciding to go and walked into a showing just at the end of the previews--and a couple of things crossed my mind on watching the movie. The first thing is possibly going to surprise some of those familiar with the story surrounding my appendectomy, but I'm glad in a way that I had it in Russia. The severity of my case meant about 5 days in the Reanimation (their version of Intensive Care) ward and another 4 in a private room as I got over peritonitis. total cost for the procedure, the drugs, the awful food, and the private room added up to around $4500. I certainly wouldn't repeat the experience--I have but one appendix to give to the Russian Cause--but I certainly can't imagine how much an equivalent stay in an American hospital would cost. It certainly would have cost substantially more than $4500.

The second thing that made my mind go off on a parallel track for a minute or two occurred when the movie moved to HMOs looking to reduce costs. The easiest way they do this is to deny claims. Personal Disclosure Moment: Due to a facial injury I sustained years before in a motorcycle accident, a bunch of capillaries merged on my lip into something that looked like a blood blister. One winter evening, my chapped lips split, right over that damned thing. I bled like a piece of thawing liver for about two hours before I finally broke down and decided to go to an emergency room. Before I did so, I made sure to call the HMO to get "clearance." The gal, when she heard how long I'd been bleeding, told me to get the heck off the phone and go right away. The phone looked like a murder weapon, and the bathroom wasn't pretty at all by this point. So I went. The thing had to be cauterized to be got rid of. Twice, once by a specialist. My claim was denied. The reasons were idiotic even to my non-health-care-expert eyes. I had to write a long letter and my regular doctor did too before the HMO decided to--grudgingly--pay what they should've paid. They bank on the chances that you'll give up and just pay it yourself. It's their way of maximizing profit while you pay them to do nothing for you.

But the thing that struck me most was the number of handicapped spots in the theater that were occupied, the wheelchairs, elderly folks, and people with crutches that were in that screening room this afternoon. That spoke volumes. People may have their issues with parts of Moore's argument, but seeing the number of disenfranchised and directly-affected folks that are turning out to see the movie, there is little doubt that the system is not helping those it should be. Recommended viewing.

--Photo adapted from Anton Corbijn's video Never Let Me Down Again

And off into the Labyrinth

There are Detail people, and Big Picture people. I am, certainly a Big Picture person. I really go for finding connections between things rather than some sort of elucidation on one particular work. It's the connection that is somehow elucidating.
For example, the fact that, at the time I was most miserable at work, finding myself completely divorced from a part of myself that I was beginning to think was going to be difficult to ever regain again, I found the books I was reading, with no premeditation, all had something to do with doubleness. After learning how to read books so late in life, I was suddenly reading something beyond what the books themselves were saying. I filled pages with notes. Tonio Kroeger, Dmitri Merezhkovsky's DaVinci, Prince Myshkin in The Idiot, Dostoevsky's The Double, and Mann, whose work has so much that has that quality: "It is just that which I mistrust from my soul, this dual world; I do not understand the necessity for a breed whose purity can be spoken of only comparatively and in retrospect." Each book I picked up after I finished had something else to add--all tiles that became a mosaic.

Well, as of yesterday, it's down the rabbit hole all over again, and I find few things more exciting. I didn't want to work on windows in this heat, so, while surfing blogs, I found a link to selected scenes from The Shining on YouTube, with the mazelike hallways of the Overlook Hotel mirroring the mazelike 70s pattern of its hallway carpets, which forms a chord with the great maze chase in the snow, which reminded me of the great maze of Danielewski's House of Leaves. Here, mentally, the drops of water falling in the same spot on the floor did more than become a growing bead and started running somewhere. Nicholson the Minotaur. The influence of a dream world. That plus Kubrick led to surfing what available files there were on Eyes Wide Shut (which, incidentally, is the only movie with Tom Cruise I've ever seen), which led to thoughts on dreaming and descent into evil, which brought up the book on which Eyes Wide Shut was based (Traumnovelle by Arthur Schnitzler), which brought up another book I'd read some nine years ago, La Bas by J. K. Huysmans, which has in it a similar secret group with dark motives, and then the water beads rolled off a variety of ways, to Demons of Dostoevsky, Demons of Heimito vonDoderer, all books I've not read for years. One of the bad Anatole France novellas I read two weeks ago, The Seven Wives of Bluebeard, links in with La Bas, which I am rereading, and now suddenly I have 2,000 pages of rereading to do.

Windows? What windows?

Sans Sunscreen

I decided to get some RnR today, so instead of working on the windows, or the flowerbed, or the tuckpointing, I took advantage of the rather cooler weather and the still mostly cloudy skies to go to a nearby public pool to read, peoplewatch, and write down observations. I hadn't thought I'd stayed there very long. I read a couple of poems from a lit journal, wrote down some observations, jumped in the water once, actually climbed to experience the slowest, most boring water slide ever constructed, and then I walked home.
I am an incendiary device. I am a fritter. A chitterling. A glowing coal of dermal catastrophe. Having been out often this summer, I thought I was generally out of the woods regarding spontaneous combustion, but I was woefully mistaken. My sides where my arms were are still white, which, when I twist to look at myself in the mirror, makes me look like an enormous slice of nicely marbled bacon. I'll bet sleeping will be a breeze tonight. Last time this happened, I had to sleep with a wet tea towel plastered to my stomach and a fan blowing on it. Ah, bliss. In three days I'll be peeling like a gecko.