Saturday, January 22, 2005
We could be heroes
Had kind of a wringer of a four days. Went out two nights running (birthdays both), getting home at 4am each night. Thursday and Friday mornings were difficult. Thursday especially. Slept three hours, woke up for 9am tutorial because I'd promised teacher I'd show, with the material read (I had read it, in fact: sat in the library, rapt, for two hours, inhaling resplendent chivalry in Le Morte d'Arthur, which is basically a medieval comic book), made it in on time and everything--and she didn't show up. That was bad.
Thursday night was Stephen's birthday. Brought tons of ginger beer and half a dozen limes, turned it into a Moscow Mule party. Sadie had purchased potato pellet guns producing pandemonium.
Friday was work, and Saturday was madness. Slammed, hard. Capacity crowd hopefully sign of upswing in custom. Used every glass and ran out of half the beer. Still not working enough hours, though. 13 last week, 14 this week. It's a problem. Same thing next week. Considering moonlighting. But at the same time I've been going to college occasionally, and when I'm not in class, it's sort of pleasant. Morte d'Arthur day was wonderful. Found a modern-English translation, meant only to read the minimum, Knight of the Cart. Soon found I couldn't stop. Sucked in nearly the whole book, 300 pages, in a sitting. Connecticut Yankees eat your livers; them there's some fun reading. They gallop at each other, lances leveled, unseat one, the other, or both, get to their feet, unsheathe and start hacking at each other with their swords. Lancelot and Gawain in the climax go at it for hours. Gawain's strength rises with the sun, as it progresses towards noon. Lancelot, amazed, defends himself desperately until the sun is past its zenith. As it starts down Gawain flags. Lancelot sees his opening and swats him on the side of the head, knocking him down. Gawain, broken, entreats Lancelot to kill him. But Lancelot will not. Gawain warns him he will devote his life to righting the wrong done him when Lancelot accidentally killed his brothers. And he does. In another story Lancelot clambers up to Guinevere's window and wrenches away the iron bars, slashing his palms to the bone. Undeterred by the gush of blood, he and Guinevere lie down and love till morning (she gets lanced a lot), when softly forth he steals from her chamber, replacing the bars in the process. But he forgets to change the sheets (let that be a lesson to you all), and in the morning, the bloodsoaked bedlinen is discovered, leading to a whole lot more bloodletting.
In Superman, Lois Lane asks Jimmy, "how many T's in Bloodletting?" (once, I'd have objected to a poor speller becoming a celebrated writer. Now I know better). Sadie and I rented it last night because we're superhero addicts--also in the bargain came Mystery Men and Ghostbusters. We feed ourselves a steady diet of X-Men and Spiderman. I saw Elektra the other night (atrocious almost beyond belief, but still). The Hulk was brilliant. We're on this huge Carnivale kick in part because it's about people with superpowers. At Elektra saw the preview for Batman Begins, with Christian Bale. Awesome. Also for House of Flying Daggers, which just stole breath entirely. I see movies to see beautiful people doing beautiful things (this is my unabashed excuse for King Arthur and Elektra). Escapism, pure possibility. Mystery Men was funny. Janeane Garofalo was actually hysterical. William H. Macy is the definition of quiet dignity, no matter what he does. Tonight Ghostbusters.
But Superman is different. First because he's the proto-hero, the whole Subermensch thing he's got going. Then because his powers are well defined. The problem with superheroes, often, from Jean Grey to Gandalf to Neo, is we don't know the extent of their powers (with those three, it's to do with flight? Jean Grey can lift a goddamn jet; why not herself? If Gandalf can propel Saruman around the room with that staff, why can't he do it to himself? Why doesn't Neo just jet off when the bazillion Agent Smiths show up--well, that I can understand. He's merely enjoying himself a bit). With Superman, he can see through anything but lead. Heat vision, too. Tough as an Abrams tank. Stronger than a locomotive. Faster than a speeding bullet (speeds in excess of 380 m/s). Flight. Looks great in red briefs and blue tights. Kryptonite's all that can kill him (I assume that's how Doomsday did it?). Period, the end. No ambiguity. Anywhere. Good is good, bad is bad. Superman is pure good, Lex is pure diabolism. But I appreciate that Smallville, with the berserk red Kryptonite Clark, is fuzzing this dichotomy. Modern villains need objective correlatives. Plus the funds have to come from somewhere. Today, you can't have a cavernous high-tech hyperdesigned evil lair, or an army of henchmen, without a plausible reason why or how these things were put together (Stryker in X-Men, with his government backing and personal vendetta, is a perfect example of the new supervillain). The Lex Luthor who was evil for evil's sake is gone; in his place we have a Lex at war with his father, as well as a sometime friend to Clark. Supervillains today need to to be method actors. I applaud this. I want my superhero epics to shoulder as much verisimilitude as their superstrengths can bear. I want them real as real can be. Because I need to believe. Christopher Reeve is dead. How is Superman dead? How was he quadruplegic? What kind of twisted fuck, with what kind of crude-ass sophomoric sense of irony, lets that happen? Milton went blind and Superman fell off a horse. These things are too fucked-up for words.
Just bought a ticket to Cake, who are coming to town on the 31st. Let's hope they play a goddamn encore. Or they can go where goats do roam.
This morning woke up at 10:30, showered (the usual dyspepsia of the hot water heater makes it an interminable process), trotted over to the butcher's to pick up a half-kilo of pork stewing meat, trotted home, threw it, corn, green beans, sweet potatoes, diced tomatoes, onions, splash of water, cilantro, chili powder and Tony Chachere's cajun seasoning (the sine qua non of gastonomy in this apartment) into the slow cooker, turned it on, Panama Pork Stew, here we go, finished off The Scarlet Letter and sprinted over to college for a class on it. A disappointing class, incidentally. For the first time everyone had read the book, and the discussion wasn't much better than they've been in the past. Scattershot approach, popping from topic to topic like grasshoppers. Depthless discussion.
Dropped off a disposable camera at Spectra, which I'd meant to do back around Thanksgiving. Getting things done is the idea. Now I'm home and gearing up to hurl myself into a project I once thought I'd finished: college applications. Fuck.
Thursday night was Stephen's birthday. Brought tons of ginger beer and half a dozen limes, turned it into a Moscow Mule party. Sadie had purchased potato pellet guns producing pandemonium.
Friday was work, and Saturday was madness. Slammed, hard. Capacity crowd hopefully sign of upswing in custom. Used every glass and ran out of half the beer. Still not working enough hours, though. 13 last week, 14 this week. It's a problem. Same thing next week. Considering moonlighting. But at the same time I've been going to college occasionally, and when I'm not in class, it's sort of pleasant. Morte d'Arthur day was wonderful. Found a modern-English translation, meant only to read the minimum, Knight of the Cart. Soon found I couldn't stop. Sucked in nearly the whole book, 300 pages, in a sitting. Connecticut Yankees eat your livers; them there's some fun reading. They gallop at each other, lances leveled, unseat one, the other, or both, get to their feet, unsheathe and start hacking at each other with their swords. Lancelot and Gawain in the climax go at it for hours. Gawain's strength rises with the sun, as it progresses towards noon. Lancelot, amazed, defends himself desperately until the sun is past its zenith. As it starts down Gawain flags. Lancelot sees his opening and swats him on the side of the head, knocking him down. Gawain, broken, entreats Lancelot to kill him. But Lancelot will not. Gawain warns him he will devote his life to righting the wrong done him when Lancelot accidentally killed his brothers. And he does. In another story Lancelot clambers up to Guinevere's window and wrenches away the iron bars, slashing his palms to the bone. Undeterred by the gush of blood, he and Guinevere lie down and love till morning (she gets lanced a lot), when softly forth he steals from her chamber, replacing the bars in the process. But he forgets to change the sheets (let that be a lesson to you all), and in the morning, the bloodsoaked bedlinen is discovered, leading to a whole lot more bloodletting.
In Superman, Lois Lane asks Jimmy, "how many T's in Bloodletting?" (once, I'd have objected to a poor speller becoming a celebrated writer. Now I know better). Sadie and I rented it last night because we're superhero addicts--also in the bargain came Mystery Men and Ghostbusters. We feed ourselves a steady diet of X-Men and Spiderman. I saw Elektra the other night (atrocious almost beyond belief, but still). The Hulk was brilliant. We're on this huge Carnivale kick in part because it's about people with superpowers. At Elektra saw the preview for Batman Begins, with Christian Bale. Awesome. Also for House of Flying Daggers, which just stole breath entirely. I see movies to see beautiful people doing beautiful things (this is my unabashed excuse for King Arthur and Elektra). Escapism, pure possibility. Mystery Men was funny. Janeane Garofalo was actually hysterical. William H. Macy is the definition of quiet dignity, no matter what he does. Tonight Ghostbusters.
But Superman is different. First because he's the proto-hero, the whole Subermensch thing he's got going. Then because his powers are well defined. The problem with superheroes, often, from Jean Grey to Gandalf to Neo, is we don't know the extent of their powers (with those three, it's to do with flight? Jean Grey can lift a goddamn jet; why not herself? If Gandalf can propel Saruman around the room with that staff, why can't he do it to himself? Why doesn't Neo just jet off when the bazillion Agent Smiths show up--well, that I can understand. He's merely enjoying himself a bit). With Superman, he can see through anything but lead. Heat vision, too. Tough as an Abrams tank. Stronger than a locomotive. Faster than a speeding bullet (speeds in excess of 380 m/s). Flight. Looks great in red briefs and blue tights. Kryptonite's all that can kill him (I assume that's how Doomsday did it?). Period, the end. No ambiguity. Anywhere. Good is good, bad is bad. Superman is pure good, Lex is pure diabolism. But I appreciate that Smallville, with the berserk red Kryptonite Clark, is fuzzing this dichotomy. Modern villains need objective correlatives. Plus the funds have to come from somewhere. Today, you can't have a cavernous high-tech hyperdesigned evil lair, or an army of henchmen, without a plausible reason why or how these things were put together (Stryker in X-Men, with his government backing and personal vendetta, is a perfect example of the new supervillain). The Lex Luthor who was evil for evil's sake is gone; in his place we have a Lex at war with his father, as well as a sometime friend to Clark. Supervillains today need to to be method actors. I applaud this. I want my superhero epics to shoulder as much verisimilitude as their superstrengths can bear. I want them real as real can be. Because I need to believe. Christopher Reeve is dead. How is Superman dead? How was he quadruplegic? What kind of twisted fuck, with what kind of crude-ass sophomoric sense of irony, lets that happen? Milton went blind and Superman fell off a horse. These things are too fucked-up for words.
Just bought a ticket to Cake, who are coming to town on the 31st. Let's hope they play a goddamn encore. Or they can go where goats do roam.
This morning woke up at 10:30, showered (the usual dyspepsia of the hot water heater makes it an interminable process), trotted over to the butcher's to pick up a half-kilo of pork stewing meat, trotted home, threw it, corn, green beans, sweet potatoes, diced tomatoes, onions, splash of water, cilantro, chili powder and Tony Chachere's cajun seasoning (the sine qua non of gastonomy in this apartment) into the slow cooker, turned it on, Panama Pork Stew, here we go, finished off The Scarlet Letter and sprinted over to college for a class on it. A disappointing class, incidentally. For the first time everyone had read the book, and the discussion wasn't much better than they've been in the past. Scattershot approach, popping from topic to topic like grasshoppers. Depthless discussion.
Dropped off a disposable camera at Spectra, which I'd meant to do back around Thanksgiving. Getting things done is the idea. Now I'm home and gearing up to hurl myself into a project I once thought I'd finished: college applications. Fuck.
Tuesday, January 18, 2005
Horizontality, serendipity, caprice and digression
Slept about 15 hours the other night. Crashed on the couch at 6, dragged somnolently over to bed at 8, woke up at 9:30am wonderfully refreshed. Made french toast, read recently purchased (€3.99) Best American Nonrequired Reading, ed. Dave Eggers, and, having effictively woken to sleep, promptly at 11am went horizontal again, falling asleep on the couch reading Eric Schlosser on McDonald's fries and the flavoring industry. Dreams of beef tallow candles and giant noses dancing through my head. Love falling asleep.
One kind of horizontality leads to another.
Left the house woefully underdressed. It's freezing rain in fine drops, slashing across Jervis st. Wind's in a lather. The swat of stinging rain singes exposed skin. Walking across the Millennium bridge it blows in horizontal, a million tiny pinging pins burning my right cheek; my left is left dry. Feels like the end of Crouching Tiger, when Jade Fox bursts through the window, blowing a hurricane of tiny poison darts at Li Mu Bai. West wind's stiff as a starched shirt. Squinch my face against the blast of rain, can't see a thing in the torrent. Cross the bridge to the shelter of Fitzsimon's and the rain slackens, reach up and touch my cheek. It's numb. I am phenomenally wet. I am also quite awake.
By the time I have reached college the rain has stopped and the sun is shining. As a matter of course.
I've gone in for a dreary Fables tutorial on an impossibly dreary matter: as last week's lecturer put it in a lecture of which I heard not one word (he'd written this one on the board), as I had better things to do, we were discussing "James Hogg and the Caledonian Antisyzygy."
James Hogg and the Caledonian Antisyzygy. James Hogg and the Caledonian Antisyzygy. James Hogg and the Caledonian Antisyzygy.
It sounds like something Zippy the Pinhead would say. Say it as many times as you want, you still don't really hear it. It just produces this What? They never cease to amaze me. Every time I think they can't possibly think of anything more fabulously irrelevant, they prove me wrong. There was also absolutely no reason to use the word antisyzygy, (the plunge into prolixity for the sake of obfuscation being something I like to think I got out of my system by the end of high school), when the words dichotomy or binary would have served equally well, and furthermore would have conjured in students' minds a microcosmos of attendant theoretical articles. Though I'd heard the word before, I didn't have a clue what "syzygy" meant, and neither, I think I can safely assume, did anyone else in that cramped, windowless, yellow deathchamber of a room (but then, that could be any room in the farts block). Turns out it's an astronomical/prosodic term, meaning:
1) Either of two points in the orbit of a celestial body where the body is in opposition to or in conjunction with the sun.
2) Either of two points in the orbit of the moon when the moon lies in a straight line with the sun and Earth.
3) The configuration of the sun, the moon, and Earth lying in a straight line.
4) The combining of two feet into a single metrical unit in classical prosody.
This last being a bizarre and rare practice no longer, well, practiced, so far as I can tell, I don't feel guilty for not knowing it. It comes from the Greek "zugos" meaning Yoke or Union (think Zeugma), so the ridiculous roundabout construction, "antisyzygy," implying division, could and should have been replaced, as said before, with Binary or Dichotomy.
Then there's "Caledonian." At least I knew what that meant. Caledonian is just Smartass for Scottish the same way Hibernian is Smartass for Irish. In the Heart of the Hibernian Metropolis, who cares?
Then James Hogg. Who? Turns out he wrote a fucked-up book no one read till 40 years ago called "The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner." As I was writing the conclusion to the essay I had due the next day, I heard little the lecturer said, and given his Scottish accent, understood less, but from what I couldn't help but hear, he assumed everyone in the room to have a fully functioning knowledge of the whole of Scottish literature, to say nothing of an intimate acquaintance with the various stripes of Protestantism. I say entirely without shame that I have not the faintest idea what Presbyterianism actually is. Nor what makes a Methodist. I know my Lutherans, thanks to Garrison Keillor, but all I really can say about them is that they're not much for marathon dance parties. But they didn't even have those in Scotland. Just Presbyterians, or "Whigs," who I thought were an antebellum political party. Now I'm all confused. What the Hell is "Whig" in the first place? Yer all de goyim to me.
No, really, I mean it. Honestly, one of the most liberating things I've ever said to a teacher (and I include in this statement, "Would you like to step outside?") was when I wrote to my Renaissance Poetry tutor that I didn't have any intention of writing about John Donne's Protestantism because not only did I know next to nothing about it, but frankly, this New York Jew just didn't care.
One of the tiring things about this place (so many straws have fallen to break the camel's back that his vertebrae are in splinters, an orthopede's nightmare) is the emphasis, understandable though it is, on Christianity. It's not evangelical, of course, just obsessive. The Protestants, the Catholics, the Lollards, the Calvinists, the Humanists, the Pickles, the Abysmals, it goes on ad nauseam, it really does. Granted, religious history more or less IS Anglo-Irish history, but come on. A little perspective, please. The Donne question was what really did me in on this. I just don't give a damn. Thank God for America & the US--they had just better be careful not to do it from some Britisher's postcolonialist point of view, which is where the first lecture seemed to be tending. It worries me that no Americans are tutoring or lecturing in that course. I didn't realize when I elected to come here (one of oh so many things) that of course the focus would be on Anglo-Saxondom, and that that literature would soon seem to me oppressive and irrelevant. I've reached a point where I like to bring it home. What stylistic techniques and considerations can I crib from this text? At least now I have Postcolonialism, which is a decent class, all about displacement, decentering and otherness. I'm just so sick of der goyim. Aliyah ha ha. In New York, that is.
And you can stop laughing. I did get it out of my system. At the very least I don't take myself as seriously.
<<>><<>><<>><<>><<>>
But serendipity. Every so often the load seems lighter. I went into the library yesterday to return Susan Sontag Against Interpretation, which I'd had for almost two months, renewed weekly, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and Beckett's Shorter Plays. I saw off to the right something I hadn't noticed before. The old card catalogue. It wasn't in drawers, it was in these huge brown bound volumes. Dozens of volumes. Ancient yellowed paper and rude yarn binding. I went over and reached randomly for volume 11 and laid it open (THUD) on the stand. It was full of spaces for typed bibliographical information to be pasted in. Most of the spaces were blank, leaving room for more. Traced my fingers over Asimov, Isaac on page 22. Drifted to the left, fingers on the parchment, and there he was:
Ashworth, William. Economic History of England.
I thought for a moment it was my great-grandfather, Willum, a professor at Berkeley. But he was a professor of English, not Economics. There are enough Ashworths out there that three might be named William. I turned to the preceding page and there I was. In print! Ashworth, Samuel. Commercial Mathematics. I always knew I had it in me. There were a few more Ashworths. One had written a book about being an Englishman living in Ireland and I think I must go pick that one up.
It was just so accidental. It hadn't occurred to me that Ashworth might be under the volume beginning with Ashtakavara. It put me in a terrific mood. I left the Berkeley library and walked into the Old library. Showed my card to the cashier and breezed through the book of Kells exhibit. Walked up the curved cement staircase to the Long Room, that beloved, heartstopping wonder. This deathless, timeless hall of dark stately mahogany and marble busts. It never fails to stop my breathing for a moment. I shall miss this place when I leave, possibly more than anything else.
Buoyant, I trundled over to the Douglas Hyde gallery, the little space below the arts block where they have rotating exhibitions. Took in some colorful vague stimulation from this wild construction-paper fiesta one guy had assembled on three wide walls. I like to walk through museums and galleries, not because I derive anything from the art (I rarely do), but because it gives me a sense of ephemerality, and the unperturbability that comes with it. I feel like smoke amid art, because I don't speak to it any more than it speaks to me. We don't interfere with each other. It's soothing, quieting. Pacifying. I've got nothing to do, no place to go. I'm dappled and drowsy and ready to sleep. I sleepwalk smiling faintly though museums.
<<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>>
But of course one can only stay ephemeral for so long. One has to make dinner and wash dishes. We watched more of Sadie's DVD's of the HBO show Carnivale last night. All the way through episode four. It's pretty hardcore bizarre, especially the first few, but it's got Clea Duvall in it, and it's really fine filmmaking.
It's about 9'oclock. We're watching, and I look out the window and see the sky is queerly purple and alive for this time of night. I remark on this and we both look outside. And we start to laugh: it's snowing. Big flakes, falling with all the vengeance of this morning's rain. We've almost never seen snow here before. Snow means we're not in Ireland. We're laughing happily, but there's grimness, because we know it can't last. Sadie says, Snow's a sign it's warming up. It'll be rain soon. I know she's right. We stick our hands out the window a moment, catching floating flakes, lingering a while in the wonder, feeling like we're home for a moment. Then we return to Carnivale and within moments it's turned to rain, and any trace of snow is washed away.
One kind of horizontality leads to another.
Left the house woefully underdressed. It's freezing rain in fine drops, slashing across Jervis st. Wind's in a lather. The swat of stinging rain singes exposed skin. Walking across the Millennium bridge it blows in horizontal, a million tiny pinging pins burning my right cheek; my left is left dry. Feels like the end of Crouching Tiger, when Jade Fox bursts through the window, blowing a hurricane of tiny poison darts at Li Mu Bai. West wind's stiff as a starched shirt. Squinch my face against the blast of rain, can't see a thing in the torrent. Cross the bridge to the shelter of Fitzsimon's and the rain slackens, reach up and touch my cheek. It's numb. I am phenomenally wet. I am also quite awake.
By the time I have reached college the rain has stopped and the sun is shining. As a matter of course.
I've gone in for a dreary Fables tutorial on an impossibly dreary matter: as last week's lecturer put it in a lecture of which I heard not one word (he'd written this one on the board), as I had better things to do, we were discussing "James Hogg and the Caledonian Antisyzygy."
James Hogg and the Caledonian Antisyzygy. James Hogg and the Caledonian Antisyzygy. James Hogg and the Caledonian Antisyzygy.
It sounds like something Zippy the Pinhead would say. Say it as many times as you want, you still don't really hear it. It just produces this What? They never cease to amaze me. Every time I think they can't possibly think of anything more fabulously irrelevant, they prove me wrong. There was also absolutely no reason to use the word antisyzygy, (the plunge into prolixity for the sake of obfuscation being something I like to think I got out of my system by the end of high school), when the words dichotomy or binary would have served equally well, and furthermore would have conjured in students' minds a microcosmos of attendant theoretical articles. Though I'd heard the word before, I didn't have a clue what "syzygy" meant, and neither, I think I can safely assume, did anyone else in that cramped, windowless, yellow deathchamber of a room (but then, that could be any room in the farts block). Turns out it's an astronomical/prosodic term, meaning:
1) Either of two points in the orbit of a celestial body where the body is in opposition to or in conjunction with the sun.
2) Either of two points in the orbit of the moon when the moon lies in a straight line with the sun and Earth.
3) The configuration of the sun, the moon, and Earth lying in a straight line.
4) The combining of two feet into a single metrical unit in classical prosody.
This last being a bizarre and rare practice no longer, well, practiced, so far as I can tell, I don't feel guilty for not knowing it. It comes from the Greek "zugos" meaning Yoke or Union (think Zeugma), so the ridiculous roundabout construction, "antisyzygy," implying division, could and should have been replaced, as said before, with Binary or Dichotomy.
Then there's "Caledonian." At least I knew what that meant. Caledonian is just Smartass for Scottish the same way Hibernian is Smartass for Irish. In the Heart of the Hibernian Metropolis, who cares?
Then James Hogg. Who? Turns out he wrote a fucked-up book no one read till 40 years ago called "The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner." As I was writing the conclusion to the essay I had due the next day, I heard little the lecturer said, and given his Scottish accent, understood less, but from what I couldn't help but hear, he assumed everyone in the room to have a fully functioning knowledge of the whole of Scottish literature, to say nothing of an intimate acquaintance with the various stripes of Protestantism. I say entirely without shame that I have not the faintest idea what Presbyterianism actually is. Nor what makes a Methodist. I know my Lutherans, thanks to Garrison Keillor, but all I really can say about them is that they're not much for marathon dance parties. But they didn't even have those in Scotland. Just Presbyterians, or "Whigs," who I thought were an antebellum political party. Now I'm all confused. What the Hell is "Whig" in the first place? Yer all de goyim to me.
No, really, I mean it. Honestly, one of the most liberating things I've ever said to a teacher (and I include in this statement, "Would you like to step outside?") was when I wrote to my Renaissance Poetry tutor that I didn't have any intention of writing about John Donne's Protestantism because not only did I know next to nothing about it, but frankly, this New York Jew just didn't care.
One of the tiring things about this place (so many straws have fallen to break the camel's back that his vertebrae are in splinters, an orthopede's nightmare) is the emphasis, understandable though it is, on Christianity. It's not evangelical, of course, just obsessive. The Protestants, the Catholics, the Lollards, the Calvinists, the Humanists, the Pickles, the Abysmals, it goes on ad nauseam, it really does. Granted, religious history more or less IS Anglo-Irish history, but come on. A little perspective, please. The Donne question was what really did me in on this. I just don't give a damn. Thank God for America & the US--they had just better be careful not to do it from some Britisher's postcolonialist point of view, which is where the first lecture seemed to be tending. It worries me that no Americans are tutoring or lecturing in that course. I didn't realize when I elected to come here (one of oh so many things) that of course the focus would be on Anglo-Saxondom, and that that literature would soon seem to me oppressive and irrelevant. I've reached a point where I like to bring it home. What stylistic techniques and considerations can I crib from this text? At least now I have Postcolonialism, which is a decent class, all about displacement, decentering and otherness. I'm just so sick of der goyim. Aliyah ha ha. In New York, that is.
And you can stop laughing. I did get it out of my system. At the very least I don't take myself as seriously.
<<>><<>><<>><<>><<>>
But serendipity. Every so often the load seems lighter. I went into the library yesterday to return Susan Sontag Against Interpretation, which I'd had for almost two months, renewed weekly, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and Beckett's Shorter Plays. I saw off to the right something I hadn't noticed before. The old card catalogue. It wasn't in drawers, it was in these huge brown bound volumes. Dozens of volumes. Ancient yellowed paper and rude yarn binding. I went over and reached randomly for volume 11 and laid it open (THUD) on the stand. It was full of spaces for typed bibliographical information to be pasted in. Most of the spaces were blank, leaving room for more. Traced my fingers over Asimov, Isaac on page 22. Drifted to the left, fingers on the parchment, and there he was:
Ashworth, William. Economic History of England.
I thought for a moment it was my great-grandfather, Willum, a professor at Berkeley. But he was a professor of English, not Economics. There are enough Ashworths out there that three might be named William. I turned to the preceding page and there I was. In print! Ashworth, Samuel. Commercial Mathematics. I always knew I had it in me. There were a few more Ashworths. One had written a book about being an Englishman living in Ireland and I think I must go pick that one up.
It was just so accidental. It hadn't occurred to me that Ashworth might be under the volume beginning with Ashtakavara. It put me in a terrific mood. I left the Berkeley library and walked into the Old library. Showed my card to the cashier and breezed through the book of Kells exhibit. Walked up the curved cement staircase to the Long Room, that beloved, heartstopping wonder. This deathless, timeless hall of dark stately mahogany and marble busts. It never fails to stop my breathing for a moment. I shall miss this place when I leave, possibly more than anything else.
Buoyant, I trundled over to the Douglas Hyde gallery, the little space below the arts block where they have rotating exhibitions. Took in some colorful vague stimulation from this wild construction-paper fiesta one guy had assembled on three wide walls. I like to walk through museums and galleries, not because I derive anything from the art (I rarely do), but because it gives me a sense of ephemerality, and the unperturbability that comes with it. I feel like smoke amid art, because I don't speak to it any more than it speaks to me. We don't interfere with each other. It's soothing, quieting. Pacifying. I've got nothing to do, no place to go. I'm dappled and drowsy and ready to sleep. I sleepwalk smiling faintly though museums.
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But of course one can only stay ephemeral for so long. One has to make dinner and wash dishes. We watched more of Sadie's DVD's of the HBO show Carnivale last night. All the way through episode four. It's pretty hardcore bizarre, especially the first few, but it's got Clea Duvall in it, and it's really fine filmmaking.
It's about 9'oclock. We're watching, and I look out the window and see the sky is queerly purple and alive for this time of night. I remark on this and we both look outside. And we start to laugh: it's snowing. Big flakes, falling with all the vengeance of this morning's rain. We've almost never seen snow here before. Snow means we're not in Ireland. We're laughing happily, but there's grimness, because we know it can't last. Sadie says, Snow's a sign it's warming up. It'll be rain soon. I know she's right. We stick our hands out the window a moment, catching floating flakes, lingering a while in the wonder, feeling like we're home for a moment. Then we return to Carnivale and within moments it's turned to rain, and any trace of snow is washed away.
Sunday, January 16, 2005
Forgot sort of to mention
Oh, yeah. I was in Paris. Nick and I stayed at Claude’s in Montmartre, spent our days hunting down cheap eats in the Chinese neighborhoods. Found delicious 50 cent steamed pork buns right next to 75 cent Tsingtao right across from €2 pots of lovely tea. Cheap wine in abundance, drunk nightly from the bottle high atop glittering lights of Paris at Sacre-Coeur, front-lit and pure white against the night, or on the brooding Seine, looking across to the Ile-Saint-Louis and coveting darkly. No open container laws is a good thing. In Ireland such laxity and permissiveness and intelligence with regard to alcohol would never work; they would kill themselves. They couldn’t handle it at all. Clearly I’m in the wrong country. But we knew that.
Finished essay on Postmodern fiction. Will post it. Wondering if perhaps the subject, or at least its scope, wasn’t beyond my powers. Prefer to think that the restrictions of the 3000-word essay caused unnatural velocity and condensing in the reasoning. Regardless it’s not bothering me now; I’ve finished everything that needed to be done. All the essays are in, the portfolio for the writing workshop (they bring in someone; might as well keep myself entertained the rest of the year), albeit a bit late, I schlepped out to Stillorgan to pick up the extra set of keys from the property office, to the tune of €25, cleaned the kitchen and went back to work.
Brought back some fabulous liquor from Paris: Lillet Blanc, Sweet Vermouth (had run out), more Bombay Sapphire, Absolut (€13, I’m not complaining), sirop de Lavande (nonalcoholic, but it reminds me inveterately of Provence), a flask of Ricard pastis, and a flask of green Chartreuse. Furthermore Nick and Julian brought me over another Dewar’s, Noilly Prat dry verm, Calvados, and Havana Club rum, which, of course, is not to be found in the U.S. Add to that the stuff from before and you have a hell of a liquor cabinet:
George Dickel Tennessee whiskey
Knob Creek bourbon
Wild Turkey 101 bourbon (Sadie also brought a new bottle)
Dewar’s scotch
Laphroaig scotch (€30 at the Shannon duty-free)
Bombay Sapphire (x2)
Havana Club rum
Calvados Coquerel
Absolut vodka
Zubrowka bison grass vodka (courtesy of Jacob the polish night manager)
Cointreau
Kahlua especial (just a bit left; was purchased back in September)
Tara Irish cream (bootleg Bailey’s; left by Stephen after a party)
Lillet Blanc
Sweet vermouth (Martini & Rossi)
Dry vermouth (M&R)
Dry vermouth (Noilly Prat--a mistake on Nick’s part, but one for which I’m grateful)
Ricard pastis
Green Chartreuse
Ouzo (left by Sparky after a party)
Cockburn’s Port
Angostura bitters
Peychaud bitters (New Orleans specialty, essential to the Sazerac, had to send away for them)
Grenadine
Sirop de Lavande
....
God damn...
It all goes into cocktails, though, and is used sparingly. I’m drinking a painstakingly measured-out Corpse Reviver #2 (NOTE: this was written last night), popularized by Ted Haight, aka Dr. Cocktail. Equal parts Gin, Cointreau, Lillet and lemon juice, and just a few drops of pastis. It’s brilliant--you can feel every ingredient party its way down your tongue. It’s quite splendid.
Also discovered the Moscow Mule. Highly, highly recommended. Vodka, a few lime wedges squeezed and dropped into the class, topped up with ginger beer. If you can find ginger beer, try it. It’s terrific, one of the best vodka drinks I’ve ever had.
Got my first essay back, too, the Wilde one. Know why I can submit an unedited, uncut essay addressing the wrong question for the wrong teacher in a class called Victorianism, never once making mention of Victorian England or anything socio-historical at all, and STILL manage a 70? Because I'm good, that's why. Booya. Happy King day.
Finished essay on Postmodern fiction. Will post it. Wondering if perhaps the subject, or at least its scope, wasn’t beyond my powers. Prefer to think that the restrictions of the 3000-word essay caused unnatural velocity and condensing in the reasoning. Regardless it’s not bothering me now; I’ve finished everything that needed to be done. All the essays are in, the portfolio for the writing workshop (they bring in someone; might as well keep myself entertained the rest of the year), albeit a bit late, I schlepped out to Stillorgan to pick up the extra set of keys from the property office, to the tune of €25, cleaned the kitchen and went back to work.
Brought back some fabulous liquor from Paris: Lillet Blanc, Sweet Vermouth (had run out), more Bombay Sapphire, Absolut (€13, I’m not complaining), sirop de Lavande (nonalcoholic, but it reminds me inveterately of Provence), a flask of Ricard pastis, and a flask of green Chartreuse. Furthermore Nick and Julian brought me over another Dewar’s, Noilly Prat dry verm, Calvados, and Havana Club rum, which, of course, is not to be found in the U.S. Add to that the stuff from before and you have a hell of a liquor cabinet:
George Dickel Tennessee whiskey
Knob Creek bourbon
Wild Turkey 101 bourbon (Sadie also brought a new bottle)
Dewar’s scotch
Laphroaig scotch (€30 at the Shannon duty-free)
Bombay Sapphire (x2)
Havana Club rum
Calvados Coquerel
Absolut vodka
Zubrowka bison grass vodka (courtesy of Jacob the polish night manager)
Cointreau
Kahlua especial (just a bit left; was purchased back in September)
Tara Irish cream (bootleg Bailey’s; left by Stephen after a party)
Lillet Blanc
Sweet vermouth (Martini & Rossi)
Dry vermouth (M&R)
Dry vermouth (Noilly Prat--a mistake on Nick’s part, but one for which I’m grateful)
Ricard pastis
Green Chartreuse
Ouzo (left by Sparky after a party)
Cockburn’s Port
Angostura bitters
Peychaud bitters (New Orleans specialty, essential to the Sazerac, had to send away for them)
Grenadine
Sirop de Lavande
....
God damn...
It all goes into cocktails, though, and is used sparingly. I’m drinking a painstakingly measured-out Corpse Reviver #2 (NOTE: this was written last night), popularized by Ted Haight, aka Dr. Cocktail. Equal parts Gin, Cointreau, Lillet and lemon juice, and just a few drops of pastis. It’s brilliant--you can feel every ingredient party its way down your tongue. It’s quite splendid.
Also discovered the Moscow Mule. Highly, highly recommended. Vodka, a few lime wedges squeezed and dropped into the class, topped up with ginger beer. If you can find ginger beer, try it. It’s terrific, one of the best vodka drinks I’ve ever had.
Got my first essay back, too, the Wilde one. Know why I can submit an unedited, uncut essay addressing the wrong question for the wrong teacher in a class called Victorianism, never once making mention of Victorian England or anything socio-historical at all, and STILL manage a 70? Because I'm good, that's why. Booya. Happy King day.
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