It's raining here, which is something it never does anymore. Water is somehow able to affect the concentration of complex systems, and rain is an environmental reboot. Want to change your state? Splash your face with water.
~~~~~~~
It's been raining for hours...
Still you're my favorite work of art. Stay, funny valentine, stay...
I'm still fevered today, though less so. It's been really something here, I can't tell you. But I want to thank everyone who's wished me well recently. It means a lot. Thank you.
I've eaten almost nothing since Saturday. Which, now that I type that and read it, it looks pretty bad, like it can't possibly be helping me to recover any faster. But luckily I've more than made up for any nourishment I may've missed out on as a result of not eating any real, honest-to-God food, by meeting (and surpassing) my RDA for passive entertainment. By which, what I really mean is that I'm sick to death of my DVD collection. Seriously, if I never have cause to watch any of those films again, I'll be pleased as a pig in punch or whatever. Calgon, take me away...
The best thing I watched recently was a double feature of Jean de Florette and Manon of the Spring. Jean de Florette in particular. Gérard Depardieu is always making good choices and the story and it's telling are so simple and sad, it reminded me of The Bicycle Thief.
But I'm listening to Over the Rhine now. I heard them first in November, and I've felt mixed about them since. When they're off, they can come across saccharine and calculating; on, and they express love and longing with a simple, high clarity. A fair trade maybe, all things considered.
~~~~~~~
Shout, shout, let it all out.
In a fever-dream last night a man I know was trying to kill me. He was driving a car and I was trapped in the backseat, bound and unable to escape. He drove us somewhere, to the shore of an ocean I'd never been to before. But when we got there what it really looked like was the Ends of the Earth...
I did escape, quite easily actually, once I'd set my mind to it. But running, I was calling to a friend of mine, K, who was near me, ahead of me, calling to her for help when I woke.
And that's the last image I have: running through some beautiful alien landscape, free for the moment, caught between what would harm me and what I believe may be my salvation.
Well, not dreaming exactly. More like mildly hallucinating from the fever I've had since I woke Saturday morning.
It's the flu, yes, and I don't remember granting it permission to come aboard.
What I do remember is that Friday night I was with the Tibetan monks witnessing them getting their groove on, and then to dinner and drinks with friends. The previous night was my First Thursday gig at the Rialto. Neither of which nights was I feeling particularly healthy and robust, but I was committed to both events, so there it is.
And going back a bit further, Boston was a good time. Family, friends, margaritas . . . you know how we roll here at the Nunnery. Plus there was a meeting of the Now Today Society (of which I am a charter member) to watch Extensions III: The Revenge, a trailer for which may be found here.
There was also private music-time with both Mr. O and Vlindinhauer. The Narrow Way suite is enjoying a resurgence these days.
170 hours of 40/20 hindsight:
Wednesday last I played music with my violist friend, Tracie. We improvise song-suites together.
Thursday night I had a date with a woman I don't like.
Friday were auditions. I was up at 04:45. There was the usual heteroclitic chaos that auditions always bring, which maybe I'll tell you about some time, but not right now.
Friday night I had a date with another woman I didn't like. We had drinks and I bowed out earlier than I think, all other things being equal, she would have preferred.
Saturday was heavenly rest, well-deserved and much needed after three weeks of being constantly O.T.M. I finally got to catch up on some important PS2 work I've been criminally neglecting. And some reading too - Art by Yasmina Reza, highly recommended, and Relativity by Einstein, also recommended though maybe not quite so highly due to his unnecessarily mannered presentation.
Sunday morning was spent in almost-but-not-quite silence with the Quakers.
Sunday night was rehearsal with markandwanda. These days rehearsals are largely technical affairs. We spent several hours on software-acquisition. The future we're aiming at has me and Mark playing our macbooks while Wanda sings. There's a steep learning curve involved with this, which is good. I'm a big fan of steep learning curves.
A good night with Jason Monday night, beginning at Fellini's with guy-talk and ending at the Nunnery with guitars. Armagnac and Dusty in Memphis played a role in occupying the sweet, swollen middle.
Yesterday was one-of-a-kind super-secretary Charlene's last day on Earth . . . or, if not on Earth, at least in the School of Music. She's worked at GSU for 17 or 18 years. We have a long relationship, filled with humor and warmth. There was a going away party with (terrible) wine, and I even had a piece of cake in her honor, a rarity, given my aversion to all things sweet. We made our goodbyes in a quiet moment in my office and she invited me to visit her in her new home in the Outer Banks. She's a good woman.
Last night's rehearsal was canceled, so I got to read some more (yes!) and watch the Wicker Man - the original, with Christopher Lee, not the remake with Nick Cage.
Today, in the middle of a million other things, I was in a meeting with Carl Patton, the President of the University, my third meeting with him in two months. He speaks, while I and the other twelvish people in the room listen. He's cheerful, and almost but not quite affable. He's announced his retirement in June or July of 2008. Oh, and in case you're wondering it looks like GSU will indeed be getting a football team, probably in 2010, by Patton's estimate. This interests me not at all.
Earlier tonight, I visited with the Amnemonic Chiropractor, and now I'm sipping Calvados and listening to When Loud Weather Buffeted Naoshima.
~~~~~~~
Back off, man. I'm a scientist.
I haven't told you yet, but I got to see H.H. the Dalai Lama a few weeks ago. Rashid and I heard him speak in Centennial Olympic Park, the same night we went to the thrift store (me and Rashid, not me and the Dalai Lama - although H.H.'d probably rock some of the supersweet offerings to be found at Last Chance Thrift).
~~~~~~~
Take it away.
But today was difficult. My sense of time is slow even though my days are busy and tight. My horses aren't so much bucking as veering pessimistically and persistently to the left. I have to keep some of my attention with them constantly so I don't, you know, incurvate. Which isn't easy because they daydream constantly and don't follow instructions well.
What kind of fuckery is this?
I saw my chiropractor tonight (if you've been following along, you probably know that he traditionally has bizarre memory lapses when it comes to me. But he seems to know me better now. He should - I wrote my name down for him the last time I saw him), and I bumped into Esteban in the waiting room. We talked for a good while, mostly about old guitarists - Django, McLaughlin, etc. Esteban and I have a regular gig, along with a percussionist and a turntablist, playing improvised music for first Thursday art openings at the Rialto. Good times.
I was invited - don't laugh - to a chanting last Friday night, at this yoga place down the street from the Nunnery that I've never seen the inside of in all the years I've lived here. But suddenly, about ten minutes before I was supposed to be there, I was struck by a thought I'd never had a reason to have before: just what does one wear to a chanting, exactly? For the curious, I settled on a burnt-orange long sleeve pullover over a black tee, my laine vierge sports coat, a flaxen scarf, and loose-fitted jeans. With saddle shoes. Funny thing, it turns out that's exactly what you wear to a chanting...
Saturday I went to the Chomp and Stomp in Cabbagetown with Rashid and Jason. Dozens of different varieties of chili, Sweetwater (a local beer), and live bluegrass are a decent way to begin a beautiful, sunny Saturday morning. Later, Mark came by the Nunnery and together we polished off the last of the tequila, listened to some records, and brainstormed about our joint musical process.
Sunday morning I went to a Quaker meeting, something I've done for the past four Sundays. This may initially surprise some who know Sabitathica well. Sabitathica is known to be constitutionally distrustful of organized religion. And while this (natural, healthy) attitude is not at all unusual in the sweet northeast, it is in some short supply down here in Bedlam. Which reminds me of a conversation I had last spring with a girl who was working for me around the office:
Girl: Sabitathica, have you accepted Jesus into your life?
Sabitathica: Um, I'm from Boston.
But Quakers are badasses. I went to one meeting in Amherst twelve years ago with good guy Chris Fitz from Hampshire and I've never forgotten it.
Sunday night I went to La Fonda with Jason for margaritas and general guy stuff before we brought the good times back here.
Lunch today with Rashid and JB at Slice, where the guy sitting next to me at the bar for some reason began talking to me about Ayn Rand of all things. He was just beginning the Fountainhead. Good times, good times.
~~~~~~~
Jackknife juggernaut
Things've been busy lately, as busy as they've been in several years. Life is rich and events are rife with meaning. Synchronicity is everywhere.
My dreams are generous, with emotions strong and mixed. People I've known, women mostly, appearing to me in my sleep, negotiating complicated amnesties.
And as an aside, I've got auditions again this week. I could organize auditions in my fucking sleep at this point of my life. One would hope this to be a transferable skill, but I'm not so sure.
In the form of gardenias . . .
Remember Apocalypse Now? Kilgore says, "you either surf or you fight." Fucking Kilgore. What a ham . . . Kurtz would have been interested in him, but wouldn't've taken him on board. He was too ostentatious, too showy. Fuck off, Kilgore. Leave me alone. Go away. Go surf.
~~~~~~~
With no forwarding address to trace them.
Talked the other day with dear sister Karyn. About The Road, mostly - she just read it. We also talked about the house we spent our childhood in. A beautiful, architecturally nourishing space; a three dimensional jigsaw puzzle, put together just so. Her bedroom, we reminisced, fearlessly explored a powerful Raggedy Ann motif. Mine had fuzzy-animal wallpaper.
~~~~~~~
A note on fame.
I listen and read, and I have to ask - who cannot relate to Britney Spears's situation? Compassless and wild, she's trying to break out of her machine. She's at last becoming interesting, no longer just amusing or entertaining. A cartoonish, real-time morality play is being acted out through her. It'll probably use her up before it's done - it maybe already has - and it seems reckless to unheed it's warning and graceless to mock her example.
"Sex is the mathematical urge repressed." ~ Freud
In an effort to, um, take my mind off things, I've been reacquainting myself with proofs of the law of quadratic reciprocity, the crown jewel of number theory, and Gauss's favorite theorem. Euler conjectured it but Gauss was first to give it proof. If you like, you can hang out with a crisp overview of quadratic reciprocity here. Oh, but it gives me the warm fuzzies...
~~~~~~~
Anyway, there's been dreams. The sleepy Cardinals are hard at hand...
... hallucinating lucidity. What gives?
~~~~~~~
I'm returned tonight from the first half of a NATS Alexander Technique workshop. NATS is the National Association of Teachers of Singing; the Alexander Technique is a way of doing things. I have no association with NATS.
Today it was necessary to leave music school and go to Borders. Being there, I bought a DVD set of fifty - yes, fifty - movies, called SciFi Classics. For twenty dollars. Have you heard about this? Fifty movies. With titles like
* The Incredible Petrified World
* The Atomic Brain
* Attack of the Monsters
* Mesa of Lost Women
* The Astral Factor
* Assignment: Outer Space
* Destroy All Planets
... except there's fifty of them. For twenty dollars. Fuck. ing. sweet. Attack of the Monsters... heh.
I was at Turner Field last night, watching the Braves explain some things to the Marlins. Wanda (of markandwanda)'s back has been troubling her (and is apparently, thankfully, beginning to mend), so Mark invited me to go. He had passes to the "755 Club", so we spent most of the game in the very lap of luxury: tureens of cocaine, cigars, fallen women . . .
A beautiful day. Full, really, with things good and bad, pleasant and un-. Walked in the park and talked, instead of eating lunch, with an old friend of mine about Dag Hammarskjöld, martyr for the good guys. This would fall under "pleasant". Vlindinhauer Haverhast, the old friend in mention, himself also a sort of martyr for the good guys, was enviably on the Cape as we spoke. Fuck, how I want to be on the Cape. I've been homeless for too long. Cape Cod, if you're lost. Keep up. But don't ask me anything else about it. I don't want to talk about it. Fuck.
Placing that aside, I watched The Pope of Greenwich Village last night for the 1st time since 1984 or 5. I'm all about Mickey Rourke right now. Motherfucker quits acting to resume his relationship with boxing in '91 - at 35 - this time as a professional and doesn't lose a single fight (though he drew against both Fransisco Harris and Thomas McCoy). His acting is spot on. Between him and Eric Roberts, the method is dropping thick.
My dreams have taken on a new direction the past two nights. Are they waving or drowning? I can't tell. There seems to be an upheaval in the works; I'm generally in favor and my concern is mostly with facilitation.
Oh, and I watched Zeitgeist over the last 21 hours, in installments. My inner conspiracy theorist wants me to tell you he's giving it two thumbs up. Rashid turned me on to this film a few weeks ago. And speaking of installments, Ken Burns, who I can never mention without reminding everyfuckingbody that he went to Hampshire, has a new documentary on WWII premiering this Sunday on PBS. I don't care if I'm the only person I know who finds this even remotely interesting. Ken Burns is a gem of a man.
And David Sylvian serenades with Orpheus.
Vlin, I can see your entries now.
Trouble sleeping. I was up until about 06:00, wired, unable to shake some strange wakefulness, my head overflowing with thoughts, my horses bucking. Awake until 06:00, which was just a few minutes before my (goddamn) alarm went off. Past five and close to sleep, I mobilized myself to investigate two loud, sharp knocks at the door to my front porch. This deep into the night, there's no reason for someone, anyone, to be knocking on my door, but of course you have to check. I don't know though, maybe I'd only imagined it, because when I opened it there was nobody there. I'm not sure what I thought I was going to do anyway. I was only in boxers, and apart from my body itself, totally weaponless (I keep a natural wood Louisville Slugger by my bed, just in case, but in my sleepless forgetfulness, I opened the door without it).
So I did what I usually do when I'm home alone and can't sleep - I watched 2001, beautiful soporific masterpiece.
The other night, the night the weather changed (it's been cooler here than it was throughout August), I had a vivid, technicolor dream. I was standing in front of the Atlantic, on the porch of the Marshfield house, looking out at the moon, which was enormous - as big as the earth - and only a few feet away. The porch had no railing, and I almost jumped across, over to the moon. I probably could have. Part of the imagery came from a story I read by Calvino in '96 called the distance of the moon. I almost jumped, but I didn't. Something stopped me. It felt dangerous, maybe.
Now playing: Someone saved my life tonight, by Elton John.
I'm leaving in a few minutes to meet Rashid for dinner at Figo. We ate together yesterday too, at La Fonda.
Backtracking: on Friday I left work early and went to Jason's for a drink and to watch some early Beatles footage (I have a great weakness for all things early-Beatle). From there we headed over to Rashid's for more drinks and engaging guy-talk. Eventually we all moved on to La Fonda for dinner and even more drinks. And later we drove to Sheila and Tim's, et al, where there was a house party in mid-swing and the drinking began in earnest. And then, finally, back home.
There was something to celebrate - I'm now vested, after ten years at GSU.
My head has been a tumult again today. I'm going to try to get some real rest tonight. Wish me luck.
Asked to guess, I'd say temperatures today were in the low nineties, which comes, believe it or not, as a big fucking relief. And there was a breeze too, which. . . you just can't imagine what it's been like here. But the stultifyingly static weather finally broke yesterday afternoon as Bedlam inched its way across a pressure front. It's still hot as fiery hell, but currently overcast, so for the moment we're no longer directly under the fat old eye of the sun.
I woke this morning at 06:00 exactly and, not for lack of trying, couldn't re-enter sleep. This is not unusual. The gods of sleeping late do not smile upon me, my friend. Their ways are mysterious and occult and I am afraid their dark logic confounds me.
I purchased a haircut at Salon Red this morning at 09:30 before engaging my Saturday usual at Gato's Sweltering Nuclear Furnace Oven Emporium. Of Hell. And the obligatory iced-coffee from Dr. Bombay's found me returning on foot to the Nunnery where I began the recording portion of my day.
I'm currently borrowing a Moog from makandwanda and finding it endlessly fascinating. I've always wanted one but couldn't afford, so I'm making this opportunity count. Oh, and Mark dropped off a cd I requested of reference recordings to aid me in my writing. We're learning how to work together.
Slice last night after hours with my boyz, Rashid and Jason, with Joe behind the bar. J. & J. had to leave, but R. and I stayed for a while, conversationalizing with the new barista and rocking to Shuggie and Sabbath on the jukebox. :()*
*Why do I not know the smiley-text symbol equivalent of death-metal devil horns? I imagine I would feel adrift in a world where such a symbol did not exist. Until I discover one, this will have to do.
And my god, what a fucking week this has been, work-wise. And there's no reason to expect next week will be any better. Fall semester begins Monday.
Take the leap and never waver.
My life these days occurs between meetings. Here's today:
* an hour and a half School of Music administrative meeting, which took place immediately following my
* one on one meeting to bring the new Graduate Director up to speed; then
* a Staff Development Committee meeting across campus to discuss, among other things, allocation of funds by the
* Scholarship Committee, for which I 'volunteered' today. As always, there were
* sundry impromptu meetings with troubled (yet ever charming) music students; and
* one more sit down later this evening with my financial advisor to discuss the pecuniary implications of my impending resignation.
And since I'm on about work, I'll mention that I sit on several new committees, viz.
* I was recently elected to the Staff Council;
* as mentioned above, I sit on both the Staff Development Committee and
* the Scholarship Committee; and also, for kicks, I'm on the
* Green Issues Committee. It's not easy being green . . .
This, in addition to my ongoing work within the School of Music itself, which was amped up to eleven when my boss went on sabbatical in Spring and wasn't made any easier when he resigned upon returning in Summer. I've been doing virtually all of his academic and administrative work since January. His replacement will take over in a few weeks and hopefully share the load, though he'll need some time to get up and running.
And it's hot here. It's a fucking heat wave. Almost unbearable. Looking back, I don't know how A. and I made it through our first summer here in the deep south without air-conditioning, migrating, as we were, from the middle of a deep, cold winter in Maine. We tried everything we could think of to stay cool, including sleeping on our apartment's porch, which would sometimes catch a cross-breeze through the bullet holes in the windows when the wind was right.
"How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress."
It's real fucking hot here. There's a heat advisory for this area. This afternoon John from Slice told me temperatures are supposed to be in the upper nineties here through the end of the month.
I'm listening to Shuggie Otis, funk guitar cynosure. His voice conjures Michael Franks in a younger day; his guitar playing is, in some alternate universe, what Prince's guitar would have sounded like were he, Prince, to have taken psilocybin in, say, 1983. As it is, Shuggie was doing this in 1974. If there's not enough sweet beautiful funk in your life these days, you should download Inspiration Information immediately. It's Bill Withers channeling Dr. Seuss, swear to god. Thank me later.
And Saturday last was dear sister Karyn's birthday. She and I talked for over an hour on Friday, with me uploading news from the Nunnery. She and my sweet goddaughter are well. Karyn is two years older than me which must make her, let's see . . . thirty-three, I believe.
Rashid, I bought another, so keep the one you've got.
And welcome back, Team Amsterdam. Hope the trip was productive.
Listening to Dusty in Memphis. The song "No Easy Way Down" is currently two-stepping its way around the room. I'm partial to Mark Eitzel's version (the first time I heard it was in April 1998 at a critical juncture), but who could deny Dusty in '68?
Work has gotten busy. Dense days keeping me forever on the phone and near my email, with increasing demands on my attention from the aspiring musicians who tap on my office door.
Hung out with my crew at Slice last night after bringing things in the office to a state of equilibrium for the week. Good friends, hard work. Not bad.
Now playing: Runaround Sue by Dion.
Went with Jenny last night to Park Tavern. There were bands playing, three of them, two of which you've maybe heard of. Musically, they weren't terribly imaginative, but several margaritas later and who really cares? Well, me still . . . but appreciably less.
Earlier on Sunday I finished that book I keep telling you about. Sunday was a real sad day for me in several ways, and the ending of this book sure didn't help matters. Fucking reduced me to a gelatinous, quivering mass of pussyishness. It might be the saddest thing I've ever read. Death of a Salesman is the only thing I can think of to approach it in terms of its effect on me, but Arthur Miller generated some of his voltage by making Willy Loman delusional and pathetic, which never seemed like the easy way out before, but is starting to now (heresy, I know). But McCarthy takes a higher road and shows us only the unadorned dolor of love plus time, with the tenderest nobility in place of pity. You probably shouldn't read it.
Moving chronologically contrariwise, Rashid left his personal effects in my car on Saturday and we met for lunch today so he could reclaim them. We got food from good girl Favan's place, which has the best tuna downtown that I know of.
There was lots of conversation as usual, though most of the big topics, including the two workhorses - our jobs and women - had been covered abundantly on Saturday. In fact, conversation was so smooth on Saturday that at one point I even got to bust out a Flubber reference. Which, for the record, was actually a reference to the original 1960's The Absent-Minded Professor with Fred MacMurray, and not the 90's remake with Robin Williams which I've never seen and which I simply cannot condone, mostly because I'm opposed to Walt Disney and his sycophantic henchmen fucking with my childhood memories.
And now playing: I think I Love You by the Partridge Family. I swooned for this song as a boy and still do. Not least of why is the relative rarity of hearing a pure, sweet pop song fall as unapologetically into a full diminished mode as this one does. And you have to love the twee harpsichord solo.
Woke from sleep this morning thinking about Steve, the man who lives next door to my parents' home in Boston. I don't think of him often, but I know he's sick. He's got Lou Gehrig's disease. Two hours later as I was getting coffee my father called to tell me Steve had died.
I also heard from old friend Kip today. He told me his wife Carla's dad had passed. Both men will be missed.
(Memento mori.)
or Here come the darkest birds
12:55 pm
Now playing: Leader of the Pack by the Shangri-Las.
I saw Knocked Up last night for the second time. Such a likable film. It hits so many notes, and a good number of them are true to life. I've actually been in several of the arguments that take place in the film, and I've no doubt many other people can say the same. There was alcohol too, in case you were wondering; drinks before and after. To be perfectly honest, I probably shouldn't have driven home last night, a perspective I didn't fully appreciate until this morning. But all's well that ends well and, stupid though I may be, I survive to blog another day.
Today - the day fate has seen fit that I should survive to blog - there are rain squalls. I narrowly escaped getting caught in one walking back from the store earlier. There was a dark cloud following behind me the whole way, never quite overhead; a metaphor for sure, but for what I hesitate to guess . . .
Lots of dreams last night, tactile and vivid, but which fade upon waking.
~~~~~~~
5:48 pm
Leonard Cohen is singing - So Long, Marianne and That's No Way to Say Goodbye. Goddamn, Leonard, how do you do it? He says things I wish I could say. But even though I don't know how to say them, it's good there's someone who does.
I'm feeling better today. Thank you to everyone who's wished me well or had nice things to say over the last few days. I'm not 100% yet, but my nose is in general less sieve-like and my voice is once again recognizably my own.
It's been a while since I've posted any photographs, and I know I said I'd show you some, so here are three . . .
First, and in case you were wondering, this is what Sabitathica's shadow looks like cast on sand (a.k.a., does this sun make me look fat?).
This is Minnie, whom you know. She's doing her thing, which in this case (as in most cases) means simply ignoring me.
And this is the grand Atlantic, captured during a sweet half-hour of the alluringest sea-spray, looking north towards Boston Bay, and beyond . . .
I feel like ass today. I'm sick and home at the Nunnery, convalescing. I'm sure it seems to you like I never go to my office anymore. You must have noticed how I'm always writing about not going into work, but I have to tell you, from my perspective, it feels different. It feels like I'm forever at the office, almost never setting foot back home.
However that may be, I am truly sick - I've got a cold and I feel lousy, though you'll be happy to know I still look damn good. Damn good, that is, if you're into the unwashed, hair jumping in a dozen different directions, still wearing the same clothes I slept in last night which are the same clothes I wore to work yesterday look. And here's what else. If you could hear me speak right now, you'd swear to god you were listening to either a frog or some kind of a toad or something. My voice is deep and fucked.
Anyway, the reason I'm so sick is because I allowed myself to do something really stupid three or four days ago. So stupid... I should know better by now, really.
It's been a week of the past here in Bedlam, meaning that several things from the distant yesternow have presented themselves this week as if for inspection. A couple of girls I used to know, A and K; Jonathan, an old friend who used to work for me around the office (You: yeah, back when you actually used to spend time in your office. Sabitathica: shut up.); and yesterday, old friend Kennon 'phoned drunk from Korea. None of these people have I seen for anywhere between three and seven years, all of them appearing out of the fabric of the past to say hello and reminisce. It's nice when the past behaves.
I think I said about how I'm reading The Road by Cormac McCarthy. Goddamn this book is good. For all the bleakness and sadness and desolation, his future is a place steeped in vigilant goodness and a deep, careful love. But it's dark too. Very dark. Real fucking dark, so don't say you weren't warned. Favorite line from today: There is no God and we are his prophets.
A father and son walk through a lifeless landscape, no food anywhere, burdening their belongings before them in a shopping cart, unable to see the sun for all the soot in the air. It's fifty pages before they see another living person, sixty before they speak to anyone. And the future is so rawboned and worn it evidently can't spare any punctuation. Commas are a luxury and nobody ever, ever uses quotation marks when they speak. Too precious, we presume, or maybe this place is too intimate for anybody to nitpick about such things. And even when we encounter the occasional contraction, there's rarely an apostrophe to be found.
Plus I've watched several DVDs in my convalescence. Here's a(n incomplete) list:
Amores Perros
Ocean's 11
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg
Belle de Jour
Sabotage (Hitchcock)
Listening now to Shh/Peaceful from In a Silent Way. I'll be posting a few photographs soon.
And the seventh brings return...
At work today nothing happened. Or maybe it did, but I wouldn't know about it since I wasn't there. I was here, home at the Nunnery, doing stuff.
Why wasn't I at work? Because did you ever have one of those days where it hits you how little time we all have, and how precious and fleeting everything is, and how we all need to stop and smell stuff before it's allofasudden too late and we wake up in a bed in some room somewhere hooked up to a machine that goes "ping!" while trying to keep our bodies alive?
Yeah me neither, but I thought if I stayed home from work today I might've done. And I think I sorta got close at one point but I don't know, I guess I'll keep you posted.
So I had breakfast at the Carroll Street and began reading a novel lent to me by markandwanda, which I'm enjoying so far, The Road, by Cormac McCarthy. The post-apocalyptic setting and sober tone are affecting (though so far, not affected) and feel as though painted with a brush that lays comfortable in the hand.
The Nunnery
6:32 PM
Returned last night from a week in Brant Rock, Marshfield, a sandy hamlet nestled beachily between Boston and Cape Cod, spiritually similar and geographically proximate to the home of the home of my home.
While there, M. and I took a side-trip and spent two days on the Vineyard, marking the first time I've laid eye or planted foot on it in nigh eighteen years. Wednesday and Thursday were our birthdays (hers and mine, respectively) and we treated ourselves to a beautiful and memorable stay on the island. We inned at Edgartown and, while there, we had one of the best meals of my life at Atria. Sabitathica's official assesstimate: for location, presentation, and the most truly cared-about food, with the highest quality of both ingredients used and attention paid to preparation, highly recommended.
And we went into Boston proper for a day too, the Back Bay mostly. We had a fine bottle of wine at Ciao Bella, where we also stumbled into the beginning of a more or less day-long conversation which I'm unfortunately but decidedly not at liberty to reproduce here.
The week was spent fully, packed to overflowing with good times, good times. So much so that we unfortunately didn't have the time to see everyone I would have liked to have seen. Notably Marko and the family Prather.
Now playing: Life in a Northern Town by The Dream Academy.
Dr. Blogger's Folksy Tea House and Reading Room
11:24 AM
Made myself not wake up until like 09:30, which was more difficult than it probably sounds. Flossed, brushed, washed my face, engaged the rest of my morning routine, ate at the Gato, then came here.
I neglected to say yesterday that I had a good conversation with one of the baristas here, Leslie. She's a student at my University, though she's not a Music Schooligan. I don't know her all that well, but she's bright and very pleasant to talk to. And she's going to Iceland next semester for study abroad.
What's a little awkward is that back in February I made a bet with someone that Leslie (though I didn't know her name back then) would die in a terrible plane crash. Is this wrong of me? The bet arose as a natural conversational consequence of my tremendous and admittedly irrational fear of flying. To my memory the terms of the bet were never set, so I don't know what I would win (or lose) should Leslie ever die (or not) in a fiery, horrific plane wreck.
But still, I'm sure the stakes, should they ever be finally agreed upon, would be high. In fact I would have to insist that they be, given there's a human life hanging in the balance. So it's weird to be having a conversation with a very pleasant person while at the same time, in the back of my mind, I'm aware that it would be a sweet sweet windfall for me if she were to perish in an unspeakably tragic air-traffic accident. (I guess this Iceland trip could be my winning lottery ticket. Sweet!)
On the other hand, anyone who's worked at the Greatest Music School on the Whole of God's Green Earth for any amount of time knows what it's like to have a pleasant conversation with someone while at the same time secretly wishing them fiery death, so maybe it's really not so weird after all. But that's another story.
In other news, I've got a new roommate: a largish clan of moths. They don't pay rent, but they do fly around your face and alight on the monitor of your laptop, so I guess like any relationship it's a compromise. We have an understanding. We co-habitate. And they mostly hang out in the kitchen. I've had worse roommates.
That said, I'm probably going to kill them today. They're boring and don't hold up their end of our conversations, so.
And, should you find yourself in need of one, here's a simple argument in favor of eliminating a pesky or unwanted roommate:
1) They're stupid.
2) Therefore, they should die.
3) If they can't follow the airtight logical connection between 1) and 2) above, then they're stupid (repeat until problem goes away).
9:23 AM
Dr. Brimstone's House of Hot Jazz and Dark Liquids
There's a smoky haze over the city this morning, from the fire that's been burning southeast of here for almost six weeks now. The fire started when a tree hit a power line back on April 16th, and the severe drought we're under has allowed things to devolve largely unabated. Between this one here and the fire in Florida (in the Okefenokee), I read that over 550,000 acres of land have been burned.
The haze carries with it the smell of burning trees which, if I could separate it in my mind from all the devastation it's necessarily connected to, is in itself not unpleasant to me, but it does affect my breathing. The pollen and the humidity here alone are sometimes hard to bear, but the smoke inhalation is worse. And so much destruction...
Someone said to me the other day that all this destruction is in the natural course of things. That, you know, fires have to happen, that the forest-as-system requires them, and that they serve a necessary purpose. But I don't know. While this is surely true in many cases, don't power lines exist outside the system of self-maintenance through periodic self-destruction?
~~~~~~~
Woke up early again today, maybe 06:45. Flossed, brushed, and abluted, then drove to Carroll Street, only to learn that the café wasn't open yet, so I drove back to my neighborhood, only to find that Dr. Brimstone's was also not open yet. And neither was Gato Bizco. Dag! So I ate at the Flying Biscuit, which I’m not a real big fan of, not these days anyway, not for the last year or so.
I saw a woman I used to know there, P, and we spoke for a few minutes. I had the sweet potato(e) pancakes, a half-order, and only managed to eat about half of that. My appetite is not itself these days, plus I sometimes tend to refer to fare at the Biscuit as ‘food for giants’, because of the ridiculously large portion sizes.
~~~~~~~
8:11 PM
The Nunnery
Talked to Rashid today on the phone for, God, almost two hours. About lots of things, so many things, not least of which was the sad sad event which occurred recently.
Oh, and I can't stop listening to Alison Krauss & Union Station's live version of Baby, Now That I've Found You. Sappy, maybe; but it's playing now and complementing my mood effortlessly, so, whatever.
Dr. Bombay's Magickal Cafe & Emporium
9:17 AM
There's a guy here who's on a study-date with some girl. He clearly wants to be studying less and interacting with her more, but he's being pretty goofy about it, telegraphing his every intention. Homeboy's got no game.
Woke up early, about 05:45. Tried to sleep again and finally set my feet on the floor at 06:45. Did my thing, got some breakfast, and came here.
I had several dreams last night. One, a variation on an old recurring dream-theme involving a house with an uncountable number of rooms. In the past this dream house has always been the same house, and highly recognizable as such (a crucial part of its design is based on the beautiful, quiet and exciting house I spent my childhood in), but this time it was a brand new house.
In another dream there were snakes, lots of them and dangerous. One, at least, was likely a coral, and another I could hear was a rattler. There was someone with me, someone I loved, whom I was trying to protect from getting bitten. Looking back, now that I'm awake, I see that I was actually in quite a bit more danger than she was, though it didn't feel that way at the time.
Now playing on the in-house system: a pretty standard jazz band playing a pretty standard jazz tune. I don't recognize the song, nor any of the musicians playing it, at least not by ear.
Can i just take a minute to say that the practice in jazz music of 'trading fours' is a little silly? It's rare that I hear a musician say anything worthwhile in this contrived format. In complex instrumental music, ideas need to be given time to develop; what we recognize as meaning and authenticity in improvised music comes from responding well to what has come before, continually 'neutralizing' the ongoing repercussions of previous notes. Trading fours always feels so artificial to my ears. Show-offy and 'exciting' I guess, but ultimately dull.
And now playing: Use Me by the incomparable Bill Withers. My God, how I love this song. The first time I heard it was on the radio of my (parents') god-ugly orange Subaru hatchback, driving down Ralph Talbot Street in 1985. Good times.
What's up. Everybody good? Things're going well here. Work is quiet for a fucking change, which is nice. All the shiny little music schooligans have flown away north for the season, navigating their majestic migratory arcs and leaving us here, alone together again, in the Twilight of our Idols, wondering where the time goes... or, you know, whateverthefuck.
Anyway, I'm here at the Nunnery at the moment and I'm listening to Low's Drums and Guns, which just so you know is rocking my feet right to the goddamn floor, in that quiet, urgent way that Low have about them. A dark aesthetic of restraint mixed with convincing husband-wife harmonies and sweet-bitter lyrics, all wrapped up in an attractive hard-rock coating! Fun for the whole family!
For some reason, last night Madge said: 'If science were a dog, I think it should be a Saint Bernard, you know, with lots of booze around its neck. That'd be awesome.'
Then she suggested we get a dog and name it Science, which of course led to all sorts of silliness. Late-night nonsensical fun, like saying in a dog-calling voice: 'Sciiience . . . heeere science' or in a dog-reprimanding voice: 'Look what you've done now, science. Bad science.' Good times, good times.
~~~~~~~
Yesterday at Slice I was talking with two students.
Student A: I want to withdraw from a class.
Sabitathica: Don't be stupid. Which class?
Student A: The World Music class.
Sabitathica: But that class is so easy. Why would you want to withdraw from it?
Student B: But Sabitathica, you've never even taken that class. How can you say whether it's easy or not? You don't know. . .
Sabitathica (to student A): Okay, how's the class? Is it easy or not?
Student A: It's pretty easy.
Sabitathica (to student B): See? Just because I don't know what I'm talking about doesn't mean I'm not right.
~~~~~~~
Oh, and plus my car got broken into last night. Nothing was stolen, at least that I can see. But they rifled through my glove box and that little compartment, what's it called, between the driver's and passenger's seats that holds all your cds and loose change and tequila and stuff. They even rifled through my ashtray for some reason. They rifled through it all and left my cds and stuff all out on the passenger's seat. I don't know why they didn't take anything - my sweet sports coat was in the back seat, along with like three hoodies of various colours and this thing that a student gave me, a digital recorder/dictophone thingy that must be worth, at the very least, like three hits of meth.
It got broken into in Madge's parking garage. The managers of her apartment building sent out a memo last week to all the tenants saying that someone was breaking into cars in the garage, but I didn't pay it any mind because the memo also said that there were reports of unauthorized people trying to enter the building, and I thought they were just talking about me, because like a week and a half ago I was trying to get into the building, and I was standing outside knocking on the door, and this idiot who was inside the building looked at me like I was waiving a gun at him and he turned tail and ran and left me hanging outside. I tried to explain to the idiot that Madge lives inside, and I'm supposed to meet her, and she's expecting me, and that everything is going to be okay if only he'll let me in the building, but I could tell it wasn't really coming across because the door was between us, so I told him to just open the goddamn door so I could explain everything without having to shout, but he just sort of ran away anyway and left me hanging.
I keep looking for him now, every time I'm in her building, so I can say to him 'Hey - I remember you. You're the idiot who can't tell the difference between a criminal and a guy just trying to get into the building to see Madge. Nice to meet you... idiot." but I haven't seen him yet.
So I thought that the idiot had probably told the apartment managers to put out an APB on me because the managers notified all the residents that some guy was trying to enter the building, claiming that Madge was expecting him, but then I thought that the managers probably took some creative license and threw in the part about someone breaking into cars to sort of sex up the memo a bit, just to scare the residents and give them all something to rally around. So I didn't pay much attention to the memo but I guess I should have because now my car's been broken into and all my stuff's been put in the wrong places.
~~~~~~~
And just now:
Sabitathica's Assistant: Do you have any candy?
Sabitathica: Absolutely. If by 'candy' you mean 'files to copy'.
Today was Sabitathica's annual performance review at the Greatest Music School on the Whole of God's Green Earth. This is a thoroughly charming event, much anticipated, and affectionately known as: First, I'm Going To Pretend To Have The Slightest Idea What Exactly It Is You Do Around Here, And Then I'll Fumble My Way Through Pretending I Can Accurately Assess Your Ability To Execute Those Functions Which, Again, I Really Am Ill-Equipped To Comprehend. Needless to say perhaps, but a rocking good time was had by all.
~~~~~~~
Something I found amusing, this past Saturday night I was hanging out with Madge watching various late-night televangelicals rock the mic on my (five-channel-receiving, rabbit-eared) tv. This was lots of fun - more fun than you probably think it was. Plus, there might have been alcohol involved. At the point where this one particularly sad, rather podgy woman was testimonializing about how wonderful it is to be one of the chosen few who get to know God personally, the following exchange transpired:
Sabitathica: She's never had a religious experience. She just oscillates between hyper-emotionalism and despondency.
Madge: And the Dunkin' Donuts.
The Sabitathiblog Science and Wildlife Department presents:
Things you, my dear reader, have in common with my fish:
1. You're not very bright.
2. You're plotting your escape.
3. You remain unaggressive, even when one of your tankmates has nibbled off your tail entire.
The Nunnery
8:14 PM
More quality time with Rashid last night, which was of course Saint Patrick's Day. Food and margaritas, then back to the Nunnery for some water (him), pale ale (me) and conversation (us).
The original plan was to 'get silly drunk' with M, but she's still in New York, her flight having been delayed due to weather. I'll see if I can talk her into getting silly drunk with me some other time.
Got up late today. I'm not telling you what time, so don't let's start with the twenty questions, shall we? What is it anyway, with you and all the time with the questions? It was pretty late though, that much I'll tell you.
But whatever, because yesterday were auditions, the last auditions before Fall semester, apart from a few stragglers - the occasional above-it-all bassoonist or a few deadline-blissfully-unaware double basses or whatever other riffraff the goddamn cat drags in. It was the largest scale audition day the Greatest Music School on the Whole of God's Green Earth has ever seen. . . and now it's over. It's no longer in my future or in my present which, thank god, e-nough already. So I'm not gonna be too hard on myself about getting up so late.
Spent quality time last night, Saint Patrick's Day Eve, with Rashid, whom you know, and Spengler and Redmond whom I'm sure you'll remember from earlier.
We met up at Sidebar and, four shots of Patron later, I was safely behind the wheel, on the move to some place in the highlands* where a friend of ours works, Hand in Hand I think it's called, which is a stupid name for a bar, or for anything else for that matter. The name should have been enough to tip us off that the bar itself was, in fact, also stupid. Too crowded, too loud, not really an atmosphere of people who're having fun, just people pretending to like places like this. Or maybe I'm just being autistic. So one quick shot of patron later and, like my boy Willie, we were on the road again, heading back to the Nunnery, where a fine time was had by all and there was much rejoicing.
*Kids, don't drink and drive.
Lunch today with Rashid at Slice on Poplar. What follows is a sliver of a conversation we had with our waitress, I think her name was Cara:
Cara: Do you know what you're going to have?
Sabitathica: Yeah, let me get my usual. . .
Cara: Whoa. You've got evil eyes.
Sabitathica: Oh god. . . No I don't. I just didn't get much sleep last night. I was up at fucking four-thirty this morning.
Rashid: Plus, he's sort of always sinister-looking.
Sabitathica: Oh yeah. Well, there's that too.
Just another undiscovered, down-on-her-luck opthademonologist waiting (tables) until her (intern)ship comes through. . .
And now, for your theater-going pleasure, a playlette:
Sabitathica: Work is busy right now, real fucking busy. Maybe I'll tell you about it, but later, okay?, not right now. Right now let's just relax and enjoy each other's company, what do you say? What? What was that? Did you just snicker? Oh, what, is just hanging out and unwinding and enjoying each other's company too much to ask or something? Whatever, listen, don't be difficult. If you're going to give me a hassle here . . . don't make me pull this car over.
You: Sabitathica, hey are you okay? What are you talking about?
Sabitathica: I'm fine. Shut up.
You: What? What's the matter with you? You're acting weird. Is your job making you act weird? Are you cracking under the pressure of auditions? Honestly, I wouldn't blame you if you were. I don't know how you do it. I remember this one time when I saw some particularly villainous auditions bring down a fully-grown fucking Zen lumberjack before. Reduced him to fucking marmalade, they did. Ghastly to witness. And he wasn't even autistic ...
Sabitathica: Stop talking please, you're being prattish. Go away. And I'll let you know when you're allowed to read my blog again, which is probably never. I've decided I'm cleaning house. All my old readers need to go ahead and fuck off. I want new readers, better readers. From here on out, I only want good-looking, self-aware, fiscally conservative readers. Everybody else has to go away. Beginning now. Thank you.
Exeunt.
Sick, slightly. Took the day off from work for the first time in several months. Woke up with M to the alarm and NPR, but put off beginning my day when I swallowed and found my throat had fallen host to evil spirits in the night. Being the good, observant catholic boy I was raised to be, I took some homeopathy and put in a call to my local parish's exorcist, who really ought to be here any minute, so I can't talk long.
Slept 'til noon-thirty, woke up, sat, brushed my teeth and washed my face. Then to the one and only Carroll St. Cafe to order a yogurt-based late breakfast, body unbathed, hair unwashed, looking like a (slightly) sick rock star. Or a slightly sick music school admissions officer, the line is so blurry there.
Ah, spring break! The time of year set aside by mother nature for non-terminating twitterpation and frolicking festivities! Or, alternatively, for working in an office so un-busy it'll make your ears bleed and so quiet you can hear your own pulse. You know, six of one, whatever...
And now I know, I know that it's true.
Dr. Bombay's
10:30 AM
Now playing on the in-house system: The theme to Get Smart, arranged for jazz combo, organ and horns. Sweet!
In other news, on Thursday I watched Inland Empire, the new David Lynch film. This film is rated 'OMGWTF' and is not recommended for those unable to accommodate a warehouse-full of ambiguity.
Sabitathica's official assesstimate: It had something to do with a woman. Unless it didn't.
And now playing over the inestimable Doctor B's sound system: Dino's version of Mambo Italiano, possibly my favorite song of the last six weeks. I just can't seem to get enough of it. If you aren't listening to it right now, you really should be. In fact, why don't you go ahead and download it right now, as we speak. Download it and listen to it. Go ahead, I'll wait.
Today was a day of auditions at the Greatest Music School on the Whole of God's Green Earth. Which means I was there early, managing the show. And now I’m tired. I’m sooo tired.
Here's a representative sampler of my morning for you:
At 9:20, after the panel of speakers had their say, but before both the music theory placement test and the parents’ meeting, a man approached me, a father to one of the auditionees. Here's what he said to me:
'I died a few years ago. I can remember what happened twenty years back, but I can't tell you what I had for breakfast this morning, so I’m going to be writing down everything you say. So . . . is there any way you can get my daughter a scholarship?'
What. the. hell?
Every audition day something bizarre happens, like some guy telling me he’s dead and can I give his daughter some money. Every time. The pattern suggested by events like this has led me to formulate
Sabitathica's Apophthegm: The more concentrated the event, the more oddness will be attracted to it.
I also got to see erstwhile buddy Natasha for the first time in a while, over a year I think. Her first words upon seeing me: You're old. Awww, what a sweet thing she is . . .
Oh, and props to my two assistants, Brendan and Diana (pronounced Deeana, and don't you forget it!) who were (and are) reliable and cheerful even while doing some of the necessary grunt work. And this despite the fact that I've fired them at least twice a day since August and regularly tell them to stop showing up for work.
. . . or kindly fuck off.
Every time I came to the end of a block and stepped off the goddamn curb, I had this feeling that I'd never get to the other side of the street. I thought I'd just go down, down, down, and nobody'd ever see me again.
This line, and you may recognize it, is Holden Caulfield having a Holden Caulfield moment. Holden has the disease, undiagnosed and unnamed, that I saw so much of in my high-school years and late teens on the coast, south of Boston. Almost all my friends had it growing up. Two of them even died needless, stupid deaths because of it, deaths unworthy even of far lesser people.
I got an email from an old friend which has been having a time-machine-like effect on me, a time-machine that only knows how to take you into your past and leave you there.
Niles was the first friend I made after my family left my childhood home to move closer to the city. He was the first and most significant friend of the second phase of my life. We had our first explorations of drinking together. Several times he took it upon himself to try and correct my almost impossible naivete in the area of sex (there were some very funny conversations). It was Niles who convinced me to pick up a musical instrument for the first time. And I was with him when I almost blew my thumb and first two fingers off my left hand with some sort of firework that he had rigged to, as he said, 'make the fuse last longer'.
Jules was different. Difficult, frustrating, creative, well-meaning, his horses eventually got away from him. His mind was always moving and he had a real gift for crisp observations. I lived with him in his rent-controlled house in Dorchester for a little while after I left school. We were in bands together, so many of them I can't even count, at least five or six, me a bass player, him a drummer which, if you know your music, is a traditionally sacred relationship if ever there was one.
These were good young men. No more confused than anybody else I knew. Male friendships are rarely mentioned in this culture, unless it's a ridiculous caricature on a sitcom.
~~~~~~~
10:22 PM
So now I'm thinking (for reasons both terrible and trivial) about Sylvia Plath and what she referred to as her bell jar. Sylvia grew up where I grew up, and she went to school where I went to school, in the Pioneer Valley in the middle of Massachusetts. Of course, she went to Smith; and, while I obviously did not, I did take two classes there. Combinatorics and Real Analysis. The combinatorics class was a joke, but it was that analysis class where I had a strange non-reoccurring experience toward the end of the semester.
The class discussion had for some reason digressed into the topic of voting systems, and we were working through a proof of either Gibbard-Satterthwaite or Arrow's Impossibility Theorem, I don't recall which, when, in my experience, the whole room temporarily receded and, for a spellbinding quarter-minute, the proof seemed actually to be about human psychology, and not about voting systems at all.
This was striking me as a Sylvia Plath-like moment. I don't know. Maybe there's something in the ivy at Smith that induces distressing transpersonal experiences. Either that or I'd been drinking before analysis class again.
Just got in from seeing Children of Men with Jennifer. Sabitathica's official assesstimate: Better than Cats!
Everybody I know: Hey, Sabitathica.
Sabitathica: Yes, what is it now?
Everybody I know: Who do you think's going to win the Superbowl?
Sabitathica: Prince. I think Prince is going to win the Superbowl.
Dr. Bombay's
8:35 AM
Now playing over the in-house system: my new least-favorite version of Mood Indigo. It is, if you can believe it, a cross between eighties hair-metal and barbershop. A genuine stylistic disaster area, ill-conceived from da capo. Someone should quietly wrap a full roll of yellow police tape around this song. But still, I have to say . . . it's fascinating in a morbid way, like slowing down near a car wreck, or witnessing an execution. It's hard to turn my ears away.
How to explain last night? Remember when I told you about my well-documented winter holiday? Well, it fell to Josh to take the whole goddamn variegated mess of footage and edit it together into a 26-minute film. Vlindinhauer, Vlindinhauer's wife M, Josh and I screened the world premier last night. Nota bene dear reader, that they three were all in Boston and I'm here in Bedlam- I mean Atlanta. So circumstances required us to video-conference the event.
There were at least two distinct successes last night:
1. The film itself was brilliant. I told Josh it's the best thing he's done that I'm aware of. It was so good we watched it twice.
2. The strangeness of videoconferencing a social event quickly became a source of entertainment in its own right.
Please don't ask me to explain all the reticulate meta-levels of hypercommunication that were inter-knitting each other at every turn last night. All I'll say is that the videoconference itself was being filmed. And it wasn't long before the film of the vidoeconference was being used in the videoconference.
Stir well. Repeat as necessary.
If that doesn't sound like fun to you . . . well, maybe that's why you weren't invited, sunshine.
Even if I were able to 1) reconstruct for myself and 2) explain to you the myriad levels of communication that were being juggled last night, like maybe by drawing you a Venn diagram or something, I wouldn't do it. I swear to god it would make your head explode.
~~~~~~~
Now playing: Naima by Coltrane. Once while I was at Hampshire I had the great pleasure of playing (bass on) this song with Yusef Lateef. Only, he had reworked it, putting it in 5/8.
I was reading today on the internet about alien abductions. Not a very well-known fact, but I used to date the daughter of possibly the top UFOlogist in the world, swear to god, back at Hampshire. This girl, her dad specialized in helping abductees cope with . . . you know, with being abductees and stuff. She used to say, with an eerie seriousness, that her dad knew so much about the aliens that the aliens definitely knew all about her dad, and that they probably knew about her, too. I asked her if that meant that the aliens knew about me as well because, you know, with her being my girlfriend and everything, but she didn't answer.
But I didn't start out meaning to read about alien abductions on the internet, honest. I was on Wikipedia, just sort of browsing amongst the shelves, when all of a sudden I found myself accidentally reading about aliens. Or alien abductions, really.
So if I were to tell you that I saw a UFO, would you hold it against me? Would I lose what meager measure of credibility I have with you? I ask because whenever I find myself telling people that I've seen a UFO (which, thankfully, is not frequently), they all, almost to a person, look at me like what I really said was that I'd seen the WMDs. What. Ever.
So I wrote a short play about it. I've even given you a part. Not the leading role, but I don't think you should be complaining about that right now. If you do a good job, maybe I'll write you a better part next time. Anyway, here's how it goes, with you playing the interrogator . . .
Sabitathica: I saw a UFO once.
You: That's ridiculous. Don't say that again.
Sabitathica: Okay. But which part of 'I saw a UFO' are you having difficulty with? That what I saw was unidentified, that it was flying, or that it was an object?
You: Oh.
See, wasn't that fun? And now that we've had this little chat, and I've dazzled you with my unassailable logic, and we've been in a play together and stuff, I feel like we're closer, like I can open up to you more. So in this exciting newfound spirit of forthcomingness, transparency and trust, I've decided to tell you a little more about the UFO I saw.
It was on Martha's Vineyard in 1988, on the coast, as you look north or north-east across Nantucket Sound. It was dark out, well after sunset, maybe 11 or 11:30 PM and I was standing on the beach. I was living on the Vineyard that summer. I looked up into the sky and saw a bright white-blue light, about the same shape and size as the average streetlight appears to be from maybe 100 feet away.
It was moving, not terribly fast, downward, earthward, and tacking north. And then the strange thing happened. Without decelerating, it completely changed direction and moved, still northward, but now suddenly and with great velocity up, away from the ground. It was gone from my sight very quickly, in less than two seconds, maybe less than one.
~~~~~~~
Anyway, segueing gracelessly into other things that're out of this world, I'm listening to Paul's piano on Drive My Car right now.
My last serious girlfriend didn't know all that much about the Beatles. In fact, there was one time when we were talking about them, and the phrase 'All Five Beatles' came out of her mouth. And no, she wasn't counting any of the people that you sometimes hear referred to as the Fifth Beatle, like George Martin or Billy Preston or, inappropriately, Pete Best. No. She really thought, and granted it may have only been for a moment, but still, that there were five boys in the band. It was all I could do to remain civil. I think I made her sleep on the couch that night.
All right. I don't care who you are, or what you do, or what you wear. I don't care how luminous you are. I don't even care what music you sing along to when you're alone inside your car. The truth is, wherever you may be right now, whatever temperature it is there, it's colder here. A lot colder.
As we discussed earlier, I have a low threshold for any sort of heat-recession or heat-starvation. Atlanta's like what, only 35 degrees latitude? And it's officially uninhabitable today. Like Mars, but you know, with plumbing and air. Cold plumbing and air.
I think I read somewhere that science was going to build a giant dome over the earth, so the whole planet can finally be indoors and we can control the weather. In the future you can rotate a dial on your bedroom wall and North America will get a couple degrees warmer.
The Nunnery
7:28 PM
Listening to a record Jennifer just burned (if you're from the RIAA, substitute 'bought') for me. Several Arrows Later by a band called Matt Pond PA. A singer-songwriter with a likeable, tight, understated band, good song structures, and his voice is growing on me. It reminds me of the record Steve McQueen by Prefab Sprout from 1985. High praise, that.
Here's some photographs for all you shy, beautiful people out there in radioland. Cheer up, freaks! If you don't start looking like you're having fun, there will be serious repercussions! Or else!
This was Sunday afternoon during the rain squall, facing south.
This is Minnie, the neighborhood cat I said about earlier. This was maybe a half-hour ago. She wanted to come in after I returned from sloughing the garbage/recycling to the curb. It's been a while since she's graced the Nunnery and it's good to have her back.
And here she is again on my lap.
Good kitty.
Take a moment, if you will, and check out the clip that someone posted a link to in a recent comment. The clip is a succinct but chilly statement on mortality and sea-worship featuring none other than Vlindinhauer Haverhast himself! Quite literally in the flesh. Keep in mind that this was recorded in the middle of the month of January, north of Cape Cod. Sabitathica's favorite part: the barely audible 'Hail Poseidon!' before communing with the deeps.
I'm reading Hapworth 16, 1924, J.D. Salinger's last published story. After The Catcher in the Rye, after Franny and Zooey, and after both Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: an Introduction, it was published only in The New Yorker in June of 1965, and never collected into a book. I knew someone who had a copy of that issue of The New Yorker, a close friend, now dead by his own hand. We were both Salinger-crazy together. He let me borrow it, the New Yorker, so I was able to read the story in it's original context.
Hapworth takes the form of a long letter, written by a 7-year old Seymour Glass. He's at a summer camp and he's injured his leg. He's using one afternoon of his convalescence to write a letter to his family back in New York City. If you've read some Salinger, you might know that Seymour is a genius. He's enlightened, or he's getting very close. Reading it is resonating with lots of good memories from the early nineties.
Anyway, fuck all that. I went to Guitar Center this morning to information-gather and possibly purchase a firewire mixer. Why do I ever go there? I've never been in there without having to witness terrible guitarists playing loudly and looking around to see who's impressed. God dammit, go get laid buddy. Today it was a bassist, which is better becuase with the lower frequencies, the jarring, misplaced, meaningless notes are less arrow-like and piercing, but it's also worse, because bass was my principle instrument for twelve years and I'm sensitive to lack of care in that area.
It was a real pleasure over winter holiday to get a chance to play guitar with two bassists I can relate to, though in very different ways, Vlindinhauer and Josh.
The guy at Guitar Center, the salesman who attached himself to me when I walked in, barely knew what he was talking about. He had to ask the internet whether the mixer I was looking at sent audio pre- or post- effects and faders. He got so involved with the website he was on that he began talking to me less and less, until eventually he stopped talking to me altogether.
He asked first one, and then another of his fellow salesmen to stand next to him and stare at the internet with him. Together, the three Zombified merchant-peddlers stood close to each other and did nothing but look at the screen. I wandered away after two minutes of this and left the store after ten. Not one of the three looked up from the monitor long enough to see their customer leaving. That place is bizarre.
The Nunnery
6:01 PM
First, my back still hurts. Thanks for thinking of me.
And yes, I went to a chiropractor and got adjusted, but it didn't work, not completely. Some of the pain is gone, but not all of it. Here's a snippet of conversation from my time with the chiropractor:
Chiropractor: You look good.
Sabitathica: Yeah, thanks.
Chiropractor: You look like you've been taking care of yourself.
Sabitathica: Yeah, I have. Thanks.
Chiropractor: So, how's your daughter?
Sabitathica: What?
He must have me confused with someone else.
In other news that has nothing to do with my back, I saw Pan's Labyrinth last night. Official status: recommended.
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My Guitar Craft friend Jonathan B. visited Atlanta a few months back and stayed here at the Nunnery. While here, he told me about a video project he was working on. It sounded interestingso I told him to send me a copy on DVD. Well, it just arrived a few days ago and I've checked it out and I have to say, this shit is seriously fucked up, like I can't tell you. Official status: Not recommended for epileptics or other human beings. But if you're adventurous and don't fall into either of the two previously mentioned categories, let me know and I'll ask him if it's okay if I send out a few copies. It's brilliant. You'll hate it.
The Nunnery
4:00 PM
Just got in from a 1:10 showing of Night at the Museum with Michelle, sans her husband. Sabitathica's official review: 'It was kind of like Doctor Zhivago, only different'.
I injured my back yesterday, doing absurdly little. Around T4 or T5, so it's hard for me to get to. A few years ago I was both a) dating my chiropractor and b) living with a massage therapist. Sweet, huh? Through osmosis alone, I learned much about how my spine works. Plus the fact that I was studying to be a teacher of the Alexander Technique before I accepted my current job. The problem is though, I can't reach T4/T5 with enough leverage to adjust myself. Anybody who knows something about how to fix backs is welcome to give it a shot.
Last night I was over at Rashid's. We ordered a pizza and watched the first two hours of the new season of 24. It was okay. Kind of like Belle de Jour, only different. After it was over, I asked R to follow my instructions and try to adjust my back. He did a very good job, but it wasn't ready yet. I'm still in discomfort.
Oh, and a tree hit my house this afternoon. Swear to god. It's mostly on my neighbor's house, but it's a little bit on the Nunnery. I saw it when I got home just now. It's leaning against the roof of my porch, nothing broken that I could see. I suppose I should go try to lift it off the porch roof but, have you heard? I injured my back.
~~~~~~~
4:42 PM
I'm going outside now to have a look at that uprooted tree, so I'm going to love you and leave you with this photograph. I took it at Vlindinhauer's months ago, at sunup.
Dr. Bombay's
11:25 AM
The rest of yesterday was spent low key. Taking it easy, not drinking. I talked to my sister, K. She was at home, her home, waiting for her daughter, my goddaughter, to get back from visiting with her daddy. K and I talked for about an hour, on two topics, mostly: 1) her job and 2) our family, with no lack of material on either front.
I had planned on using that phone call to straighten out a problem that came up with the Bath and Body Works gift certificate I sent her via email. The problem? Apparently I had it sent to the wrong email address. An old one, one she doesn't use anymore. As I say, I was going to straighten it out, but I got interrupted by a phone call from Regina, an old friend/girlfriend I haven't heard from in about a year and a half. We caught up for a little while, then I returned to 'taking it easy, not drinking'.
~~~~~~~
12:12 PM
Just got a phone call from my parents. They seemed happy. Which reminds me, I was reading about a 10-year study where these researchers from U Washington developed a mathematical model which predicts (with 94% accuracy!) which marriages will survive and which will end in divorce. The URL is http://marriage.about.com/cs/longlasting/a/math.htm.
A key finding: 'Couples with the best chance for long lasting marriages are couples who have a sense of humor, are affectionate, able to lovingly tease, and take interest in one another.' Wow, thanks science!
Now playing over the in-house system: You Belong to Me. Which is a coincidence, because I woke up with this song in my head this morning, I was singing it in the shower, and I haven't been able to shake it all day.
Dr. Bombay's
3:45 PM
It's January 13th, traditionally an important day. I drank too much last night. Went to Sidebar after work. It was the regular crew, meaning Jason, Rashid and Sabitathica. And Michelle joined us for a little while before she had to get back to her husband. She and I made loose plans for the three of us to take in a movie this weekend. We wanted Pan's Labyrinth, but apparently it's not been released yet, aside from an advanced screening. Then, a pleasant surprise, Spengler and Redmond joined us as well. We left Sidebar to go for margaritas at the La Fonda in my hood, Candler Park. There we were joined by Sheila E. and her friend Sarah. Rashid held court over tostones on one of his favorite topics: the relationship of the created to it's creator and how that relationship evolves with time. If you've never heard Rashid riff on this subject, you really should. He pulls in cybernetics, the future of mankind, procreation, and artificial intelligence, both the scientific field of study and the Spielberg film, which I always have to remind him, sucked.
From there we went back to the Nunnery, where we were joined by Jason C., a guy I've always liked, but've never had over to the Nunnery before. There was much rejoicing. So much, in fact, that I didn't get to bed until, what, 5:00? It was a night of many statistically improbable events, including Redmond and myself smoking cigars in the kitchen, something I haven't done in, if I had to guess, at least four years, maybe more.
The Nunnery was a mess, by the way, in case you were wondering. For instance, there's rather large locks of my hair still on the floor of the bathroom from when I misguidedly (pronounced 'drunkenly') tried to cut my own hair before the winter holiday. Luckily, and as I've posted before, Vlindinhauer was able to cut my hair properly in Boston. Everyone was too polite to mention the state my bathroom floor is in.
I woke up twice today. The first time, about 10:30 AM, prematurely. We drank Patron tequila last night after we got back to the Nunnery, and Sweetwater 420. I'm sure I'm the first person in the history of, you know, stuff, to not realize until the next morning how far things went the night before. I tried to wake up at 10:30, tried to get it together, sit, etc., but it was all in vain. I don't usually let my body do whatever it wants, but this morning I did. I went back to bed until about 3:30 PM. But first, and apropos of cybernetics and the future of mankind and stuff, I watched the pilot episode of Futurama. Rashid would be proud.
Suzanne W., an old friend and colleague, called this morning. We're playing phone tag. She's back in Atlanta with her husband John and their son after having lived elsewhere for a few years.
Moving chronologically widdershins, work yesterday was the culmination of a damn busy week. I won't bore you, but suffice to say the music school kiddies are as charming and adorably high maintenance as ever. My day began with a meeting at which I had to advise a student that she wouldn't be allowed to continue her studies in the school of music, due to poor grades. Things picked up momentum from there. In one nice moment, I went to Slice for lunch and bumped into Jason and Heather J. Heather said something about the 'cornflower blue tie' I was wearing, which, I'm sure you know, is a reference to Fight Club. Three cheers for Fight Club! Huzzah!
Let's see. A grown man crying in my office. My computer still on the fritz. Students buzzing everywhere. My assistant off god knows where. Yep, it must be Thursday. In Microsoft Word today, every time I tried to open a document, my email would open instead. Swear to god.
Dean Martin is singing. Have you noticed how he gets a little saccharine at times? His trills showboaty, some of his choices questionable? He doesn't have the artistry that Frank had, but that's usually not a problem, because his charm comes through loud and clear. And his version of Volare is the one I remember from my boyhood, spent so far away in the Italian countryside (read: Boston).
I took this photograph when I got home today, from the back porch. Nel blu, dipinto di blu.
Here's another photograph for you. I took it outside Vlindinhauer's, just after sunrise, facing east across the Atlantic. Vlindinhauer likes to point out that if you wade out far enough and begin swimming, sooner or later you'll reach Portugal.
On my last flight into Logan, I was able to pick out V's house from the air, through a starboard window. I picked up my camera because I thought it would be nice to send him a picture of his house from the air. I picked it up, and learned that its battery had died. I'd been taking pictures earlier in the flight and used up the last of it's precious lifejuice. Maybe next time.
7:24 PM
The Nunnery
You're going to tell me it's stupid to write about the same record over and over and I'm going to tell you to fuck off. That's right. It's Astral Weeks.
Your argument is based on a false premise anyway, because Astral Weeks is not so much a record as it is a religion encoded in sound; or a secret handshake used by initiates to recognize each other. The bass player on this album alone is worthy of your whole attention. And how to describe the quality of Van's voice? Beside You? Ballerina? He's a natural philosopher, an alchemist. There's a month's worth of wandering in the woods in his voice.
It doesn't matter if you don't believe me. I'm still going to show you a picture I took of a butterfly last summer on my birthday.
Work today was something else. Welcoming all the kiddies back after their long winter naps. It was good to see them.
~~~~~~~
10:55 PM
Now playing: In the Wee Small Hours by Sinatra. The song is Glad to Be Unhappy.
Unrequited love's a bore
And I've got it pretty bad
But for someone you adore
it's a pleasure to be sad
As I remember reading, he made this record after separating from Ava Gardner. I don't know if there's any truth to that, but it's pretty fucking melancholy music. Feeling sad? Broken up? Depressed? Don't listen to this. Walk on by.
