Queueing theory

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.

Death standing up

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.

Ars Moriendi

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.)

Please advance to the next frame when you hear the beep . . .

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.

Photographs

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 . . .

Sixty before they speak to anyone.

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.