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.

Neptune, Titan, stars can frighten.

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.

Between the outstretched hand and the fruit.

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.

Hilarity Does Not Ensue

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).

Fragment (consider revising)

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.

Snakes, lots of them and dangerous

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.

Low

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!

No lunch for the wicked.

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'.