Day 55

Some talk of spending the afternoon looking at furniture on the West Side.  We need a new dining table, so it's got to be done.  Still, looking at furniture is not among the tasks I look forward to.  Maybe the dining table will present itself within the first twenty minutes and we can spend the rest of the time dancing and singing.  Seems unlikely.

I of course ended up watching some of the Royal Wedding, despite making no effort to do so.  Much like the NFL Draft.  It's something I would never care about ordinarily, but which, through the mass efforts of a large portion of society, I've somehow come to care about.  ESPN's relentless plugging of their own coverage of the draft is done, I know, to help their ratings.  In three weeks--maybe three days--no one will care who picked who in the third round.  Still I found myself watching for almost an hour yesterday, enduring the loathsome Mel Kiper just so I could learn where various people I've never heard of and don't care about will end up playing football.  Very odd.  

Day 54

Last night I watched The Friends Of Eddie Coyle, a movie about hoods and crooks in South Boston in the 70s.  Robert Mitchum stars as a man about to go to prison who's trying to find out ways to avoid doing time.  He's "stood up" for his criminal buddies in the past, but now he's starting to wonder about the price of being so honorable.  A young young Peter Boyle (of Everybody Loves Raymond fame) is a bartender who makes extra money on the side by talking to the cops.  For me the best scenes were the ones of the bank robbery (at the beginning) and the various interactions between the gun broker and the people buying guns from him.  In mood, it felt a little to me like Dog Day Afternoon, though of course they were directed by different films and shot in different cities.  Interesting too, that in a movie about crime and criminals, only two people get shot (and one a very minor character) in the whole film.  The first death doesn't even happen till halfway in.  As I told my wife, if this had been made today, the body count would have hit twenty by the first hour mark.

Since I seem to like to try and read as many books at the same time as possible I've also started The Great Enigma, a collection of poems by Tomas Transtormer, and Fall Higher, Dean Young's newest book.  Last night I also read about half of Rilke's Letters To A Young Poet.  Worked from about 3-9 last night, which is always leads to my best ideas.  (The longer you sit and think about something, the better it goes.  Graph of working/ideas vs time is not linear but exponential.  Momentum is everything).

I wanted to make some predictions about the NFL Draft (a subject, I know, you're all eager to hear about).  I usually only make predictions about quarterbacks, and my record in the past has been, let's say, checkered.  Specifically I predicted the following:
-Matt Leinart would be a good to great player
-Jay Cutler would be a great player
-Vince Young would be a bust
-Colt McCoy would be a successful starter

So far it's too early to say for sure about Colt McCoy.  I was right about Vince Young (to my everlasting delight), wrong about Matt Leinart (REALLY wrong, too) and sort of wrong about Jay Cutler.  He's been okay, but not great, obviously.  So given that I have no track record or no expertise, why make more predictions?  I don't know.  But I'm going to:
-Cam Newton: major bust.  (I have a bias against 'athletic' quarterbacks who have character issues and/or are rumored to be fairly stupid.  I have to say, too, that I REALLY dislike the guy, and that probably enters in.  Still, I think in three years he'll be on the bench or out of the league altogether.  When your first weapon is your feet, you tend not to learn to read defenses until it's too late.)
-Jake Locker: I think he'll make it.  A solid starter for three or four years, that's my pick.
-Ryan Mallett: I want to predict that he will do better than a lot of people think.  I know he's got character issues, and has the mobility of a stoned turtle.  Still, I think he's got the arm and the attitude to be, if not a huge success, then at least more of a success than people think.  (As of this writing he still hasn't been drafted, however; it might depend on what system he ends up in).

Okay, make your bets about the next season accordingly.

Addendum: This article in Slate describes a company that tries to evaluate potential greatness in draft picks based on how they speak.  Worth a read.

Day 53

Dante has reached the circle of Saturn, home to the contemplatives (monks, founders of monastic orders).  He's asked about predestination, a favorite subject.  The question of how God can know everything and yet still give human beings free will is one that comes up several times in the Paradisio.  The answer gets complicated, especially for people who aren't versed in Scholastic Theology--or, I guess, any theology.  I am one of those people.  But, to summarize: we have free will.  So, be comforted!

Many new books arrived yesterday.  It's always a happy occasion.  I've started reading Howard's End, which I read last in 2002.  I hadn't remembered how great it was.  I'm 50 pages in and am already loving it.   There's a kindness, a gentleness, to Forster's tone that I find especially soothing.  His characters have flaws but he doesn't condemn them for them.

I took some pictures of our flowers yesterday but none of them really captured their splendor.  Still, I'll try to post them anyway.  Only seven more days till I've blogged for sixty straight days.  The mind reels...

Day 52

Work on Act I now involves turning sketches and drafts into polished scenes.  Polishing is taking much longer than I anticipated; all the micro problems I'd forgotten about in working out the large scale structure now reappear.  Writing a mix of engineering and physics.  In engineering you have a set problem--a chasm that needs a bridge, and a pile of material.  Your goal is to use the material to make a bridge, a nice-looking bridge ideally.  Sometimes, though, you're in pure science mode (physics).  You have a chasm and you have no material; before you can figure out how to make a bridge you have to figure out where to get the material to build it with.  Maybe you have to make it in a lab.  Maybe you have to carve it out of the rocks. But that will take other tools, and you have no tools.  Maybe you should just walk out onto the air above the chasm and hope you don't fall?

But you will fall.  You will.

New work on relationship: we've made a new rule that we must eat together at dinner table at least every other night.  Pattern of getting home and watching TV while we eat precludes conversation which is I guess the glue that holds it all together.  Sitting at table is helped by recent furniture purchases which make the dining room area less gloomy and underdeveloped.  Wife has found a great mirror which has an almost rococo frame, curving and ornate.  Helps to undercut the room's previous austerity.

Flowers are in bloom everywhere in yard.  Roses, carnations, even our cherry tree has come back to life. I should take some photos; our garden is probably the house's best feature.  We also have a beehive in the tree in the backyard.  At one point our gardener told us he could get us honey from it.  That promise seems to have fallen by the wayside.  That's fine.  We don't really eat all that much honey anyway.

Day 51

I just can't help feeling like you should all be listening to The Joy Formidable.  And the reason I can't help feeling that is because it's true.  True true true.  Welsh people sing better than the rest of us.  This is well, well documented.  Now, I'll concede that their album (The Big Roar) has only four GREAT songs.  That's fine.  I'm not saying it's Outside. I'm not saying it's Low.  I'm not saying it's McGarnigle and the Peasnips go to Jackson (Allman Bros Bootleg).  But it's better than Neon Bible.  It's better than the xxWhoever.  It's better than Pavement or Dinosaur Jr (and I like Pavement!  And it's not Jay M's fault he's not Neil Young).  I know: it isn't 1997.  L Barlow is no longer extant.  That's fine.  Everybody's fine.  But why aren't you listening?  (As Christopher Walken): "Why aren't you calling?"  Look at this woman--with her bleached white hair...surely she's got passion.  I need to find a video for "Abacus."  That's their best song.

Day 50

This is short and photo-heavy, but, hey, I've posted something for 50 straight days.  If I want to go to photos for one day, I'm entitled.

The purple jacket was worn over the holidays and was, I have to say, entirely necessary (lots of rain and cold in Houston).  I like that it makes him look like a Russian cadet.

The napping stuff ('action photos' as we call them around here) features Bink in a car seat.  The car seat had to be installed and was waiting around the house, so Binks nestled into it.  The 'long white sausage' shot in the middle was taken while he slept.  He woke up as I prepared to take the photo.  As he sleeps, he extends himself into poses that are pretty remarkable.

Day 49

Last night we went out and celebrated our anniversary so I woke late this morning, somewhat the worse for wear.  Right now I'm sitting around eating Carl's Jr hash browns and a sausage and egg sandwich.  The cure for most ailments, I think we'd all agree.

When we got home last night my wife took over the music playlist.  I was glad for that to happen; I don't want to impose my tastes and preferences on the house and I worry that I do that more than is right.  On the other hand, someone has to put on music and usually she doesn't want to.  Last night she did.  And it was something.

I believe the playlist went something like this: Air Supply (1 song), Styx (1 song), 50 Cent (4 or 5 songs), Kenny Rogers (1 song), Stevie Nicks (5 songs), George Strait (60 songs.  Well no, but it felt like it).  Oh, and there was some Juice Newton in there too.  ("Playing with the Queen of Hearts.")  Maybe, also, some Bread.  (She loves Bread.  Really.)  It was really something.  I harass my wife about her love for (bad) music of the late 70s and early 80s, and last night it was really in effect.  I think it all started because we were debating who originally wrote the song "Angel of the Morning."  That lead to a wikipedia moment (turns out it was actually WRITTEN by Angelina Jolie's uncle, a songwriter no one has heard of, in 1968, but it's been performed by a bunch of people, including the aforementioned Juice Newton) which lead to the wife deciding to see if she had Juice Newton on her computer, which, of course, she did.  It was a little like being in a roller rink in 1980, with the 50 Cent thrown in just as a break.

Of course the Stevie Nicks was outstanding.  ("Just like a white-wing dove...."  Yes!)  Her voice never ceases to astonish me.  She could stand up there and sing about getting a haircut and it'd be worth listening to.  (Especially if it were a really wild haircut.  Like, maybe, she got dreadlocks?).  I hadn't heard most of the George Strait, and though I generally liked the songs, they were pretty mournful.  (Gist of every George Strait song: I'm alone, I'm drinking, you're not here.  And, sometimes, I'm on the road.  Or you're on the road.  Someone's on the road, though, and I'm drinking.  Alone.  And, I'm old and lonely.  And alone.  And drinking.  It's not necessarily festive 'celebrate our years of love together' music.)

Anyway, a good time was had by all.  Tonight we're meeting some friends of hers from work at a Soul Food restaurant in North Hollywood.  Should be interesting.

Day 48

After about two months off, I'm back to reading Dante again.  Every morning I read a page from the Paradisio.  I started last fall; right now I'm on Canto XXI, a little more than halfway through.  I'm reading it in a facing-page translation; otherwise I'd be working on it for another year.  I try and get to a point, going back and forth, where I can read the Italian straight through without having to go back and consult the English.

The section yesterday involved an explanation of why certain of the virtuous pagans can, in fact, be saved. In the Inferno Dante famously consigns everyone who lived before the time of Christ--no matter how virtuous they were--to hell.   Socrates, Plato, Aristotle--they're all found in an antechamber at the start of the Inferno.  Nothing too terrible happens there, but, still.  It is hell.  And so the idea, obviously, is that without knowing Christ and undergoing Christian rituals (baptism, etc) no one can come to heaven.

Except that now, in Canto XX of the Paradisio we find out that, in fact, there are a few people born before the time of Christ who got to heaven.  The Roman Emperor Trajan, for one.  And also, a minor character in Virgil's Aenied, named Ripenus.  Dante's explanation for how this is possible is to me less interesting than this unfinished, contradictory aspect of the poem.  Unlike the first two books, the Paradisio contains a number of sections that seem to differ theologically from the past two books.  The accepted explanation seems to be that he died before he had time to revise the Paradisio and perhaps resolve some of its apparent problems.

It is not by any stretch a page-turner.  In fact, I'd say it's up there with the most difficult things I've ever read.  Still, there are some rewards.  Dante's certainty that there is a vast angelic order overlying (and undergirding) all our acts and thoughts, the infinitely intricate apparatus that is Scholastic philosophy, though frequently confusing and occasionally incomprehensible, imparts, at its best, a profound calm.  They make belief seem possible.  If someone could dedicate fifteen years (or whatever) of his life to writing this immense celebration of the Christian faith, then maybe, you think (I think), there's something there.  No one builds cathedrals in honor of atheism, as the saying goes.  The Commedia is a cathedral.  Spending thirty minutes in it every day is generally worth one's time.

Tonight we're going out to celebrate the anniversary.  I have to tutor today--it's been light this month--and I guess I'll work the rest of the day.  I should read up on Japanese internment during WWII.  That's what my student this afternoon is writing about.  A subject I know nearly nothing about.

You Make Me Sleep So Badly, Invisible Friend

I'm getting more obsessed.  They're coming to New York on April 29th.  I'd go if I lived there.   Hell, if I lived on the East Coast.

This is music to get overwhelmed by.  Turn it up; make the video full-screen.  Have a shot of engine oil.  Let the joy build up....

Day 47

I've managed to teach the Bink a new trick ("high five") which always puts him in a good mood.  The effort of struggling to learn and being rewarded when he does it correctly imparts a structure to his life, I think, and we all like structure.  Also he gets a lot of treats.  Everytime he gets the trick right he gets a cheerio.  (Or two, if he does it exceptionally well). At this point he can do it more or less perfectly (although he still can't do without lunging forward with his entire body--still can't just bat my hand with his paw, the rest of him motionless).  He's a smart little bear.

I've been listening to a great new band, a video of whom I hope to find and post for your enjoyment.  They're called The Joy Formidable.  Sort of anthemic intense slightly dissonant version of...I don't know?...the Cranberries.  They're way less poppy than that.  The woman who sings sounds a little like Shirley Manson as well, I guess.  I'll see if I can hunt down some of their stuff.

Yesterday I watched the first half of a Swedish movie called Together.  Movie's about a collective/commune of young idealistic men and women living in a suburb somewhere in Sweden in the 70s.  Told from the vantage of two children who are forced to move in to the commune when their parents split up (their mother is the sister of a commune member).  Somewhat disturbing (though probably not intended to be) but it did feel very honest about what it'd be like to live a true communal life.  Lots of jealousy, bickering, tension, chaos.  One member has resolved to be a lesbian, in order to free herself from patriarchal control.  Another has dropped out of college to become a welder, in order to show solidarity with the working class.  Serious conversations about what will happen when 'the revolution comes' occur frequently.  Of course it's a terrible, and thoroughly frightening, environment to raise children.  Kind of reminded me of the two years I lived in Berkeley, though of course we all had our own homes.

Okay, off to work.

Day 46

Many strange half dreams this morning, involving KT and others.  Why do most of my strongest memories of the past involve regret?  "Things done wrong or for others harm," as it were.  I'm fairly certain that the people I used to be close with, the ones I dream about, think about, regret my actions toward, must also have mistreated me in some ways, at some point.  But that's not what I remember.  I remember an ex-gf, in grad school, giving me a paper she had written, on fetishism in "The Metamorphosis", and me disdainfully exposing all the flaws in its argument.  Probably not good idea for me to have dated someone in English Literature field.

Had semi-idea this morning about Moby Dick (he's up, in my increasingly desultory lecture series on the Western Canon).  To do with the allegorizing nature of the book.  Everything in Moby Dick is made to stand for, to mean, something else.  Candles, coins, a sextant, whatever gets brought up is immediately made an exemplum of some act or virtue.  A bit like the old medieval bestiaries, in that way.  But the whale, in Ahab (and Melville's) description, cannot be made to fit into a simple allegory.  He is too large for metaphor.  They're applied, but they don't stick.  He resists them; he means too much.  And for this reason, he must be destroyed.

* * *

My 4th anniversary is today.  (The traditional gift if flowers--it's your flower anniversary, in other words.  That strikes me as odd.)  My wife and I had our first date in 2005; by the end of this year we will have been together in some form or other for six years.  A public blog, read by the hundreds of millions of people who come here every day, is not in my mind a suitable place to talk about your love for your wife.  And love itself is a complicated, varying, constantly reshaped and reshaping kind of thing.  There's a sense in society in which the romance of married people is less talked about, less understood, less celebrated than the romance of people who are just starting to fall in love.  (Many many movies about people getting together; hardly any about staying together).  It's a cliche, but no one writes about what comes after 'happily ever after.'  Because it's too large, and too messy, and too private.

Typing in a new quote in the space above the blog's name up above, I was reminded of a night we spent together.  It was the day of my brother's wedding, so my wife-to-be and I had been dating about nine months.  She got very sick at the wedding and went home immediately after it was over.  I stayed up and went to a bar with some people and got pretty...uhm...riled up.  I got back to my apartment at 2 am, where she was sound asleep, fired up with the need to watch David Bowie videos.  For some reason, I insisted on watching the videos right then, at 2 AM, with the music up loud.  Even though she was asleep.  In fact, I think I may have woken her up and insisted she get up and watch them with me.  To share in the joy.  Which joy I don't think she felt as deeply as I did, at that moment in time.

But she did get up and watch them, without complaint.  I think we actually had fun doing it, though to be honest the night is pretty hazy.  Now on one hand, that story reveals me to be sort of an inconsiderate jerk, I know.  On the other hand, it shows that we were well-suited for each other, since she was basically fine to get up and watch Bowie at 2 am.  [As she should be!!!! (And so should you all, out there....)]

Well this is going off into a rambling incoherent place, a place I must try and avoid.  Happy Anniversary, Honey!  I guess the gift this year will have to be just flowers, but next year (number five)--it's the wooden anniversary.  Wood!  So that's something to look forward to....