Bloglet, the gentleman's mock turtle soup -- Moss made it sweeter than myrrh ash and dhoup
Two incidents:
"Is this Barnes and Nobles? I walked in without looking at the sign."
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{customer is buying a Dover Thrift edition of Shaw's Major Barbara)
Cashier: "Oh, you don't want that version. They shorten their books."
Me: "What? No they don't." (She mixing 'em up with Reader's Digest?)
Her: "Yes they do. I had to write a paper on the Five Dialogues, and I bought the Dover one instead of the teacher's and all the words were different."
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(1)
07:31:19 PM,Wednesday 20 October 2004
I want me some Iris Murdoch. Dunno quite why; just in the mood. I've narrowed it down to A Word Child or The Sea, The Sea. Which should it be? Preferably one with lots of queers and Plato. (Or is that redundant?)
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03:44:43 PM,Wednesday 20 October 2004
AND many voices marshalled in one hymn
Wound through the night, whose still translucent moments
Lay on each side their breath; and the hymn passed
Its long, harmonious populace of words
Between the silvery silences, as when
The slaves of Egypt, like a wind between
The head and trunk of a dismembered king
On a strewn plank, with blood and footsteps sealed,
Vallied the unaccustomed sea._
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(4)
11:25:59 AM,Wednesday 20 October 2004
I do not like thee, Giant F------ Thing On My Face.
The reason why I cannot place.
But this I know, an' it please your Grace:
I do not like thee, Giant F------ Thing On My Face.
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(3)
11:02:11 AM,Wednesday 20 October 2004
My student loan company's website is hosted on callipygos.pheaa.org. I find this intensely, hysterically unsettling.
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(1)
09:33:47 PM,Tuesday 19 October 2004
"I'm looking for this book. Can't quite remember the title. 'The' something..."
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(9)
03:27:29 PM,Tuesday 19 October 2004
Capiche?
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(2)
10:02:46 AM,Saturday 16 October 2004
I dropped by K.'s place to kiss her goodnight before heading uptown, and there was this old guy with an old fiddle, busking at her stop -- he was playing the first part of "The Irish Washerwoman" over and over again, and sounded pretty terrible, but who am I to judge? When I came back down the stairs, all recharged and grinning, he was proffering his fiddle at everyone within reach, asking if they played. They all shook their heads and stared at the ground. I said I did, and he put it in my hands. "Play, play!" I mangled a little Bach for a couple seconds. "Do you know the Irish Washerwoman? Can you teach me?" I started sawing it out (I was sick of that song by 6th grade), but he stopped me. "Slower! And in this key, this key." He demonstrated pizzicato under his arm (he didn't quite have the hang of the bow, was a big part of his problem). We went back and forth a bit. "I hear you play, and I sound better, see? You play more, and I play even better." "Yeah, sounds good. You should keep at it. It's fun." My train came, and I tried to board, but he held it out again. "Play a little more. Just a little more." Man... I hadn't had my own violin near me since summer, and I hadn't thought about how much I missed it 'til I had his old beaten-up thing under my fingers. I waited out three trains' worth. His name, he said, was John Trabolta, and he was from Shanghai. No, just kidding -- Santo Domingo. He had me play Hava Nagila and La Bamba and tried to teach me Yellow Bird and was disappointed that I couldn't do The Devil Went Down to Georgia and then I did a little out of one of my old Suzuki books and then the fourth train came and I handed it off to him. "Keep playing!" I yelled. "I will!" he yelled back.
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(5)
12:19:12 AM,Friday 15 October 2004
Made a new mix.
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(1)
11:37:51 AM,Wednesday 13 October 2004
Covet.
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(2)
12:09:10 AM,Wednesday 13 October 2004
The church where we saw the operas had some lovely stained glass, but I felt like an ignant heathen for not knowing which of the apostles was which based on their respective iconographies. I feel a little less shamefaced about it now; this stuff is roody confusing.
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(1)
12:49:24 AM,Tuesday 12 October 2004
I want to develop a quick personal cipher system that can be worked either in one's head or on a little bit of scrap paper. Key optional. Where should I start?
At work, we have these little magnetic bed things over which we're supposed to swipe the book spines to let them go through the alarm gates without causing a ruckus. I like playing with them. I have a big steel ball bearing and a little steel tuning ork, and I slide the one along the other and roll them all about and have the best time. But what's surprising to me is that, under the influence of the magnetic field, the tuning fork is so much more attracted to the ball bearing than either is to the magnet itself, that I can lift one of them off its bed by touching them with the other. That seems counter-intuitive, doesn't it? I mean, I know that there's a node of amagnetism right at the center of the field, and so I should expect the field to be stronger all around it than at its focus, but it seems to be more that, no matter where I put the two steel objects, they exert a stronger influence over each other than the magnet does over either of them. I would have thought that, in a battle between the three of them, the magnet would win and catch everything else to it, even if it also caused the objects under its sway to be weakly attracted to each other. But it's the opposite. Can anyone explain why this is?
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(14)
12:48:55 AM,Tuesday 12 October 2004
Went to the recorder play-in on Saturday, which was loads of fun, though I got mistaken for a middle-schooler. Had the most fantastic Sunday known to man -- bagels and lox and capers and fresh cream cheese and loads of other amazing stuff for breakfast, Blow's Venus and Adonis and Purcell's Dido and Aeneas in a big old church for lunch, and lovely Thai food for dinner, all of it with my best girlie by my side. Freakin' ruled. My work schedule is up in the air for a week or two more, which is a little obnoxious, but it looks like when it comes down again it may be highly preferable to what it was going to be, so I'm not too out of sorts about it. Finished Kater Murr (~loved~ it), have started The Cornish Trilogy, 'cause it was the third one that turned me on to Kater Murr in the first place, but I hadn't read the other two, so I'm having a grand time filling in the blank bits in the story. I really don't want to quit the bookstore, but I'm worried I might have to. So I'm just resigned to enjoying it while I'm there. It's fallish and blustery here. I'm going to climb under the dyne with the book and slip into the depths, and once I ooze out of them again, I'll hie me to the Upper East Side and lunch with my boon companion and go and stand among the inky jackets and bless my life. I'm happy. Goddamn; that's all; I'm happy.
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(5)
12:43:57 AM,Tuesday 12 October 2004
My hound hath no nose.
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(2)
03:34:00 AM,Friday 8 October 2004
So it's been two months since I arrived in New York. To sum up: I've got a great big apartment in a lovely neighborhood, and my roommates are both very learned classical musicians. I never seem to see them much, but I don't mind that too terribly, and I don't think they do either. I've got one mindless full time job for 50 cents more than minimum wage that I enjoy very much, and I'm starting my third week of training for another job that pays very well but makes me a little anxious. My employer doesn't suffer fools gladly, is all, and parts of me keep being foolish. I may have to work nights because I'm not physically strong enough, which would mean I may have to work weekends, which would mean I could keep things the same at the bookstore and make money more quickly but it'd tot up to something like 70 hours of work a week with no days off and only schoolnights for any hypothetical bedfellowship, which is less than ideal.
So I just dunno. But I think, barring catastrophe, that this month, for the first time since I got here, I won't have to borrow any money from my mom to get by. I do kind of wish I could have an idea of my schedule some time soon, just so I can start putting out calls for musical groups and draw up a budget and plan outings and stuff, but I won't be able to start working in earnest until I'm able to do the lift properly, and who knows how long that'll take?
It's all right, though. I've been luckier than I've had any right to be. I'm more giddily and profoundly in love than I've ever thought I could be. I've got a bank account and a library card and a blood donor card and soon I'll go out and get a driver's license. And maybe, eventually, I'll have in-state residence and a little money stored up and I can apply to this. I keep mooning over the thought of it. It's something to do with being in such close proximity to the school all the time, and being surrounded by books all the time, and then coming home and watching my girl do her homework with that knitted brow and solemn jaw. Sends me over all whichways. Yes, I know it's useless and pointless and it'll overqualify me for any job I might reasonably be hired for now and it won't qualify me for anything besides teaching, a criminally glutted field that I've never wanted to work in anyhow, but... but... "research paper required (or one epic poem)". It just sounds like blinking blissful glory, is all.
I still haven't explored the city properly. Just get it in little snatches, and it makes me wisftful. I miss my parents, but I don't miss Missoula. Well, maybe the Rattlesnake, a little, but Central Park helps damn well. I sort of need to spend a day striding all around with no purpose, though. And I need to go to museums and shows and clubs and restaurants. I've pretty much missed the New York Early Music Festival because of work, which sucks, but I suppose there's next year, and I'm hoping to catch at least one concert or opera or play-in before it wraps up. I like falling asleep to street sounds. I like static-colored skies. I like street meat. I like worldly girls with quick gaits and huge vocabularies. I've got a couple friends here, and nothing's stopping me from making more. I'm here. I'm staying here. I'm getting there.
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(7)
03:17:12 AM,Friday 8 October 2004
A lady just asked me if Death in Venice was appropriate for her 14-year-old son. I... I was good and said no, but I was so tempted, goddamn. I love that book. Especially since she was buying him The Fountainhead at the same time. But fooey. Probably not a good idea, if I don't want to get busted for Corruption of the Young.
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(9)
06:04:59 PM,Thursday 7 October 2004
Say what you like about the younger generation, but, as a rule, the college students who come into the store are acres more polite than the grownups. They generally say "thank you" three times -- when you ring up the book, when you give back their credit card, and when you give them the bag. Sheesh, with the older ones, you're lucky if they look at you, double lucky if they do it without their lip curling. I mean, I know the people who live around here are all high class and money and everything, but whatever happened to noblesse oblige?
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(3)
03:09:55 PM,Wednesday 6 October 2004
"'I don't mean to arouse controversy or to appear discriminatory, but I would suggest in an ecumenical way that it is necessary to take one's medicine and vitamins on schedule to avoid getting migraines,' said the Nicaraguan lieutenant narrating a story to his homosexual nephew, the laboratory clerk and saxophonist, whose car was in the garage."
Figure out the purpose of that sentence and get a cookie.
When I went into work yesterday, I noticed that behind the counter there was this huge gaudy bouquet of twelve red roses with baby's breath and some sort of effusive frondy business, wrapped up in plastic and crowned with a heart-shaped helium balloon reading "I Love You". Apparently some chick had walked in a little earlier, her face somewhere between pissed and bawling, said, "I don't even want to look at this right now. You take it," and marched out. It spent the day wilting.
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(57)
11:11:57 AM,Wednesday 6 October 2004
Yesterday afternoon, I was sitting on a bench in a Broadway traffic island and an old man walked by carrying a large stuffed frog. As he crossed the street, he declaimed, "Please re-elect Bush. Ashcroft has a surprise for you. We still haven't recreated gasoline."
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(3)
07:29:27 PM,Monday 4 October 2004
Disposable fountain pens: sound so wrong, look so wrong, feel so wrong, write so right. {hangs head}
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(3)
11:07:47 AM,Friday 1 October 2004