What a great day.
Friday, November 21, 2008
And the lion and the lamb shall lie down together.
In Isaiah there are actually wolves and fatlings in this scripture, but anyway: drunk on sunshine, Bruiser and the cat had nothing to say to each other except "[yawn]": 
What a great day.
What a great day.
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Memorandum to my cable television.
TO: The Downstairs DISH box and DVR
FROM: Hightouchmegastore
RE: Your failure to provide me with the television programming and digital video recording that I have paid for and is therefore rightfully mine to expect
DATE: 20 November 2008
It's been six months now since the Great Downstairs Renovation of 2008. The panelling of death has been removed. Paint has been applied to the walls. A new-to-us retro-tastic sectional sofa, cobalt blue, has been purchased, delivered, and attractively arranged for socializing and, yes, let it be said, television watching. But you, downstairs DISH box and DVR, are not even speaking to the television. You and the television are not communicating. The television gives me static. You make spinning sounds in your self-contained universe. What are you doing in there? Working a treadle? Knitting a sweater? Running the dishwasher?
All I know is, they's no shows a-transmittin' on the T.V. No pictures or banter or dvr'd episodes of Family Guy. Nothing is what you are delivering. Nothing.
More, you act like there's nothing wrong. I try to reset you, you make your obliging spinning sound. Like you're God, setting the gyroscope of the earth on its axis. Still nothing. I check your cables and tighten them and still: nothing.
The worst is calling the DISHOverlord at 1-888-FUT-ILE*. Here's what the DISHOverlord Robot says to you: "Did you know that many problems with your DISH television can be solved via your remote? Are you in front of your television with your remote? If not, hang up and call back later." Try talking your way through this problem with the eventual human who shows up on the line: "Uh, well, let me start about six months ago. We were doing some work downstairs. Well, actually, the problem is, well, when we got it going about a month ago, there was a message about a smart card? But now I can't . . . I can't even get that message back. It's like. But. I can't." And so on &c. It's a nightmare and I'm blaming it on you, downstairs DISH box and DVR. The Overlord is just gratuitous humiliation.
Please organize yourself and take care of this situation; I'll expect a report when things are back to normal and order is restored.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Literary life.
It's been awhile since I whined about
--I mean updated you--on my literary exploits. I know! What a terrible oversight! Thank God I can't think of anything else to blog about.
May I just say that this narcissism--I mean navel-gazing--I mean self-reflection--is stimulated by the fact that I heard Dr. Write read tonight. She was excellent--the idiosyncratic voices of her stories, read in her trademark unprepossessing and supercool style. Her writing makes you glad there is such a thing as writing. Which leads me to this point: lately, I am writing but not finishing.
Case in point, I have a piece of writing that I feel great confidence is going to be a terrific poem that will break your heart. I'm pretty sure that it will break my own heart. I feel this way especially when I just look at the piece of writing, but I am kind of terrified to press on, to try to find a form for it, to add things or take things out. As long as I don't write it, I told my friend tonight after the reading, I haven't yet wrecked it.
Why does writing always make me feel like a rank beginner?
I made a promise to myself that I would have this poem drafted by the next time there's a reading--two weeks from now--and I will read it at the open. So I may have to break my heart a dozen times, or even more than that, within the next two weeks.
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
So, I mean, it's cool if you keep quiet, but I like singing.
Rolling Stone recently named its "100 Greatest Singers of All Time" (top 10: Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, Elvis Presley, Sam Cooke, John Lennon, Marvin Gaye, Bob Dylan, Otis Redding, Stevie Wonder, and James Brown). Since they included Tom Waits and Lou Reed among this stellar company, I must conclude that pure vocal beauty is not the sole criterion for inclusion, and therefore, I offer the following as some of my favorite voices, many of which are beautiful but all of which are compelling to me--voices I'm never sorry to hear:
- Annie Lennox
- Brian Wilson
- Regina Spektor
- Bryan Ferry
- Stephen Stills
- that guy from Depeche Mode
- Gillian Welch
- Rufus Wainwright
- Jeff Buckley
- Jimmie Dale Gilmore
- Joni Mitchell
- Kate Bush
- Mavis Staples
- Marianne Faithfull
- Nellie McKay
- Patty Scialfa
- Peggy Lee
- Chrissie Hynde
- Michael Stipe
- Richard Thompson
- Rickie Lee Jones
- Shawn Colvin
- Prince
- Sylvester Stone
- Stevie Wonder
- Taj Mahal
- Al Green
- Jim Kerr
- Youssou N'Dour
Who makes your heart sing?
Monday, November 17, 2008
Utah, I am home.
Why are you unseasonably warm, Utah? Why are you developing a bad case of the smogs? Why does airline travel make one feel as though the blood has thickened ever so fatally in one veins, and also, and curiously, sweaty?
Utah, I have stories to tell about the curious pleasures of airports: a reason to read Esquire, a moment or 200 to oneself, the chance to read a whole book at a time, time to contemplate one's next move, time to think about and feel everything about the trip--how much fun one had and how much one misses the daughter one visited--and about home. But I am glad not to be in an airport now, even giving the airports their props--the flights were on time, people were helpful, my bag made it with me despite having to change airlines and a stop in Denver, both ways.
Mainly, though, Utah, I am glad to reconnect to my own life and routine. I am very glad to be with my husband. Tomorrow, I will develop rolls and rolls of film. I will be glad to have the photos to remind me of my darling daughter and of the wonderful places we visited together. I will take Bruiser (I believe he was named State Dog in my absence) for a walk. I will go to the bank and write a poem and begin reading a new book. I will see loved ones and eat Utah vegetables. I need to be here, I am glad to be here, though my heart, it turns out, my heart is both here and also everywhere.
Utah, I have stories to tell about the curious pleasures of airports: a reason to read Esquire, a moment or 200 to oneself, the chance to read a whole book at a time, time to contemplate one's next move, time to think about and feel everything about the trip--how much fun one had and how much one misses the daughter one visited--and about home. But I am glad not to be in an airport now, even giving the airports their props--the flights were on time, people were helpful, my bag made it with me despite having to change airlines and a stop in Denver, both ways.
Mainly, though, Utah, I am glad to reconnect to my own life and routine. I am very glad to be with my husband. Tomorrow, I will develop rolls and rolls of film. I will be glad to have the photos to remind me of my darling daughter and of the wonderful places we visited together. I will take Bruiser (I believe he was named State Dog in my absence) for a walk. I will go to the bank and write a poem and begin reading a new book. I will see loved ones and eat Utah vegetables. I need to be here, I am glad to be here, though my heart, it turns out, my heart is both here and also everywhere.
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Clam chowder: requiem for a dream.
Since today was the last day of running around New England, I determined that today would also be the day I had clam chowder for lunch. Driving from Maine to Provincetown? Surely there would be chowder opportunities aplenty. Alas, when college daughter and I left Maine, we neglected to calculate the effect that a breakfast beverage might have on, oh, say, when or where we might stop to pee.
Skip ahead to Hwy. 6, halfway between Boston and Provincetown. We were navigating by holding a spit-finger to the wind, and the wind was saying, "I don't know where in THE hell we are, and as for a clean public restroom? Beats the hell outta me." Also, one might consider the fact that many locations on the Cape are vacation-y and therefore--oh, and also, it's Sunday--closed for the season.
So, we're in thriving downtown Barnstable, made up, as far as we could tell, by equal parts Episcopal churches, fire stations, gorgeous picturesque houses, and closed antique stores. Our GPS robot was telling us about restaurants that may or may not have been in the area, in any direction from where we were driving. We chose a restaurant with Dolphin in the title. (Have you forgotten that we needed to pee? Don't forget this fact.) And lo! The Dolphin appeared before us, along with the Barnstable Tavern and the Village Cafe.
The Dolphin looked very swanky and also possibly only barely open, and very swanky seemed in excess of our needs, so we turned around and thought, Village Cafe, just a couple of locations back. We hopped out of the car, our bladders doing all the reasoning for us. We stepped into the cafe and lo! it had the smell of two decades' worth of deep-fried food, which my actual brain processed just as the proprietress said, "Sit anywhere you want," and my mouth said, "Mind if we use the restroom first?" and my soul screamed, "NO NO NO NO NO!"
I am an old-fashioned girl, and once you've decided to avail yourself--gratefully!--of an establishment's facilities, it is my view that you must buy something there. They don't just have a restroom so anyone in the world can just casually stop by to pee without also ordering up some fries or a sandwich or something. Or chowder.
And so, dear reader, I ordered the chowder. At the counter. And the waitress said, "Ohhhhh, chowder, right, it's on the menu but I don't think we have it on Sunday."
Deeply disappointing, right? But the cook, behind a fortress made of stainless steel that was probably coated with the grease of the ages, said: "We can heat some up."
"Are you sure?" I said, when a rational person would have said, "Umm, do you have like a bag of pretzels? and a Coke? or, like, maybe a Coke and a bottle of 409 spray and a roll of paper towels?" But no. No, I said, "Great!" And shortly after that, a plastic tub of chowder, labeled "CHOWDER," appeared from the walk-in and disappeared behind the stainless steel. And then, probably three minutes and thirty seconds later, the chowder appeared, in a shallow bowl, over the stainless steel barrier. With some steam wafting, a positive omen, I thought.
But I was wrong.
No, the chowder was lukewarm, or rather, of uneven heat, sort of how a big bowl of soup is when you microwave but do not stir. Moreover, the soup was extra salty, as if salt were the only possible seasoning ever to grace chowder. There it sat, looking like the paragon of chowder, clam-filled and potato-y and even a little creamy. Why was it so nasty? Why?
Here's what I did and did not do: I did not ask for more nuke to be applied to my soup. I did not not eat the soup. No, I sprinkled both packets of oyster crackers on the surface of the soup, and I ate each little cracker, lightly anointed with the soup, telling myself this: "Having made the deal to be polite and eating in a sorry place where even my low(ered) expectations were disappointed, I am not going to change the deal now. No, I will eat the misbegotten chowder and enough of it that I will not have to explain my not finishing it. I like oyster crackers. I like them!" I said this as the chowder cooled and got, yes, nastier.
My daughter asked me if perhaps I wanted to try to redeem my chowder luncheon by finding better chowder for dinner. No, no, I did not. The experience had embittered me. I may or may not eat chowder again, but it will be a cold day in hell before I order it again at a restaurant where the chowder has not been vetted by experts, aka, by me myself at a previous occasion. Even then. The whole concept seems fraught with peril. Milk, clams, potatoes, onions . . . I'm sure there is a long and storied history of how this came to be a beloved American dish, but I'm thinking that the real genius of the soup world is the inventor of the oyster cracker. Now there's a dish no one can screw up.
Skip ahead to Hwy. 6, halfway between Boston and Provincetown. We were navigating by holding a spit-finger to the wind, and the wind was saying, "I don't know where in THE hell we are, and as for a clean public restroom? Beats the hell outta me." Also, one might consider the fact that many locations on the Cape are vacation-y and therefore--oh, and also, it's Sunday--closed for the season.
So, we're in thriving downtown Barnstable, made up, as far as we could tell, by equal parts Episcopal churches, fire stations, gorgeous picturesque houses, and closed antique stores. Our GPS robot was telling us about restaurants that may or may not have been in the area, in any direction from where we were driving. We chose a restaurant with Dolphin in the title. (Have you forgotten that we needed to pee? Don't forget this fact.) And lo! The Dolphin appeared before us, along with the Barnstable Tavern and the Village Cafe.
The Dolphin looked very swanky and also possibly only barely open, and very swanky seemed in excess of our needs, so we turned around and thought, Village Cafe, just a couple of locations back. We hopped out of the car, our bladders doing all the reasoning for us. We stepped into the cafe and lo! it had the smell of two decades' worth of deep-fried food, which my actual brain processed just as the proprietress said, "Sit anywhere you want," and my mouth said, "Mind if we use the restroom first?" and my soul screamed, "NO NO NO NO NO!"
I am an old-fashioned girl, and once you've decided to avail yourself--gratefully!--of an establishment's facilities, it is my view that you must buy something there. They don't just have a restroom so anyone in the world can just casually stop by to pee without also ordering up some fries or a sandwich or something. Or chowder.
And so, dear reader, I ordered the chowder. At the counter. And the waitress said, "Ohhhhh, chowder, right, it's on the menu but I don't think we have it on Sunday."
Deeply disappointing, right? But the cook, behind a fortress made of stainless steel that was probably coated with the grease of the ages, said: "We can heat some up."
"Are you sure?" I said, when a rational person would have said, "Umm, do you have like a bag of pretzels? and a Coke? or, like, maybe a Coke and a bottle of 409 spray and a roll of paper towels?" But no. No, I said, "Great!" And shortly after that, a plastic tub of chowder, labeled "CHOWDER," appeared from the walk-in and disappeared behind the stainless steel. And then, probably three minutes and thirty seconds later, the chowder appeared, in a shallow bowl, over the stainless steel barrier. With some steam wafting, a positive omen, I thought.
But I was wrong.
No, the chowder was lukewarm, or rather, of uneven heat, sort of how a big bowl of soup is when you microwave but do not stir. Moreover, the soup was extra salty, as if salt were the only possible seasoning ever to grace chowder. There it sat, looking like the paragon of chowder, clam-filled and potato-y and even a little creamy. Why was it so nasty? Why?
Here's what I did and did not do: I did not ask for more nuke to be applied to my soup. I did not not eat the soup. No, I sprinkled both packets of oyster crackers on the surface of the soup, and I ate each little cracker, lightly anointed with the soup, telling myself this: "Having made the deal to be polite and eating in a sorry place where even my low(ered) expectations were disappointed, I am not going to change the deal now. No, I will eat the misbegotten chowder and enough of it that I will not have to explain my not finishing it. I like oyster crackers. I like them!" I said this as the chowder cooled and got, yes, nastier.
My daughter asked me if perhaps I wanted to try to redeem my chowder luncheon by finding better chowder for dinner. No, no, I did not. The experience had embittered me. I may or may not eat chowder again, but it will be a cold day in hell before I order it again at a restaurant where the chowder has not been vetted by experts, aka, by me myself at a previous occasion. Even then. The whole concept seems fraught with peril. Milk, clams, potatoes, onions . . . I'm sure there is a long and storied history of how this came to be a beloved American dish, but I'm thinking that the real genius of the soup world is the inventor of the oyster cracker. Now there's a dish no one can screw up.
Saturday, November 15, 2008
Maine: observations.
1. Maine has more mottos and slogans than it needs ("Dirigo," or I direct; "Vacationland"; "Worth a Visit, Worth a Lifetime"; "The Way Life Should Be"). I saw the latter three of these on signs within the first few minutes of being in the state. Dave Barry suggests "Cold, but Damp." It rained all day, sometimes harder than other times. On the other hand,
2. It's still quite breathtaking beautiful, the parts I've seen. We were at Cape Neddick today at sunset, when the sky decided, miraculously, to clear just to put on a show, over the crashing waves and an insanely picturesque lighthouse. Ridiculous. I have pictures.
3. The Atlantic? Vast.
4. Plenty of fish, not enough blueberries. Of course, it's November.
5. Dunkin' Donuts: what is it with the donuts here? This observation is mainly about Massachusetts, actually. Many, many donuts and many many donut shops. Never a bad thing in a region, in my opinion.
6. Down East, everything is close together, so you can drive through Massachusetts ("The Spirit of America"), New Hampshire ("Live Free or Die"), and arrive in Ogunquit, ME in just a little over an hour. Picturesque, convenient, and more donuts than any one human might ever need. Is New England great or what.
2. It's still quite breathtaking beautiful, the parts I've seen. We were at Cape Neddick today at sunset, when the sky decided, miraculously, to clear just to put on a show, over the crashing waves and an insanely picturesque lighthouse. Ridiculous. I have pictures.
3. The Atlantic? Vast.
4. Plenty of fish, not enough blueberries. Of course, it's November.
5. Dunkin' Donuts: what is it with the donuts here? This observation is mainly about Massachusetts, actually. Many, many donuts and many many donut shops. Never a bad thing in a region, in my opinion.
6. Down East, everything is close together, so you can drive through Massachusetts ("The Spirit of America"), New Hampshire ("Live Free or Die"), and arrive in Ogunquit, ME in just a little over an hour. Picturesque, convenient, and more donuts than any one human might ever need. Is New England great or what.
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