In the 'Life' section (dontcha love the names of things? Oh, gee, this part of the newspaper is about Life!) is an article badly written by a professional reporter, who gets paid for this stuff, about a performance piece featuring music composed by Bill Frisell and some very old photos, wait a minute, eight coy paragraphs into the story there is an oblique reference that tells me, yes, the photos that inspired The Disfarmer Project were made by a guy named Mike Disfarmer. Five paragraphs later comes the earthshaking quote:
"When I first saw the photos, it was really moving," Frisell said.
Oh wow, I can see that performance art is very deep and heavy. How can I tell? Because every paragraph is one sentence long.
Next to my desk is a quote from E.B. White: "An editor is someone who knows more about writing than writers do, but who has lost the terrible desire to write." I'm only about halfway there.
On page two, Dear Abby (not the real Dear Abby but one Jeanne Phillips, the pretend Dear Abby) informs a woman in Austin, Texas, whose neighbor sometimes walks out to get his mail in the nude, that
The incidents of exposure you have seen aren't accidents. You would be doing your community a favor to photograph Flash in the act and forward the pictures to the police.
Or you could look away, you fascist busybody. And I could turn the page, where both of my favorites, 'Doonesbury' and 'Frank and Ernest', are quite good. Is this a bad sign when the best work in mainstream journalism is in the comics?
The weather has turned colder again, and it's even snowing, so i guess that nixes my plan to go for a bike ride and fix the roof of the shed. Instead it will be the kind of saturday to light a fire in the stove, bake bread and make black bean soup, a food-oriented saturday, as people used to say back when being "food-oriented" was like a neurotic condition that led to obesity, addictive relationships, and dysfunctional families.
Gven golly comes home from her saturday morning kaffee klatsch. I open the editorial page and point out a piece about an Australian artist with a Web site extolling a new drug called Havidol that promises relief from Dysphoric Social Attention Consumption Deficit Anxiety Disorder. We have a laugh. All is not lost.
I chop some vegetables, fry them in a skillet, and mix them into the split pea soup I started last night, then I fry two eggs, toast some bread, and eat a nice normal breakfast with a second cup of coffee. Gven's friend GoKate wants to go see "Pan's Labyrinthe" tonight at Crosswoods, so we make a plan to go to the early show. Jessi told me about it some time ago, it sounds interesting, and I was happy to see it getting some attention on Oscar night, so here's my chance to see it.
Maybe i'll go to office and do some work. Or not. Maybe while cleaning the house i'll get inspired to begin a home-improvement project. Or not. Moving the end cabinet across the kitchen to sit like an island, then moving the stove to the space left by the cabinet, should really wait until we have a dishwasher to replace the stove. Everything is contingent on everything else, and i may have used up my spatial creativity last night anyway, rearranging the living room in a fit of domestic activity by essentially rotating the entire room counterclockwise, so we can now sit on the couch and watch TV across the width instead of the length of the room. To my astonishment, Gven did not freak out when she came home and saw it. I really think the feng-shui is better now.
Songs going through my head today from CDs heard last night: "When I grow up I wanna be an old woman" by Michelle Shocked; something from Modern Times by Bob Dylan, which is one of his best ever, okay it's no Highway 61 or Blond on Blond but still; something by Van Morrison about water.
Since we're going to the early movie, I won't have time to bake bread. I will have a bowl of soup, and it is delicious if a bit bland because for some reason I didn't put any hot peppers in it. I have to check the sourdough starter to see if it's bubbling (yes!) and a new batch of mead that is just starting to ferment in a half-gallon honey jar. Uh-oh, I'm getting all food-oriented again, danger danger.
But it's Saturday, or Satyr Day, or Saturn Day, so it's okay to indulge a little, and my calendar tells me it's a full moon tonight - and a lunar eclipse - which could only increase the sensual, Dionysian aspect of everything else that happens today.
And it's cleaning day, so out goes the paper and other recycling. In goes a load of laundry. After sweeping up a heaping combination of dust, ash, and cat hair, I watched parts of three basketball games on TV, read a little of Lynne Sharon Schwartz's nonfiction, which is not as compelling as her fiction, and brought in more firewood. Chagrined at my lethargy, I took a short nap in the wicker chair, folded the laundry, and did a short qigong form to revive.
For some reason, I wasn't in the mood for an early movie, but "Pan's Labyrinthe" was great. Despite abrupt editing shifts from a primeval underworld of nature spirits to the historical aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, it was completely believable. A young girl who loves to read is swept into turbulent events in this world and the other and, like all heroes, is forced to make choices with major consequences. Of course there are good guys and bad guys among the characters, making hard decisions whether to make a sacrifice, to question one's benefactor, to let imagination rule.
Outside the theater I've forgotten what day it is, and it's too cloudy and snowy to see the moon. We go home with hardly any discussion of the movie, and Gven asks me if I fixed the gate, which suddenly latches when you close it. I say no, Zelda must have done it, since she put the latch on in the first place. When Zelda comes home, reporting that the roads are icy and slick, she asks who fixed the gate. It wasn't me, I thought it was you. "We must have elves," she concludes.
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