Laguna Lacuna

Paris Journal, Postscript

2008-07-19T10:22:00.000-07:00

Thursday 7/13

Hard to believe we've been back for almost two weeks already. I was itching to get home and to sleep in my own bed by the time we got on the plane, and really for the last few days of the trip, and so was Nicholas (though the same wasn't quite true for Suzanne, who wept on our last night). But perhaps inevitably, the return has been a bit of a letdown in some ways. Work, bills, home repairs, lawn maintenance--it was all still here waiting for us, and though Branford is a nice little town it can't quite match the glories of Paris. Of course we do have the beach, the water, the breezes, and all the comforts of home--but it doesn't help that it's been really hot, the breezes have been scarce, and the jellyfish have come in about six weeks early this year, making it impossible to swim at our neighborhood beach.

Already we have talked about whether we can swing Paris again next year--but that remains to be seen. In the meantime I'm hoping that what Hemingway says will prove true, that Paris will turn out to be "a moveable feast." What he actually writes, in a passage from a letter to a friend that became the epigraph to his book, is this:

If you are lucky enough to have lived
in Paris as a young man, then wherever you
go for the rest of your life, it stays with
you, for Paris is a moveable feast.

I will pass over the delicate question of whether we were "young" during our time there, observing only that youth is relative. And I'll assume you don't have to be a man to get the benefit. The little matter of whether a stay of five weeks constitutes "living in Paris" is also a bit tricky (certainly Hemingway was in residence a lot longer), but I like to think we were there long enough to pick up at least a bit of the real flavor of things.

Still, I'm left wondering what exactly Hemingway means when he calls Paris a moveable feast that stays with you the rest of your life, and what exactly, if anything, the concept might mean for us. Hemingway's memories of living in Paris are deeply bound up with being poor and happy and deeply in love with his first wife, and with all the good writing he got done there and his coming of age as an artist--and all those things are very personal and specific to the unfolding of his particular life. Some of the best parts of the book (and ones that especially resonated for me) are about the act of writing, the discipline it takes and the wild ups and downs of the writing life. At one point (I can't find the passage now) he says, roughly, that Paris is the city best "organized" (that's a definite quote) for living as a writer. And though we inhabited a different Paris than Hemingway way did, and though I can hardly call myself a writer in same sense that he was one, I can still understand what he meant by this. In Paris the appreciation for things aesthetic runs deep. The city itself is beautiful and alive, and the people there care deeply about food and wine and art and books. When I was there, the act of writing felt natural, like breathing, and I did a helluva lot of it. That's been hard to sustain since I got back. But having experienced that way of living, and having fallen under its spell, I'm hoping that I can continue to draw on this experience, this knowledge, for sustenance, and that I can carry forward some of the inspiration I experienced in Paris into my life here. I hope that this will be true for all three of us, each in our own way but also together as a family. That's the moveable feast I'd like us to be able to continue to savor.

Paris Journal, Part 8

2008-07-03T15:37:00.000-07:00

Thursday 6/26

Today we took a long walking tour of Pigalle (where it proved easier than expected to keep Nicholas from noticing the racy stuff) and Montmartre, led by a group of Suzanne's students, who did a nice job of point out the notable sites. We walked by the sex shops and strip clubs in Pigalle, of course, but also saw: the Place Andre Breton and the building housing Breton's old apartment; the Moulin Rouge; an avant-garde building designed by Alfred Loos for Tristan Tzara; Salvador Dali's old apartment, the Lapin Agile, and the Bateau-Lavoir (Picasso painted the "Third Rose" portrait of Gertrude Stein here, and also Les Damoiselles d'Avignon. Montmartre is the highest point of elevation in Paris, and some of the streets are San Francisco-steep. It was another hot day, but the air was noticeably cooler and fresher here. The combination of hilly terrain, narrow streets and picturesque old buildings meant that we got our exercise and some lovely views at the same time.

We ended up at Sacre Coeur, which shines whitely at the top of the hill. This church was the only one we've been in so far that asks for silence inside and prohibits photographs, though they still have a gift shop selling religious icons, and a vending machine for Sacre Coeur medallions (Nicholas got one for his collection). Outside, on the steps overlooking the rest of the city, was gathered a mob of tourists, a couple of musicians playing sacred music for spare change, and a few beggars asking for alms. As we left we were happy to discover the funicular, which allows you to avoid the long set of steps down the hill, and then to come across a very lovely and elaborate old carousel, on which the three of us took a ride. We decided we needed to stop for something to eat on the way home, so we stopped for a relatively simple dinner at Parnasse 138. I had a very good fish soup as an appetizer, and Nicholas had his first grapple with an appropriately cheesy bowl of French onion soup. In a first for the trip, Suzanne and I skipped dessert even though it was included in the "formule." Nicholas, on the other hand, decided that he did want to have some ice cream.

Friday 6/27

Slow day with all of us tired from the last three days of big expeditions. I was due for some time off from daddy duty, so I went to the Jardin du Luxembourg for some reading and reading.. There was an excellent youth orchestra in the park playing Hello Dolly, the theme from Jaws, It's a Wonderful World, the Star Wars bar theme, and other crowd-pleasers. Suzanne and Nicholas went back to the American library for a new Hardy boys mystery (The Mystery of the Flying Express), getting another choice view of the Eiffel Tower in the process.

Saturday 6/28

There was an extremely large, loud, and raucous Gay Pride parade today that started by late morning not far away (it was loud even in our apartment) and snaked through the city for a good six or seven hours. Since the normal bus from Glaciere wasn't running, we discovered, happily, that we could walk without too much difficulty to the Jardin du Luxembourg, and in fact we even detoured a bit to take in the Pantheon, though we decided not to pay the entrance fee to go in. Once we got the Jardin the big treat was that we finally got a boat for Nicholas to sail in the central pond! He had a blast running around for a solid hour with all the other kids, the main task being to shove one's boat off from the side of the pond with a long wooden stick whenever it nears shore. Each child notes the number of his or her bateau and then eagerly follows its course as it tacks hither and thither. A moment of suspense comes if one's boat is sucked into the vortex around central fountain, but somehow all the boats manage to break free in the end. Whenever a French child's boat approaches the shore and is in need of a shove, one is likely to hear the excited cry "Il arrive! Il arrive!"

After the boating, we took Nicholas to the very cool playground I had scouted out on a previous visit. It was closed when he and I came to the Jardin for the first time but since then I had noticed that it seemed to be open for the season. It has great climbing structures, with tunnels and rope ladders and swinging bridges and everything one could want, and Nicholas checked out most of what it had to offer. All in all, it was a full afternoon of Luxembourg fun.

For dinner, we finally went to Bar a Huitres for the oysters I've been anticipating. I ordered the house specialty, a quite large platter of mostly raw seafood served on a bed of ice. Eating it was an invigorating and challenging experience even for a veteran Maryland-born crab-eater. In addition to the oysters (which were very good), the platter came with one small blue crab, a large spider crab, clams, mussels (discovered I don't really like these raw), shrimp (steamed), whelks, periwinkles, and some very tiny prawns. I skipped the periwinkles and the tiny prawns, since these were a lot of effort without much pay-off, but enjoyed all the rest, and was pleased to find out that I like whelks quite a lot. The seafood was served with three condiments in small pots--one was mayo, one was a very tasty and somewhat spicy creamy sauce, and one was almost like a vinegar dressing. I found myself really missing the cocktail sauce (the kind with lots of horse radish) for the oysters.

Sunday 6/29

Today we took a long, sweaty trek to and around and through the Chateau Versailles and its grounds. Alas, the Chateau itself was a bit of a bust for us--it was simply too mobbed with tourists (we waited in a long line just to get in, even though we bought our tickets in advance) and we didn't enjoy shuffling along with the crowd looking at a lot of not particularly interesting paintings of French kings and queens. To be sure, the whole affair was notably lavish and indisputably shiny, but it left me cold, or rather, hot and sweaty and irritable. We didn't really begin to enjoy ourselves until we got out to the grounds, and even then we still faced the problem that there were too many tourists and too few bathrooms and places to get refreshments (long lines for both). Things picked up by 3:30 when Les Grands Eaux Musicals began. This is when they begin piping classical music through an extensive speaker system while also turning on all the many fountains, which feature impressive statues of galloping horses, leaping dolphins, cavorting gods and goddesses, and so on. All of this was very pleasant, and the day began to cool, with some help from the misting fountains. We watched a couple of Italian youths using bread crumbs as bait and trying, just for fun, to catch some very big fish (carp?) in the central pond with their hands, and were eventually refreshed enough to enjoy all the varied and gorgeous flowers. I used my Elph to shoot a short video of Suzanne and Nicholas dancing that captured some of the best and lightest spirit of the day. And now when I read all those references to Versailles in the history books I will know whereof they speak.

Monday 6/30

Watched Nicholas in the morning while Suzanne prepped for teaching. He has filled a couple of notebooks with drawings and writings since we've been here, and is quite proud of this fact, and he managed a couple of pretty elaborate multi-colored dragons just this morning (the other day I got him a book on all the different types of dragons and how to draw them, and this has provided some inspiration, though he still has his own preferred style). This morning as he was sketching he said, "Dad, won't we be famous when we get back?" and when I asked him why he said "Because of all of these great drawings!" I said yes, we probably would be famous. Nicholas plans to set up our own "museum" in the house when we get back.

In the afternoon, I did some reading and writing interspersed with a the usual copious amount of walking. Today's walk nicely filled in a few gaps in my mental map of the surrounding area. First I took the green line to the Edgar Quinet stop and walked around the interesting cafe-filled area we noticed the other evening on our way to La Cagouille. Then I cut up to Boulevard Montparnasse and walked east, and before very long I hit the familiar cafes (Le Dome, Le Select, and La Coupole) in the area of Montparnasse that we have been in the habit of reaching by taking the Metro to the Vavin stop. I kept going further east until I hit Hemingway's old hangout the Closerie de Lilas. They have a collage rendering of Hem's face (both old and young) on the menu, but the place still has a solidly authentic French feel, with its cloistered patio protecting one from the crowded boulevard, and some quite impressive woodwork and tiling in the dark interior (including some very small tiles that look to be made of tiny sheets of beaten gold suspended in glass). I had a Pernod (always wanted to try one of those) and did a bit of writing. There were only a few other patrons at this time of the afternoon and it was a nice calm place to sit and work for a while.

On the way home I continued east on the Boulevard Montparnasse until it turns into Boulevard Port Royal. At this point, I could have cut south and ended up at Denfert Rochereau if I had wished, but instead I headed north (on Avenue de L'Observatoire) toward Jardin du Luxembourg, discovering that there is a separate little park extending like a slim southern arm from the Luxembourg. It's called Jardin Marco Polo and features a great fountain with galloping horses and turtles spouting water from their mouths, more or less in the Versailles mode. There were a few kids in swimsuits playing in the fountain, and as I continued north I saw that this is one of those places where you can actually lie or sit or play on the grass. Lots of people were stretched out either sunning themselves or enjoying the cool shade. It was a lively scene, and quite close to our apartment if one were to walk there directly.

Wednesday 7/2

Well, Nicholas has been so good this trip--gamely touring museums, walking miles at a time without complaint, sitting through long French dinners until the glace finally arrives, etc.--that we've decided to go to Paris Disney on Friday. Today I went to the big mall at Place d' Italie because it has an FNAC store (selling computers, dvds, books, music, etc.) from which you can pick up advance Disney tickets (crazily enough, you can not buy advance tickets from the Disney phone-order line if it's less than five days in advance, though they neglected to tell us this when we called for information a week ago).

Only later at dinner, talking to Suzanne's students, did we realize that all the attractions will be in French! Somehow the whole "Disney" thing seems so American that we just hadn't thought about it. Guess we'll find out how it goes. After getting the tickets, I took the Metro to the Bastille stop, and ended up doing quite a bit of walking in the rain as I wended my way to the Marais for one last meander. I went to our favorite patisserie from our previous trip, on Rue Vielle du Temple, just up the street from our old hotel, for a mille-feuille (what we call a Napoleon). I hadn't had one of these the whole trip, and it's getting down to now-or-never time (it was delicious). I also made a quick tour of the Musee Victor Hugo as I cut through the Place des Vosges. They've preserved much of the furniture from his lavish apartment--lots of heavy and ornate dark wood, and a clear taste for both Chinoiserie and the Gothic style. But the most impressive thing of all had to be the views out the large windows opening onto the Place des Vosges. It struck me as a pretty nice place to get some writing done.

Nicholas and Suzanne also had some errands to do during the afternoon, and then I surprised them at the little Notre Dame park (where I knew they were eventually headed). We went to Shakespeare and Company to pick up a book for Nicholas (we got The Indian in the Cupboard) for after we return our American library loaners, and particularly for the plane ride home.

From there it was on to Le Bistrot des Pingouins for the last class dinner. It's been a really great class (only one session left), and the students, who have lots of shared Paris experiences at this point, seem to have become a pretty close-knit group. Toward the end of dinner, Nicholas had his much-anticipated Tic-Tac-To championship match with Tanya--it was a rousing spectacle ending in a final score of 11 wins each, 10 draws (at this point I had to take Nicholas home for bedtime). Our favorite neighborhood bistrot didn't let us down--I think everyone enjoyed the good food (boy these kids put away a lot of beef!) and the relaxed but lively atmosphere.

Thursday 7/3

Suzanne and Nicholas are off to the very last class tour, visiting some of the famous resting places in the Cimetiere de Pere La-Chaise. It's an impressive list--the Lizard King (Jim Morrison), of course, but also Oscar Wilde, Richard Wright, Sara Bernhardt, Colette, Edith Piaf, Chopin, Moliere, Proust, and many others.

I decided to stay home to catch up on the journal and get some other writing done. We go to Disney tomorrow, and fly out Sunday morning, so this will probably be the last Paris post! Nicholas says we're going to have a celebration with all his animals when we get home.

The word count for the journal has topped 12,000. Hope it's been fun to follow along...

Paris Journal, Part 7

2008-07-03T06:15:00.000-07:00

Sunday 6/22

Sunday is the biggest day for the fresh market, with the most goodies, so I brought home a feast fit for a king for lunch: warm baguettes, goat cheese, shrimp, tomatoes , cherries, and strawberries. I took Nicholas so Suzanne could work on grading her first batch of papers, then I headed off for some reading and writing in the Jardin d' Observatoire. It was quite hot again, so I sought as much shade as I could. The apartment was pretty hot too, and we began to wonder what it would be like here later in the summer. Late in the afternoon, Suzanne and Nicholas pioneered the use of the #21 bus (much more pleasant than the Metro on a hot day), catching it at Glaciere and riding up to the Jardin du Luxembourg. They caught a really good and sort of zany New Orleans-style brass band playing just outside the park--with male band members wearing dresses, crazy wigs, etc.

Monday 6/23

More paper-grading. A little cooler. Jardin du Luxembourg for reading and writing and les moules again for me. Got whooped by one of the old chess guys in the park, in a game of 5-minute blitz.

Had our first conversation about home and the things we miss, and how we'll be going back in less than two weeks. Nicholas said not sadly but with a smile, "I love my home," and talked about looking forward to seeing all his "animals," a category that I think probably encompasses both our two cats, Missy and Tazzie, and all his stuffed animals (except Snow Leopard and Wolfie, who are here with us).

Tuesday 6/24

Quite hot today, and we ended up making a long, sweaty expedition down the Champs Elysees and to the Arc de Triomphe. Of course, both the view of the arch (apparently the largest in the world) and the view from it are pretty fantastic, and it was fun to meander along the famous avenue. For me that stroll was particularly resonant because I associate it with Proust and Swann's Way, but it was too hot and Nicholas was too tired for us to try to make sure we located the Allee Marcel Proust, which is somewhere in the Jardin des Champs-Elysees. I would have liked to spend a little time sitting on a bench imagining the young Proust and the childhood crush who became Gilberte in the book frolicking in the garden. But since Proust wrote most of his book sitting in bed in a cork-lined room, I guess I don't have to go there to do the imagining.

Even though we avoided all the stairs by taking the elevator up and down the Arc, we were pretty beat by the end. We could only manage to stagger to the first cafe we hit after we emerged from the underground tunnel that gets you back and forth across the heavily trafficked circle that makes an island of the Arch and its immediate surround. It was an Italian joint so we got an early dinner of pizza and spaghetti (Nicholas is always happy to see this on a menu) while we sat on the patio, amid the roar of Champs Elysees traffic and with the Arc looming close by.

Wednesday 6/25

Another big expedition with Suzanne's class, this time to the Centre Pompidou (which we missed on our last visit). I can see how it must have been absolutely shocking when this massive modern structure, all bristling pipes and bright colors, was erected in the midst of the Beaubourg neighborhood, with its quaint and picturesque buildings. The juxtaposition is still striking, but the Centre has settled in as an institution now, drawing more visitors than the Louvre for its exhibits of modern and contemporary works. The views of the city that one can get through the giant glass-walled windows of the terraces (one can't actually go out on these, unfortunately) are nothing short of astounding, and I took some "artistic" shots that I think should come out pretty well (even with digital, one is never entirely sure how the image on the little screen will translate once its transferred and enlarged). And of course I found much to like in the paintings too, especially a room full of Matisses that I hadn't been familiar with, and also Robert Delaunay's brightly colored abstractions--among many, many other works. One can never take in everything that one would like, but I especially regret not going to see Brancusi's Atelier (studio) which has been preserved in a separate building on the museum's plaza.

Nicholas was well rested after a big sleep, and he bowled us over once again with his museum-going capacity, outlasting both Suzanne and me as he also had at the Louvre. After we were finished, we grabbed a couple of crepes and some ice cream and sat refreshing ourselves on the museum plaza, which is a scene in itself, with tourists from all over the world gathered in little clumps dotted across its expanse. At 7 o'clock, we met up again with Suzanne's students (Nicholas had enjoyed running into parts of "the group" as we perused the art) for dinner at Georges, the splashy, chic, and fairly expensive restaurant on the top floor of the restaurant. The entire, very large space is surrounded by floor-to-ceiling glass walls, and there are odd little curvy alcoves, painted bright pink, that make you feel as if you're inside a giant shell. We weren't seated in one of these, but in the central space at a long table running along the south-facing window/wall. Nicholas's seat was directly in line with a straight-on view of Notre Dame, which looked remarkably close. As we ate our food, drank our wine, and talked about our various Paris experiences, the day softened into twilight, the panorama of the city laying open before us as if it might just be ours to possess.

Paris Journal, Part 6

2008-07-01T01:37:00.000-07:00

6/19 Thursday

Nicholas took the postponed "Hemingway walking tour" with Suzanne and her students, and also went with them to the Picasso museum ("really good," he told me), and then I met up with everyone--that is, Suzanne and Nicholas and Suzanne's class and Scott and Sue--at Le Colimacon for dinner. We were up on the second floor, just a few paces away from the door to the kitchen (the chef wished us a hearty "Bon Appetit!"), the food and wine was good, and the atmosphere was comfortable. Then, too, the place has special meaning for Suzanne and me, since it was our favorite haunt on our previous trip. It was pleasing to make use of it for this large rendezvous and to have the evening work out so well. We said our farewells to Scott and Sue (who seem to have enjoyed Paris very much), since they are leaving Saturday morning, and Suzanne is off to Giverny tomorrow. Nicholas and I left before the rest of the group and wended our way across the Seine and through the little park by Notre Dame we have come to like so much and across the Seine again to the St. Michel metro stop, then from there to Denfert Rochereau and the walk home. It was still 10 by the time Nicholas was in bed, even though we had started dinner at 6:30--so, rather late again, but we had a lovely evening walk.

6/20 Friday

Suzanne and her class had their big day-long expedition to Giverny (leaving early in the morning and not returning until 8pm) to wander around Monet's old stamping ground, taking in the house with its large collection of Japanese prints and the extensive gardens (including, of course, water lilies). That meant a big day for Nicholas and me. We hung out in the morning watching some of Toy Story 2 (which is even better than the first one) and doing some drawing, then we went up to Zen Sushi for lunch, took a meander through the neighborhood, and wound up at Parc Montsouris, which I had not been to before, though Nicholas had checked it out with Suzanne and Julia. It's a really wonderful and rather large park, quite near Cite Universitaire, where Suzanne is teaching. It has a duck pond, a public bathroom (not as common as one would like), excellent climbing structures, great "tree forts," a waterfall and stream, and a small cafe serving glace, crepes, and the like. We played on just about everything, and I even got Nicholas to entertain himself for a brief stint so I could sit on a bench with my electronic Larousse attempting to read a couple of pages of Simenon. Things got really exciting by about 5 o'clock, when we had our second go at the climbing structures, because the playground was suddenly flooded with kids accompanied by parents who must have just gotten off work. Even without knowing anyone or speaking any French Nicholas was able to participate joyfully in the general hubbub of kids running around doing the stuff kids do.

The battery went dead on the camera while we were at the park, and I didn't have the spare with me, so I suggested to Nicholas that we take "mental pictures." He really got into it, developing a technique where he would look at the scene, snap his picture, then turn his head to the side, in order, he told me, to make sure he still had the image in his mind. After a while, he told me that he was also "pasting" things into his pictures. When I asked how this worked, he said, "Oh, like, if I take a picture of a scene that doesn't have Daddy in it and I want you in it I can just paste you in." He also liked the idea that your mental pictures are your own private secret that no one else could see. When I said, "But what if you want to show your picture to someone else?" he decided that you could draw a copy of it if you wanted to. By the time we walked home we were taking mental movies.

6/21 Saturday

Suzanne and I had hoped for a couple of nights out on our own while we're here, but it looks like it may come to down to just this one, since Julia is leaving next week and has told us that she'll be too busy to do any more sitting. For tonight's dinner, we chose Millesime 62, singled out by Pudlo for special praise among the restaurants of the 14th.
It's on the Place De Catalogne, which is a large square with monumental Romanesque buildings and a central fountain (a sort of incline plane topped with a thin sheet of flowing water), all designed by a fellow named Boffil. It was interesting to check out a new part of town, and the square certainly had a different look than what we have become used to it--but we weren't all that taken with the design as we made our way to the restaurant through the heat and humidity that had been making us droop for much of the day. It looked better, though, once we had eaten and the evening had cooled down a little, especially since the Eiffel Tower popped into the view down one of the long avenues radiating from the square--we somehow hadn't had the right angle to see it during our approach to the restaurant earlier.

Anyway, we really liked the restaurant, which also had a more contemporary feel than most of the places we've gone so far. Having done a little advance research on the web, we were able to find our way through the French menu with no problems (event though the waitress did offer to answer in English any questions we might have). We had two appetizers; one was a tasty little cold crab and avocado number, but the clear winner was the "croustillant," which was flaky pastry formed into a kind of little pouch, closed with a twist. When you broke it open, it was filled with warm goat cheese. For the main course, I had very good sea bass and Suzanne had the lamb (not something we usually eat, but it was certainly tender and delicious). For dessert, we split the creme brulee epice, that is "creme brulee with spices," the spices--and the fact that it was served cold--giving a new twist to a traditional dessert. We both agreed that we preferred the old style, but it was interesting to try the new.

One of the things that we have missed the most, as compared to our previous trip (when we were a duo rather than a trio) is the leisurely, late, after-dinner stroll along the Seine, with the evening just fading to twilight around 10--so we decided that this was something we would try to do this evening. Already on the way to the restaurant, though, we had begun to realize that this might not work out because this Saturday turned out to be the day of the Fete de la Musique, a street festival taking place in locations all over the city. As it turned out, most of the music was heavily amplified and not particularly great rock and roll, and by night-time the crowds were tremendous. We packed into the sweltering Metro along with the rest of the masses, and emerged into a slowly drifting throng of people lining the quais all long the Seine and also the bridges crossing the river. The quiet, romantic stroll was not to be. But we ended up agreeing that the sheer size and energy of the festival--the spectacle of all these people rocking out in the shadow of Paris's huge, ancient, and classically styled public buildings--made it something to see. And something to hear too, of course, though we stayed as far away from the amplifiers as we could, and would have preferred to come across a small jazz or classical ensemble tucked into some less densely populated nook somewhere. That didn't happen, and, in fact, the bruit was at one point following us, since some student types were making their way through the crowd with large speakers (emitting some very loud and strange noises) strapped to their backs.

Paris Journal, Part 5

2008-06-28T01:37:00.000-07:00

6/14 Saturday

Went to Anne's concert at Ste. Chapelle, which will undoubtedly go down as one of the great highlights of the trip. As reputed, the stained glass here is gorgeous, especially with the sun pouring through the rose window. The trains were running less frequently since it was Saturday, so we were a few minutes late for our rendezvous with Anne before the concert, but she was kind enough to wait for us and shepherd us to the front row seats she had reserved. We were only a few feet from the chamber quintet for which Anne is one of the violinists, and this meant not only that we had a great view but also that the acoustics were fantastic (when I commented on this after the show, she told us that they get much more muddied toward the back of the hall). I remember reading an article a while ago talking about how concert hall acoustics are not nearly as well understood as one might expect, so that modern performance spaces sometimes end up with disappointing sound despite the best efforts of the architects--but apparently the medieval builders of Ste. Chapelle knew a thing or two. Some of the selections featured a children's choir and the sound was especially marvelous once the human voice was added to the mix. The swelling high notes in particular were rather sublime. Even more particularly, there was a boy soprano of about 11 who came forward for a solo that actually did send chills up my spine. He was right in front of me, singing with both great power and marvelous articulation, and I could hardly believe his slight body could produce such sound. When he was done, Suzanne and I gave each other a stunned look. I joked with Anne afterwards that it almost makes one understand the medieval tradition of castrati. Nicholas enjoyed the concert (only beginning to slump in the last fifteen minutes or so) and agreed that the boy soprano was amazing.

6/15 Sunday (Father's Day)

Suzanne's brother Scott, and his wife, Sue, arrived today after the same sort of all-nighter we pulled two weeks ago, and looking just as dazed as we were--but also happy to be in Paris. They hung out at our place for a while waiting to be able to check in at their hotel, and we fed them baguette sandwiches with bread from our favorite boulangerie (even in Paris, not all the bread is good, we have found).

After they headed off to catch a nap, Nicholas and Suzanne and I went for a Father's Day outing to one of the local parks--next to the Observatoire de Paris--that Nicholas had been waiting to show me (he also made me a sweet card at a pre-Father's Day arts and crafts session at the American library). One nice feature of this park is that it has several clumps of trees and bushes with room to move around inside--which means to Nicholas that they make great "forts" (and I can still pretty clearly recall the appeal a good fort had for me when I was a kid). We climbed around on some trees, ran around foolishly, gathered a few rocks, stirred up some "dust storms," and watched the French kids running around doing pretty much the same things American kids do. One little girl even helped us with a dust storm for a minute or two, before getting shy and running off.

For dinner, we met up with Scott and Sue for dinner near their hotel in Montparnasse (they have a great location near the famous cafes Le Rotund, Le Dome, and Le Select), at a place called Montparnasse 138, which comes highly recommended by Pudlo for its large menu, good prices, and comfortable atmosphere. It was a lovely meal, with the mussels in cream sauce with leeks standing out as an especially tasty appetizer. Everything Pudlo said was true--the food was good, the staff was friendly, and the prices have remained very reasonable (as was not the case at Les Olivades). I certainly expect to pay them another visit before we leave.

6/16 Monday

Sick day. Stomach bug for all three of us, but especially Suzanne. With a big effort of will I used some of the down-time to catch up on the journal for the previous days.

6/17 Tuesday

Today we were still recovering from the bug, especially in the morning, but managed to venture out for a return to Isle St. Louis with Scott and Sue. We enjoyed introducing them to one of our favorite places, and we ate some great ice cream. They had had a big morning, with lots of walking, so they eventually headed back to their hotel for a rest before dinner. We decided to stay out, giving Nicholas a chance to run around in the great little park by Notre Dame, where we also enjoyed the playing of a couple of pretty good young jazz musicians (sax and guitar) free-lancing for tips (I gave Nicholas a Euro to drop in the guitar case). Then we met back up with Scott and Sue for a wonderful dinner at Bistrot des Pingouins on Rue Daguerre. They really enjoyed their dishes, and it was fun to be able to take them to one of our neighborhood favorites.

6/18 Wednesday

Big day at the Louvre with Scott and Sue. We spent most of our time checking out the ancient statuary and relics, since these (rather than the paintings) were what Nicholas was most interested in seeing. He felt a particular affinity for the ancient Egyptians, noting their admiration for the big cats (many lions were in evidence). After a few hours, I was ready for fresh air, so I peeled off and ended up taking a long walk along the Seine on the Rive Gauche, perusing the many blocks of book stalls as i went. I had in mind a copy of Henry Miller's Quiet Days in Clichy (in French) that I had spotted the day before, far down the line, past Notre Dame. Wouldn't you know, when I finally found the place the book was gone, but along the way I snapped up a couple of Simenon's Inspector Maigret mysteries, including one that is mentioned by Hemingway in A Moveable Feast as possibly the first Simenon he ever read. These were a couple of cheap paperbacks and I hadn't quite sated my book-buying lust, so I returned to Shakespeare and Co. (which we had visited for the first time the day before with Scott and Sue) and picked up a nice copy of Hemingway's Collected Stories, making sure they impressed it with their coveted "Kilometer Zero" stamp. Then, since Nicholas and Suzanne were picking up Asian carry-out for dinner, I decided to take the opportunity to walk along St. Germaine Boulevard until I found a brasserie where I could stop for "les moules" (mussels). Suzanne and I had done this on the previous trip, and I had been looking for the chance to repeat the experience ever since we arrived. To my surprise, none of the many brasseries and cafes I passed seemed to have them, so I ended up walking west (after already walked east from the Louvre to Shakespeare and Co.) almost until I hit St. Germaine de Pres church. On that stretch of the boulevard, across from Les Deux Magots and Cafe Flore, and a few doors down from Brasserie Lip, I located the brasserie (La Taverne St. Germaine) at which we had originally had our moules, and sure enough they were still on the menu. By then I was hot, thirsty, hungry, and foot-weary, so the stakes were high--but they delivered with a tall cold glass of beer and big black pot of mussels. As a bonus, I had an enjoyable and extended conversation (after I recommended les moules) with a couple of visitors from Quebec. They were an older couple, with the hardy, rumpled look of habitual hikers and campers (as it turned out they were), who were having an extended vacation taking them to Greece, Vienna, Paris, the south of France, etc. She was also a poetry lover, and was quite pleased to find out I was a lit professor. We had a very nice exchange, agreeing that we liked forests and lakes, on the one hand, but also cities, on the other, and bid each other warm farewells at the end of the meal.

Paris Journal, Part 4

2008-06-18T12:32:00.000-07:00

6/11 Wednesday

Suzanne took her students to the Musee D ' Orsay today. But Nicholas and I were pretty tuckered from the big expedition yesterday, so we took it easy . This gave Nicholas a chance to do some of his "work" at home. He plugged away on the "code" for his rock collection (he labels each rock with a letter, and has made a list of what the letters stand for), and also started on a list of French words and their translations. I also read to him from the Hardy boys book (The Clue in the Embers) we got from the American library--he's quite enraptured by the action, so the interval between evening story-times is proving too long.

Anne, who is a classical violinist, dropped by this morning and invited us to a concert at Ste. Chapelle this Saturday night. They will do Vivaldi (can't remember the piece) and there will be a children's choir. Sounds like it should be lovely.

6/12 Thursday

Tonight we met up with Suzanne's students for dinner at Cafe Delmas. The attraction here is not so much to the food (which is just average) as the location and the history. It's one of Hemingway's old haunts, in the Mouffetard neighborhood where he had an apartment with Hadley (the Rue Mouffetard is one of the old Roman streets, and some of the buildings date to the 12thC). Suzanne had assigned a group of her students to put together a tour for us, but because of a rainy afternoon (that ended up clearing by dinnertime) it was postponed. Instead, we just trotted quickly over for a glimpse of the building where Hemingway lived. The Mouffetard neighborhood has serious character, and I can understand why Hemingway liked it--though they lived in a cold-water flat with no toilet. Apparently, he didn't mind the accommodations (or lack thereof), preferring to save their money for travel rather than everyday living expenses, and making good use of the local cafes.

We had a nice relaxing dinner (sort of a relief to be in a more casual place without a haughty waiter overseeing things), with a large-screen TV off to one side showing the Germany/Croatia football (soccer) match. I enjoyed meeting Suzanne's students--she lucked out with a very nice group of kids, smart and amiable, and clearly reveling in the opportunity to spend five weeks in Paris. And Nicholas really liked meeting them too, especially Tania, a dark-haired beauty with whom he kept up an animated conversation for much of the meal. She was a good sport, explaining that she really likes little kids and has two much younger siblings at home. With me as go-between serving to elucidate some of Nicholas's more obscure allusions, they covered all the Disney movies they had both seen, all the books they had in common, the names of the rocks in his rock collection (Asteroid, Skeleton Face, Baboon Face, Crab Claw, Arrowhead, Rotten Wood), etc. etc.

6/13 Friday

Julia came to take Nicholas to the park for a few hours (they had a great time again). And Suzanne got to do some further exploration of the Mouffetard neighborhood on foot--it's a really funky, interesting place, with lots of arty cafes and shops, narrow winding streets, charming buildings, etc. It's simply astonishing how many great--and different--neighborhoods there are in Paris. It has to be the best city for walking in the world. I went to the Musee D' Orsay for a couple of hours. Quite apart from the paintings, the place itself is fantastic, a renovated 19thC train station featuring a huge central space with a ceiling of glass and steel. There are a couple of observation decks from which you can survey the the people wending their way among the sculptures on the first floor far below. But the paintings, too, are marvelous, the main attractions being the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists on the upper floors. Many of the canonical works are here--Whistler's mother, Van Gogh's bedroom and self-portraits and "Starry Night," Monet's water lilies, Cezanne's apples, and the list goes on and on. I also came across many gripping paintings that were less familiar to me, or that I hadn't known at all. We've been here nearly two weeks, and today is the first time I've made it to a museum, so I was really hungry to take it all in. We're planning a family trip to the Louvre soon, and I'm hoping Nicholas will like the Picasso museum as well (it's fairly small, for one thing), but in general it's just trickier to get to the museums as often as we once would have.

We have a fairly restrained plan of going out for full meals, but tonight was one of them. We went to La Cagouille, which is one of the restaurants designated a true "temple of seafood" by our guidebooks, and it certainly lived up to its billing. The day's menu was handwritten on a white board (no English translations) and, except for dessert, featured nothing but seafood. They automatically bring you a bowl of tiny, delicious clams before you order your meal, and both the entrees and the plats were seafood--mainly different kinds of fish in one form or another. One appetizer was rather salty mackerel on a bed of greens, and wasn't a favorite with me, but the other appetizer was a tasty little fish (I've forgotten the name) accompanied by a little boat of truly mouth-watering sauce that all three of us enjoyed. My main course was filet de mulet (red mullet, I think) and was very good, as was Suzanne's salmon. Both of the main dishes came with wonderfully prepared vegetables--potatoes in butter in my case, and mix of potatoes, haricots vert (French green beans), carrots, and potatoes for Suzanne. Nicholas held on valiantly through the long meal to be rewarded with two scoops of glace (ice cream), one vanilla and one chocolate. The ice cream here seems to be pretty consistently fantastic--the vanilla in particular tastes less "processed" than our version, with a much richer flavor of vanilla bean. Suzanne and I (and Nicholas) shared the mille-feuille des fraises, that is, layers of puff pastry with custard and fresh strawberries. Wonderful. It was after 10 o'clock by the time we made it home from the restaurant and got Nicholas in bed.

We've been resisting, since we have to keep on schedule for Suzanne to teach a 9am class, but it's almost impossible not to shift later here. The restaurants don't start serving until 7:30 and it doesn't get dark until after 10. Little by little you get seduced into later and later bedtimes (a seduction to which I am especially susceptible anyway).

Paris Journal, Part 3

2008-06-16T13:47:00.000-07:00

6/8 Sunday

Fresh market. A different rhythm.

Went to the neighborhood fresh market. We visited this on our first day here, and it was nice, but today we weren't so tired and we got to see more of it. The whole scene is tremendously bustling and French (but also fairly friendly), with fresh veggies, fruits, seafood, and cheese, all at good prices. Open every Sunday, Tuesday, and Friday, until 2pm. We had a lot of fun today, and came home to make a delicious lunch. I had brie with tomato and basil (basilic, I now know to call it), all perfectly fresh. I took our little Larousse electronic dictionary with me, and that came in really handy for things like figuring out that fletan is halibut. Again, there weren't too many kids around, and the vendors kept offering Nicholas free goodies. He was happy to munch an apricot and a cherry, but shied away from the shrimp, which was cooked, but still sporting its head and legs. I ate the shrimp, which was quite tasty. I'll pick some of those up soon, but tonight I'm going to try pan-frying the halibut (we don't have an oven or I'd bake it). I was pleased to manage the shopping pretty well with my limited French. The language already feels a lot more familiar to me than it did a week ago.

We're trying to find a rhythm for this longer stay, which is a lot different than a week-long vacation. We have a much longer stretch in which to see things, but we also have to handle laundry and shopping and the business of daily life, and Suzanne's summer course carries a fairly serious work load, since the schedule is quite compressed.

6/9 Monday

Today a we had a sitter for Nicholas for three hours. Her name is Julia, and she is the twenty-something daughter of Francoise, another of the Yale professors in the summer program. Suzanne went with them to the park, but used the time to get some reading (teaching prep) done, and Nicholas and Julia hit it off nicely. That's great, since we'll definitely need some more sitting so Suz can get her prep done and I can do a little work too. Today I got to go off solo for this first time. Took a book and headed up to St. Germaine, where I secured a cafe table at Le Rouquet (less famous but also less mobbed than Cafe Flore or Les Deux Magots), ordered a cafe au lait, and got some actual work done when I wasn't rubbernecking.

6/10 Tuesday

Big day today. Went on the bateau-mouche with Suzanne's class (a nice bunch). It was an exceptionally sunny afternoon, which had us broiling on the top deck--but it was nice to see all the famous sights along the Seine framed against blue sky. Suz and I took this tour last time we were here, but it really is remarkable how much you can see from the Seine. The guide books don't exaggerate when they call it the central "artery" of the city--it does somehow seem like the city's life force flows through it.

Nicholas started off grumpy and disinclined to be pleased in the morning, after not getting a great night's sleep, so he and I had a distinctly bumpy morning with much wrangling and a few melt-downs while Suzanne was off teaching. He didn't want to go the fresh market, didn't want to go on the bateau-mouche, etc. But in the event, he enjoyed the cruise a great deal, and also got a kick out of meeting Suzanne's students. By the end of the day he said, "You know daddy, you don't really need a camera. I've got a hundred pictures in my mind, and 130 sentences!" Moments like that are pretty great.

I also had some almost giddy successes with my French today, including another successful trip to the fresh market, where I was again taken for Italian. And then, even better, we went to the seafood market at Rue Daguerre (to pick up the Paella Royale, a mix of Spanish rice, shrimp, clams, mussels, etc.) and I got in an extended conversation with the woman behind the counter. She asked me quite a few questions, and as long as she didn't speak too fast (I'm not afraid to say "plus lentement, s'il vous plait," which means "more slowly, please") I was able to follow most of what she said. And I was also able to explain, in decently acceptable French, that we had been here six years ago for a one-week stay before Nicholas was born, that we had returned for a five-week stay because my wife was teaching a summer literature course at Cite Universitaire, etc. etc. She complimented me on my accent, and then launched into the familiar complaint about how Americans don't articulate their words (she thought at first that I was British). We were both clearly pleased by the conversation and she tossed in a tasty mayo sauce to go with our crevettes (shrimp).

I was so intoxicated by this success that I struck up another conversation when I came across a neighbor in the hall. She was looking for a book on the little communal bookshelf they keep there (nice touch, that) and I used the opening (Vous cherchez un bon livre, n' est-ce pas?) to get things rolling. She spoke much too quickly for me to get everything, but I told her a little about us and gathered that she has aunts and uncles in San Francisco whom she has not seen for a long time. I'm curious to know what she does for a living, since she was looking for the second volume of Proust's A la Recherche du Temps Perdu, which is not exactly light reading. She didn't compliment me on my accent, but she did think I had been living here for a while.

Paris Journal, Part 2

2008-06-14T06:19:00.000-07:00

6/5 Thursday

Suzanne taught today, and Nicholas and I went off to Le Jardin des Tuileries. The main reason for this destination was that Nicholas wanted to go somewhere with rocks and sticks, so he could experiment with fulcrums, and so he could look for rocks to collect. Not all that many kids in evidence, except for those on class trips. No play structures, and as with the Jardin du Luxembourg there were none of those little sailboats in evidence--though they are mentioned in all the guide books, and we remember them from our last trip. All in all, it was a rather tiring expedition. We've been walking our feet off since we got here, and had an especially big day yesterday. Also, the Metro is proving to be extremely crowded almost every time we use it, and we have to use it--often changing trains a couple of times--to get to most places.

We end up putting together a quick dinner of whatever was left in the fridge or the kitchen--some bean salad, some pasta, baguette and goat cheese or butter, some fruit, etc. Nicholas was pretty excited about this "scavenger hunt" approach to dinner.

6/6 Friday

Shopping at Place d'Italie. Writing. Bistrot des Pingouins.

Suzanne and Nicholas went shopping at Place d' Italie to get mugs, an umbrella, a toy for Nicholas (promised during yesterday's tiring excursion), and some other odds and ends. I stayed home to do some reading and writing. I write to clear my mind and sharpen my wits. Even the merest jottings serve to establish some perspective and impose some organization, however minimal or haphazard. This morning I woke up burdened by a sense of the accumulation of large chunks of undigested experience. In the five days we've been here we've been on the go, scrambling to figure out the business of living in a foreign city, to get Suz up and running with her teaching, to see some sights, etc. And before we came I was pushing as hard as I could to get my Oppen manuscript to the press, finish up the academic year, write my annual reports, get ready to leave the country, etc. By now I'm feeling a pretty serious need to slow down a little, get some rest, and do some thinking of a more meditative and less hurried sort than I have managed lately. But at the same time, I also want to "make the most" of my Paris experience. That latter urge sounds benign enough, but it can turn you into one of those crazed tourists hurtling from one monument to the next if you're not careful.

We went to Pistro des Pinguoins for dinner (I successfully made a reservation by phone in advance). This place was recommended by Pudlo as a friendly, simple restaurant, and that's exactly what it was--very relaxed (though also very busy), with a strong neighborhood feel. Despite the latter, they also had menus in French and English (we looked at both, and they were the same--not different as we warned they can be at some places). We will definitely return. I was disappointed at first that there was not a range of fish offerings (I was hoping for the cod mentioned in Pudlo), meaning that I had to order salmon, which I eat pretty often back home. But my filet was moist and delicious, accompanied by very simple greens and potatoes. Struck me as a French version of down-home cooking, very satisfying. Suzanne also had salmon, baked in a fillo-like pastry, with green salad. I had escargots for an appetizer--quite tasty in an herb sauce (definitely featuring basil). These came with a special little implement perfectly sized and shaped to hold the shell as one works to prize out the snail. One snail wouldn't come out and I was happy to get a laugh from the waitress with my attempt at a small joke in French: "Cette escargot a gagne. Il reste dans la maison." Or : "This snail has won. He remains in his house.")

6/7 Saturday

Return to the Marais. Le Colimacon. Place des Vosges. BHV. Notre Dame on the weekend. The crushing crowd (la foule).

Today we made our much anticipated return to Le Marais, the district that was our home base (we stayed at Le Caron de Beaumarchais) during our week-long Paris fling before Nicholas was born (I took a picture of Nicholas and Suzanne in front of our old hotel). We got off the metro at St. Michel and walked past Notre Dame--and with the weekend crowd, there was a line to get in today. In fact, there was a fairly crushing crowd (we learned the name for this: la foule) just about everywhere we went. Still, we had fun walking the ancient and picturesque cobblestone streets (very different from the wide avenues of the neighborhood where we're staying now), even if they were full of tourists like ourselves. Walking up Rue Vielle du Temple we passed first Le Caron de Beaumarchais, then Les Philosophes (a cafe), and then Le Colimacon, our beloved little restaurant. Suzanne is planning to take her class out to dinner here, so we stopped in and found out that she could reserve a special room for the class, which would have its own waiter and an earlier than usual serving time to accommodate their schedule. The "events" person for Yale hadn't been able to set this up by phone, so stopping by proved to be worthwhile, quite aside from the pleasant shot of nostalgia. While Suz and Nicholas checked out the dining room, I made conversation with a young chef and his friend, who were having a smoke outside. My French kept the exchange limited, but I did manage to explain that we had frequented the restaurant on a visit six or seven years ago. The chef and his friend complained that the area had gotten "plus doux," that is, softer and calmer than it used to be, with too many tourists on the scene now. That reminded me that one night we had gone to the restaurant later than usual--to realize that in addition to be a charming neighborhood restaurant it had a thriving gay scene.

Placed des Vosges was full of tourists too, but still possessed its remembered stately beauty. After so much negotiating of narrow, crowded streets, Nicholas was thrilled to be able to run free for a bit. We had bubble-blowing paraphernalia, so he chased bubbles like a happy fool.

Heading back, we were getting pretty tired, and were also in need of a bathroom. Here and there they have some little public toilet cabins, but the one in this area was broken, so we were happy to find out that the big bargain department-store BHV, near Hotel de Ville, had rest rooms on the fifth floor. We were also pleased to find an eatery, also on the fifth floor, where we could get double scoops (deux boules) of ice cream for 2 euros, rather than having to pay three times as much at one of the chic local cafes. That recharged our batteries enough for the ride back home, or rather to Place Denfert Rochereau, where we sought out the sushi restaurant on Rue Daguerre, as we had promised Nicholas we would. The sushi was just okay, but the food was relatively inexpensive, and N. chowed down on his California roll until he was nicely sated. It was good to get a solid meal after another big day of walking and metro-riding, and even more so because we had to spend a foot-weary, belly-grumbling half hour waiting for the restaurant to open at 7 o'clock, which seems to be the earliest possible serving time around these parts.

Paris Journal, Part 1

2008-06-12T02:15:00.000-07:00

Paris Journal

6/2 Paris! (Monday)

Got in yesterday after one of those all-night flights with a time change that pushed us from 1am to 7am by the time we arrived. No sleep for me and Suz, a little for Nicholas. When we got to the apartment we were greeted by our very gracious hostess, Anne, who took us around to the local grocery store and also to the very lovely fresh market, where we picked up a few fruits and veggies, including some excellent French strawberries. Also got a cheap but good bottle of Chardonnay from the corner store, and even managed to read a little of my Philip K. Dick novel last night--but the whole "day" (or whatever you call it) passed in a strange blur of fatigue. We did manage a few hours sleep in the afternoon, but Suz had to run off to Cite Universitaire to meet her students and Nicholas was a bit of a basket case by evening, when we went to the local pizzeria.

Everybody's cheerier this morning after getting at least a bit of sleep, and starting to break out of the jet lag. Nicholas just had his first bath in our Paris tub, and came out to show me a silly new dance he just invented, smiling, rosy, and clean. I had strange broken dreams last night and popped awake at 6am to the light through the curtains (a bit too bright for me) and the unfamiliar street noises (not used to being in the city--any city--any more). Right now a siren is going off, and kids are pouring out of the school across the street. Looks like a fire drill. Sun's trying to come out.

Ok, time for some ablutions. And Nicholas has been promised that he can watch some more of Cars, which means I have to give up the laptop for now. A class of young kids--probably kindergarteners--is going by on the street. An old nun gives one of the teachers kiss on both cheeks (but didn't she kiss her on the forehead first?). The kitchen staff is standing around on the corner in white chef's coats and those grey-and-black checked pants. Lots to see out the window.
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6/3 Tuesday

Notre Dame. Hugo's Notre Dame. Isle St. Louis. Hemingway. Allergies. Faster-than-light vehicles. Shopping at the supermarche.

Rainy off and on yesterday, and that's what they're calling for the next couple of days, but we made an expedition up to Notre Dame yesterday and got things off to a nice start. Nicholas was excited to see such a famous building, and we even got inside without waiting (I seem to remember a line to get in last time). Read in the guide book that the building was nearly torn down in the 19thC, but that the popularity of Hugo's Hunchback of Notre Dame, along with a revival of interest in Gothic architecture, saved it. Last night Suz read out a bit of Hemingway's Sun Also Rises, where he talks about the cathedral "squatting" on the island. That's a good choice of verb--makes me think of the building itself, with its ugly beauty, as a larger version of one of its own famous gargoyles.

After walking around the dark interior, looking at the stained glass, the statues, etc. we moved on to the Isle St. Louis, a favorite of ours from the last visit. We found the spot where we had our (to us) famous picnic of wine and brie and baguette. There was a steady shower by this time, which forced us to seek the expensive shelter of an awning at one of the local cafes. We had a pricey but delicious treat of glace vanille and sorbet fraise. Nicholas first thought the glace was the best, then the sorbet, then the glace, continuing back and forth in this manner the whole time we ate, in an exquisite agony of indecision. At one point, he said, "You know what this place is to me?" The answer: "Paradise!"

I had bad allergies all day, and they culminated in an uncontrollable fit of sneezing and weepy eyes by late afternoon. Same thing happened on Cape Cod last June, and also the year before. Apparently I'm now destined to be beset by killer June allergies wherever I am in the world.

~

Today Suzanne taught her first class, tackling Hemingway (manly metaphors seem appropriate in this case) and finding her students eager and bright-eyed, the natural vitality of youth working to counteract their jet lag. Nicholas and I went off to the Jardin Luxembourg, where we gazed at the palace, watched the old guys playing chess, fed the birds some of our daddy-packed pb&j picnic, looked at various intriguing sculpture installations (including one whose title translates roughly as "pot of legs, bouquet of feet"), inspected the various varieties of palm tree on view, gathered rocks, etc. Nicholas got particularly excited about the rocks, which were not the usual sort we find around home--especially when I told him I was pretty sure they are volcanic (which seems to me likely, given their waviform smoothness).

Before we went out, I had N. occupy himself for a bit by drawing faster-than-light aircraft, having explained to him that--Star Wars aside--we had conquered the sound barrier but had not yet topped the speed of light (I didn't get around to explaining that we would have to do so with space vehicles, not planes). After producing several fierce-looking designs, Nicholas wanted me to draw one. I conjured up something I thought was pretty sleek and impressive, but when I showed it to N. he smiled tolerantly and said, "Let me show you a model." After scrutinizing several models, I grasped the need for extra sets of wings and a plethora of guns, and thus managed to turn out something acceptable.

~

I didn't like the soy milk we picked up yesterday, so I went to the supermarche tonight to try to find another brand. It was difficult to locate, so I ended up inquiring "Avez-vous soja?" First I was shown a can of soy beans, but with the clarifier "a boire" I did eventually obtain the desired beverage. A small success in the on-going transatlantic negotiations, but I'll find out tomorrow morning if this one tastes any better. We haven't gone to a restaurant for a real French meal yet, which means that so far the usual food inconveniences faced by travelers are hanging in the balance with the compensatory treats (excellent strawberries, some good street-vendor crepes, mousse from the supermarche, good cheap wine plentifully available, etc.)

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6/4 Wednesday

Eiffel Tower. Les Olivades. Vagabonds. The "lucky" ring. American library.

Made our inevitable trip to the Eiffel Tower today. The three of us are starting to get the hang of the Metro (sometimes a bit challenging with Nicholas in tow). On our last Paris visit, Suz and I only gazed at the tower from a bateau-mouche, so we didn't know about the carnivalesque scene at its base--crowds from the world over, street performers, ice cream, sketch artists (we got one done of Nicholas and the Eiffel tower, which was sort of fun, but the result was, alas, a poor likeness), a carousel, etc.. The lines to go up and take in the view were long, and Nicholas wasn't so sure he liked the idea anyway, so we confined ourselves to taking in the atmosphere and taking the usual pictures of ourselves against the backdrop of the tower. Not unlike Notre Dame, but with a modernist twist, it has a strange way of oscillating between beauty and ugliness when you see it up close. I'd like to see it lit up at night, but it stays light so late here--that is, so far past N.'s bedtime--that I don't know if we'll be able to manage it.

~

We also went for our first real French meal of the trip--at Les Olivades--selected from Pudlo's as one of the best bets in the 7th (the chef is Bruno Deligne, for those who know about such things). But the 12 Euro prix fixe lunch mentioned in the guide (which is 2007-2008) is apparently a thing of the past. It had gone up to 25E, and all told it was not by any means a cheap meal, but it was an experience. Pudlo's ratings ascend as follows: simple, comfortable, very comfortable, luxurious, very luxurious. Le Colimacon, the Marais restaurant we liked so well on our last visit, is listed as "simple." Les Olivades is listed as "comfortable," but we found it both as expensive and as formal as we are likely to be able to handle. The younger waitress who served us was very precise and very French, but friendly enough and game to shepherd a table of Americans through the ritual of a French meal. We went through only an attenuated version of this ritual, skipping the aperitif at one end and coffee at the other, and we expended a good deal of effort behaving ourselves, keeping Nicholas in line (he was actually very good), and summoning our very best French. With only a few rough patches we were able to understand and to be understood. The older matron of the establishment also participated in the service, and she was more formidable, but we succeeded, I think, in not provoking her full scorn. The meal was initiated by the waitress bringing us each a large plate bearing a tiny sort of scoop-like dish containing a small white disk. After placing these on the table, the waitress said to us repeatedly and emphatically, "Ne mangez pas!" (Do not eat!") Then she returned with an elegant pitcher and poured a few drops of water onto each of the white disks, at which point they expanded into white towers several inches high and revealed themselves to be wet naps for cleaning the hands before the meal. Suzanne and Nicholas had some marvelous, tiny, cheese-filled raviolis in pesto, served with shavings of fresh cheese (probably some variety of parm, i guess). I had the Black Tiger shrimp with finely minced papaya, pepper, and sweet onions, one of the dishes mentioned in Pudlo's. There were three, or perhaps four, of these good-sized shrimp, and then a thin line of the minced accompaniment along one edge of the plate. All very spicy and tasty, but though I am not a meat-and-potatoes sort of guy, I did find it a bit minimalist. Dessert was surprisingly unsweet (and therefore spurned by Nicholas)--a whipped "fromage blanc" with a layer of rhubarb sauce underneath, both a bit sour, but nevertheless delicious. For a touch of sweetness there were some sugar crystals sprinkled on top, and these turned out to fizz in the mouth--the "pop rocks" effect that is apparently popular these days (or so I have gleaned from reading the occasional food column in the Times). Nicholas did think that part was pretty cool.

~

The Indian fellow who did Nicholas's portrait was not much of an artist, but had the knack of seeming friendly and honest. Of course it was a smart line of his to say that Nicholas was so handsome that he really wanted to sketch him. Later, as we were leaving the scene and on our way to the American library, a slightly scroungy looking fellow of some non-French but European origin (possibly Italian) found a "gold" ring on the ground as were passing by. He made a big show of finding it, and of reading some initials on the inside that he took to signal that it was genuine gold. Then he tried it on his fingers but it was too small, so he tried it on mine (he had captured my interest) and the ring fit. He then gave me the ring, saying it must be my lucky day, bid us a cheery "Ciao," and headed on his way. After a minute, though, he trotted back to ask if I might perhaps spare the money for a sandwich. I obliged, in a mix of Euros and dollars (he almost didn't want to take one of the bills, which had a slight tear), and he took his farewell again. Later, it occurred to me that the whole thing had the aspect of a show (especially when he tried the ring on his fingers in a bigger-than-life, nothing-up-my-sleeve sort of way), and was most likely a well rehearsed scam. Anyway, if it was a scam, I don't really mind. He did look rather down and out, and probably could have used the lunch. I have a soft spot for vagabonds, and I don't really begrudge those who try to put their wits to use to fill their bellies. I got to know the street culture of Washington, D.C. way back when I was a bike courier, and I tend also to think of all the hungry artists--first and foremost, Henry Miller--who have written so sharply of trying to scrape up the next meal. Hemingway claimed to have gotten many a dinner out of the fat pigeons of Le Jardin du Luxembourg, waiting for the moment when the gendarme went off for his glass of wine and then sneaking up on his victim to wring its neck (whether true or not, the story has made it into our guidebook). But neither Hemingway nor Miller, it goes without saying, would have spurned a nice meal at Les Olivades, given the chance.

~

We also signed up for membership in the American Library of Paris. We got some videos for Nicholas (including Disney's Hunchback of Notre Dame, of course), and a couple for ourselves as well, and Suz was able to get some books she needs for her teaching.

War, Peace, Fantasy, Truth

2008-04-10T07:50:00.000-07:00

Listened to War and Peace last night and again on the way to work this morning. Powerful episode leading up to the death of Petya, and that led me to brood darkly (while making the cloudy drive up I-95) on the human cost of war, the senselessness, the tragedy of it that so many people have pointed to in despair over the years--and it is always there to point to since war is a practice we can never seem to abandon. For a 19thC writer, Tolstoy is not notably sentimental; indeed, his famous "objectivity" often denies us many of the easier fictional satisfactions--such as the rousing enjoyment of heroic deeds. Petya's death is stupid and meaningless, and it comes about explicitly because of the fiction of valor and "heroism" to which he is so hopelessly in thrall. He's a boy, a boy with a sword and a gun, seeking a boy's idea of glory. And the great sadness here is that he is probably closer to the rule than to the exception; we fight wars with boys--that is, boys fight wars--and we fill their heads with nonsense so they will be ready to lay down their lives. In the novel, Tolstoy uses the power of sentiment to make us feel the loss of Petya's boyish life keenly. The older soldier/friend Denisov recalls Petya's love of sweets and the cache of raisins he has brought with him to the battlefield, and then he, Denisov, bursts into a howl of grief. Though there have been many battles in the many hundreds of pages preceding this moment, we have previously seen nothing of the kind, no outpouring of emotion on this order. The effect is all the more powerful in light of Tolstoy's habitual restraint.

~

Literature often envelopes us in a comforting bubble of fantasy; we enjoy things we would never enjoy in real life, including even the rendering of the dark facts of death and destruction. There are moments, though, when the bubble bursts, when we stop thinking about fiction as fiction and start thinking about the world. Suddenly you're not reading a battle scene but thinking about real battles, real soldiers, real deaths (in this case Iraq was in my mind), as if the real non-fictional truth were suddenly laid bare like a rock that had been covered by earth.

~

Lately, we have let Nicholas watch Star Wars, bowing to the fact that several of the other boys at pre-school have seen it a zillion times, own all the toys, and talk about it incessantly. It's an exciting adventure, a simple, powerful story about the battle between good and evil, with a heroic boy at the center. We fast-forward through some of the more violent scenes, but it's the first thing we've ever let him watch where people fire guns at one another, ships blow up, and so on. Last night he was enjoying the explosions of starfighters in one of the battle scenes when it finally (we're on our third or fourth viewing) occurred to him to ask "What happens to the people when the ships blow up?" When I explained that the people also blow up, Nicholas let out a wide-eyed, heavy, serious "Oh," full of the gravity of the realization. The movie kept going, we kept watching, and the moment passed, but it gave me a serious pang. He's five years old now, and learning more and more about the world that's out there--as opposed to the semi-fictional bubble in which we raise young children. That means he's going to start finding out the things we really do to one another.

Notes on Poetry and Weather

2008-02-06T09:14:00.000-08:00

It occurred to me driving in today that one could probably write a rather grand essay on poetry and weather, maybe even on the poetics of weather.

Exhibit A would probably be the haiku, and the way the genre is specifically tied to the seasons. The haiku captures transience, fleeting moments, and nothing is more transient than the weather. The paradox—and challenge—of haiku is to make transience permanent. We could say that all poetry—all literature—does this, but the haiku is so resolutely attuned to the ephemeral that it constitutes a special case.

So already I find myself thinking about time. To write about weather may be to write about time.

Pound said poetry is news that stays news, but nothing, seemingly, is more irrelevant than yesterday’s weather. Haiku is tied not just to weather, but to the seasons. The seasons, which are regular and cyclical, impose order on the weather. Because seasons follow a recurring pattern, and since this pattern has remained part of human experience for centuries, haiku can let us experience weather sub species aeternitas.

The moon, in its different phases, reflected in water, makes a lovely trope for the passage of time, for shimmering transience. And there is the haiku ur-image “falling petals, swirling leaves.” I’m drawing on Hass, who is very good on transience and the haiku.

Googling Basho I turn up one I don’t know:

The banana tree
blown by winds pours raindrops
into the bucket

A moment's weather. Is it still raining, or just after the storm? Was the bucket placed there to catch the raindrops or is it just there by accident? Perhaps the banana tree is like us, buffeted by the storm but gathering precious water.

And here’s another new one for me:

Winter showers
even the monkey searches
for a raincoat.

That one needs no comment. One of the things I like about haiku is that they are often funny. Here it’s a comedy of weather, of weathering.

The theme of poetry and weather is closely bound up, of course, with the genre “nature poetry,” and also pastoral (as a subset). One thinks immediately of all the soft breezes and scudding clouds in romantic poetry, and of poets themselves wandering lonely as clouds.

But weather can trope in various ways. The Aeolian harp is a primal image for poetry, and in this case the breeze is the muse—what blows through one in the inspiration (intake of breath) that is the source of poetry.

And I think of William Carlos Williams’s “Against the Weather” essay, where weather seems to be something like history, the often hostile environment against which the poet has to hunker down in order to get the job done. And then there is Stevens’s “major weather.”

For Oppen, sailing is a central image for the writing of poetry, and here again the wind is what makes things go.

And Oppen’s “approached the window / as if to see “what was really going on.” That’s an attempt to get out of a stuffy room on a rainy day, to project oneself outside into the world.

The author of “Defining the Wind” rhapsodizes about the gorgeousness and precision of the Beaufort wind scale. See the modern version at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaufort_scale.

The weather is an image of the world itself, in its dynamic aspect, and of the ways it soothes or buffets us. You can’t step into the same weather twice.

A nice figure for the relation of subject and object, since the weather is so palpably an element we are in.

So poetics of weather and poetics of mind come together as the interpenetration of inside and outside, the commingling of subject and object.

Cape Cod Journal 2007, Part V

2007-11-14T11:44:00.000-08:00

Well, it's been 3 months since my last post, and 5 months since we went to Cape Cod, but better late than never I guess. Anyway, I've finally gotten around to transcribing the final entry of my Cape Cod Journal from last summer. It's just a small one, but it's been bugging me that I never (until now) got around to completing the account.

6/15

Last night we talked about how remarkably fun the trip has been despite the past few days of cloudy, windy, chilly weather. We agreed, again, that the wonderful thing about the Cape is its variety, its fantastic density of “points of interest” packed into what is really a fairly small sliver of land. You’ve got scads of lovely beaches offering everything from mellow tidal pools to impressive breakers; you’ve got bookstores, galleries, and museums; you’ve got hiking and biking and boating (the latter are two are on the agenda for the next trip), and so on.

~

Anyway, after talking about all that we made plans to leave for home right after check-out in the morning, since the weather was predicted to be cloudy once again—but the prediction is wrong and we wake up to blue skies! Naturally, we alter our plans and head for Wood Neck beach. The skies remain unblemished and the day is a veritable idyll. We lie about on the beach, protected from the wind and enjoying the more temperate water of Buzzard’s Bay where it is further gentled into tidal pools and streams. Nicholas and I build a ring-shaped, twelve-towered “drip castle” on the bank of one of the main tidal channels, buttressing it with large-ish stones from the stream and topping it off with a judicious selection of the abundant shells lying all around us. Then Nicholas goes to work again with his net and he and Suzanne capture even more crabs than we did before, and even a couple of small translucent prawns. We have been schooled all week to appreciate any hint of sun, so we are in a position to savor every moment of this last sun-blessed day of vacation.

We leave around 3 o’clock and hit the expected slow-down around Providence (& beyond), but a well-timed stop for a pizza dinner gives the traffic a chance to calm and we make it home in good time. The cats are glad to see us and it’s good to be home. At bedtime, Nicholas makes up a song about how he loves Cape Cod and Branford—or, as he puts it, “all the countries”...

Cape Cod Journal 2007, Part 4

2007-08-17T17:47:00.000-07:00

6/14/07 Thursday

Coudy, windy, and chilly again. Which starts us all off in a grumbly mood. But we use the clouds to make a return visit to Isaiah Thomas, the great used bookstore we discovered last year. And memory really hadn’t done justice to just how marvelous this bookstore is. Or maybe I just felt the marvel more keenly since it has been longer since I have lived near such an establishment—the last was the Harvard Bookstore in Harvard Square (the store is not affiliated with the university). As it did last year, the kids’ room with the big stuffed dragon proves crucial to keeping Nicholas entertained, and he does pretty well for himself book-wise too—at a buck apiece we get a stack of installments in the Boxcar Children series, and barely manage to leave behind another stack from the Magic Treehouse series. We pass on the latter because Nicholas hasn’t fully established his enthusiasm for the series quite yet—but the ones we have taken out from the library have helped introduce N. to the idea of “mysteries” in general. We spend a lot of time these days identifying mysteries and following clues to solve them—like say the Mystery of the Yellow Kayak (unoccupied) on the beach today. Anyway, we also find him a nicely illustrated edition of Hans Christian Anderson stories.

I could easily get lost in this store and browse endlessly, but as time is limited I decide to focus just on the poetry section, since such sections are so hard to find anywhere these days. Everything I get is old--in the sense that the authors are long dead--but I do pretty well: Paul Valery: An Anthology, from Princeton UP; the Selected Writing of Paul Valery, from New Directions (can’t believe I’ve never gotten around to buying this before); the Richard Howard translation of Les Fleurs du Mal, from Godine; The Penguin Book of Bird Poetry (sometime I’ll tell you about my pet theory about the links between poetry and birdsong); Poems of New York (one of those handsome and relatively inexpensive little Everyman hardbacks, with the very civilized ribbon-style attached bookmark, and it even includes a poem by man George Oppen, whose work is certainly not anthologized often enough); Poems from the Sanskrit, from Penguin Classics; and Stephen Mitchell’s Gilgamesh (I’m an unapologetic fan of Mitchell’s Rilke translations, though some have criticized them for being too light and Americanized; I wouldn’t want to have only these translations, but they definitely have their charms, at least for me). The Essays section is right next to Poetry, so I sidle over and also end up with The Oxford Book of Essays (where else am I going to get Sir Thomas Brown’s “On Dreams” and Pauline Kael’s “Movies on Television” in the same volume?) and Isaiah Berlin’s The Hedgehog and the Fox (perhaps in a subconscious nod to the African pygmy hedgehog at the Zooquarium yesterday?) in the form of an original Mentor paperback from 1957 (original price 35 cents, current price $3.50). Then, as I’m watching Nicholas while Suzanne browses, we wander past the New England section, so I add Henry Kittredge’s Cape Cod: Its People and their History to the pile, along with a collection of “haunting, spine-chilling stories” called New England Ghosts (years ago I picked up a little collection of local legends and ghost stories when visiting New Brunswick on vacation, and ended up liking it a lot).

~

As the purchasing list above indicates, we have discovered on this trip something I’m sure all the local merchants count on: there is an inverse relation between the pleasantness of the weather and the amount of money one spends shopping on vacation. Shopping isn’t normally a particularly big vacation activity for us, but this week we do more of it than usual, since we’re not on the beach. After the bookstore, we vamp up the tourist bit and outfit ourselves with a pile of pretty nice Cape Cod sweatshirts from the Cuffy’s chain (Buy two at full price, and get three more free!). The shop is in Chatham, a town we haven’t visited before, and are determined to check out. As it happens, we don’t do much more than reconnoiter it for a future excursion, since by the time we get there we’re itching to find a beach—no matter what the weather. Driving through the quaint downtown we spot a railroad museum, a glassworks, and some interesting looking galleries, so the place definitely merits a return visit next year. But now we head straight back out of town until we hit Ridgevale beach, mentioned in our guide as having both a beach with waves and a protected area great for kids. It is, in fact, a very nice beach, and would probably be even more impressive on a day with sun and blue skies. As it is, the wind is howling, so we keep the long pants on and just stroll around, pondering The Mystery of the Yellow Kayak, and coming across a big pile of blue-crab shells (looks like someone must have had a feast). We make a big pile of claws (N. is particularly fascinated by these, with their impressive hinges and fierce-looking serrations), and count 27 of them. But there are no waves, despite the whipping wind, so we feel a mounting urge to head over to Orleans, and Nauset beach.

As soon as we get to Nauset we can see monster waves crashing ahead of us as we drive down the beach road to the parking lot. The air temp is about 57 degrees (average for this time of year is about 71), and the wind is blasting, but we decide that when a thing has to be done it has to be done. Our eyes wide with the prospect that lies before us, we change into our swim suits (still wearing sweatshirts and jackets) and charge the beach. The waves are thrashing, and once again we are about the only ones braving the weather, but we walk into the surf and stand there letting the waves pound us. The water is icy cold, and I have to keep a tight grip on Nicholas’s hand so he won’t be flattened by the incoming breakers, but he yells with delight and so do I. Suzanne bravely stands in the surf taking pictures, and gets taken unawares by a sly wave or two. Then I take over the camera and Suzanne keeps hold of Nicholas. The finisher comes when three waves converge and break at once, knocking Nicholas clean off his feet, though Suzanne manages to keep him mostly out of the water. After that we break for the van—still yelling our heads off—and change into dry clothes. My feet are still icily numb as we leave the parking lot, and I have the feeling that we’ve earned our lobsters for the night. Once we get to the Lobster Claw the “Ah, lobster!” moment we’ve been waiting for all week finally comes.

The visit to Nauset, brief and frigid though it was, ends up feeling like a kind of pilgrimage. It seems as though our stay at the Cape would have been somehow incomplete if we hadn’t gone.

Cape Cod Journal 2007, Part 3

2007-07-29T17:27:00.000-07:00

Part 3

6/12/07 Tuesday

Cloudy with showers, but the breaks between showers are exceedingly well timed. In the morning we head north for Skaket and Nauset beaches wearing our swim suits—convinced that our luck from yesterday will hold and that the sun will burn off the clouds, but this isn’t quite what happens. As we drive it begins to rain and the clouds look disconcertingly thick and dark. When we arrive at Skaket the rain does stop, but that’s the extent of our good fortune weather-wise. It’s quite cold and there is a scouring wind – but somehow Skaket is still fun. We keep our suits on but bundle up in sweatshirts and windbreakers, ready to join the one or two lonely figures on the beach. We know from past experience that low tide is a particularly fun time to come here, since the beach becomes an immense tidal flat and you can wade far into the shallow water to arrive at various sandbar “islands.” So this is what we do, and the wind and chill prove invigorating, provoking much running and yelling as we feel ourselves blown about like kites (in fact, we pretend to be kites). We carry our pails and shovels, and set up our water wheel in various strategic locations, burying its base in the mud to keep it from blowing over. It spins furiously from the force of the wind alone, before we even pour water into it. And when we do try to pour our water, only about half makes it in, with the rest taken by the wind.

After about 45 minutes of this sort of bracing play, we return to the van feeling like we’ve been on an adventure – and very ready to get out of the wind and into some warm, dry, long pants.

~

There’s no point in trying Nauset, which would be even harsher, so we drive north to Wellfleet for a run to Herridge’s Bookstore that does not disappoint. The management has changed again since last time – back, apparently, to the “original” fellow from our first visit, after a two-year sublease. The dog is gone, but the book selection is still pleasing. Suzanne restricts herself with remarkable discipline (some might call it foolishness) to Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood. I take a chance on a book and writer I haven’t heard of—The Last Days of Dogtown, by Anita Diamant. I know “Dogtown” from Charles Olson’s poetry, and from the day trips to Gloucester we used to like to make when we lived near Boston (though we never actually got to Dogtown itself)—so the gamble seems reasonable. I also get Nick Hornby’s Fever Pitch (which is supposed to be a comically obsessive account of soccer fandom); Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle; William Godwin’s Caleb Williams; and Edmund Wilson’s The Shores of Light: A Literary Chronicle of the Twenties and Thirties.

We also stop at the farm stand and a gift shop we like in Wellfleet, and then press on to Provincetown (located, as we explain to Nicholas, on the “hand” attached to “bare and bended arm” of the Cape). Bearing a couple of restaurant recommendations we got from the woman at the bookstore, we embark on what turns out to be an actual culinary adventure at Napi’s, a long-standing local establishment, its walls covered with various nautically themed scenes captured by P-town artists from over the years. We start with “Russian Oysters,” which are oysters on the half shell, each topped by a dollop of sour cream and another dollop of black caviar. As soon as I see these on the menu I know I have to try them, and they are indeed excellent. Ditto for my scallop-stuffed half lobster with garlic mash potatoes and sauteed veggies, and Suzanne’s scallops Provencale. For dessert Nicholas discovers the taste of gourmet vanilla ice cream topped with dark chocolate sauce, as Suzanne and I heroically resist eating more than a bite or two of his treat.

6/13/07 Wednesday

Cloudy, windy, & quite chilly again. After Skaket yesterday, we’re not feeling ready to make bold with the elements again, so we look for an indoor activity and settle on the Zooquarium in Yarmouth. N. is excited about this, and Suzanne and I remark that one of the good things about having a four year old, as opposed to say, a nine year old, is that it doesn’t take all that much to keep one entertained. Anyway, we see some more fish and turtles and snakes, and feed some cows and goats and llamas. Then we see a live show featuring Miss Pickles, the trained pig, and another involving an African an African pygmy hedgehog who was not introduced to us by name. Did you know that rats can go longer without water than camels can? That pigs are incapable of looking up at the sky? That kangaroos can’t walk backwards? Well, you do now.

~

We come home and cook some salmon in garlic, olive oil, and white wine, with salad and doggy-bagged restaurant linguini on the side. All in all, we have made it through another cold, cloudy vacation day pretty well. The problem is that the forecast continues to call for clouds up through our departure on Friday—and that’s definitely a drag. One thing that takes a little pressure off the “beach vacation” and its demand for good weather is that we have a pretty nice beach down the street from us back home. But even so, it would be really nice if the sun would peep out a bit before we leave.

~

The thing about a vacation week is that you have your schedule cleared, you’re away from other responsibilities, and you can actually focus on what you want to do—and to an extent, that makes anything you do yield a certain amount of fun. But on the other hand, there is undeniable pressure to make the most of the time, since this is the week you have been planning for, and are now paying for.

Cape Cod Journal 2007, Part 2

2007-07-23T17:32:00.000-07:00

Part 2

6/10/07 Sunday

Gorgeous and sunny. Bright white beach light. We head to Wood Neck beach, the beautifuly little “local” hideaway beach on Buzzards Bay that we discovered last year. There are really two beaches here – one on the more exposed “oceany” side and then another, protected area full of tidal pools and streams. The more exposed beach has a marvelous view, and the very clear water takes on a Mediterranean green in the sandy shallows. But this side is also much windier, and the water is pretty cold. On the other side, the water is mellow (especially for New England) and the beach is sheltered from the wind by the grassy dunes.

Last year, we noticed all the kids gleefully exploring the pools with nets, and this year we remembered to bring our own. Nicholas is absolutely delighted to see that these pools really do have whole schools of little fish (pipefish, I think they’re called) swimming about in them, but they prove too quick and elusive for our efforts. However, this does not deter Nicholas from splashing along madly in an attempt to catch some. We do catch a couple of hermit crabs and another larger crab (about three or four inches across) that’s built just like a blue crab but with a sandy yellow color and some darker speckles. Nicholas spots the crabs with his sharp eyes, but I have to scoop them up since he’s a bit afraid of them. Later, on the open side, we also see a horseshoe crab gliding primordially through the shallows, and Suz tries out the grab-it-by-the-tail trick remembered from her youthful summers on Long Island Sound – but as soon as all those claws start to wave in the air it slips from her hand and lands back in the water.

All in all, a wonderfully satisfying beach day, even though we left the thoughtfully packed sandwiches back in the fridge and had to make an unexpected lunch run. By dinner, we’re ready for a break from restaurant fare, so I head to Roche’s and pick up a roasted chicken, along with some fresh green beans to sautee in olive oil and garlic, and some Annie’s Mac & Cheese (one of N’s staples) to microwave. It all hits the spot.

~

After dinner, Nicholas and I go outside with our velcro “mitts” and our gaily colored tennis ball and have a game of catch. We haven’t done this since last summer, but N really does have a pretty good arm. Before we come in, we work up to 44 successful catches in a row, though toward the end we are standing only about three feet apart, each aiming right for the velcro sweet spot of the other’s mitt. Then the bath, and more from The Voyage of Dr. Doolittle before bed. We’re more than 300 pages in, and nearing the end. The book has an unfortunate streak of colonialism throughout (much condescension to the ignorant and silly “natives”), but we try to edit as we go. And otherwise, the story has many charms and delights.

~

Just remembered that today after a couple of seagulls tried to steal his turkey sandwich, N said “I call seagulls ‘mischief birds’ because they’re always getting up to mischief. N himself, I might add, is quite interested in mischief himself these days.

~

Also remembered that we finished up our time at the beach with a little game of “detective.” Nicholas was quite intrigued by the “mystery” that some of the water had flooded into the parking lot as the tide had come in (several people even had to move their cars). We waded through the tidal pool looking for clues (like the water getting colder toward the source of the influx) until we found the channel through which the tide enters the flats. When N and I returned, he said to Suzanne “I will tell you the whole story” and then proceeded to explain all that we had found.

6/11/07 Monday

Intermittent sun and clouds today with a few sprinkles and then a brief shower in the early evening. In the morning we’re in the mood for a hike, so we drive to the headquarters of the Waquoit Nature Reserve, but at the Visitor’s Information Center we realize that most of their trails are actually not near the headquarters but down by South Cape beach. So we drive just a little ways down the road to the ________ River Reservation, which has a riverside trail, though the “river” turns out to be not much more than a trickle at present. Under the spell of Dr. Doolittle, who makes being a naturalist sound quite exciting and adventurous, Nicholas insists on bringing his net so we can catch butterflies. I don’t have high hopes for our prospects, but sure enough, we do catch butterflies. One is a sort of burnt orange color that blends right in with the dead leaves on the ground. Another is brown with a row of four “eyes” on its wings, each eye consisting of a dark center encircled by a bright yellow ring. Our most spectacular specimen is black and irridescent blue, but though we spot two of this type they are both too quick for us. We lunch by the side of the road and then hike back out, with Suzanne and I taking turns carrying a tired Nicholas on our backs. Eventually he revives enough actually to run a good bit of the last segment of trail—ah the recuperative powers of youth!

~

We decide to hit the beach next, but make a couple of false starts. After driving down to South Cape beach because it is so close we remember that it really isn’t one of the better beaches. Then, after a certain amount of indecision (so many beaches!) we head over to Buzzard’s Bay again to investigate Old Silver beach. We do this partly because Nicholas really wants to go back to Wood Neck beach to hunt for fish and crabs again. Old Silver beach is near enough to Wood Neck to give us two options. Either it will be enough like Wood Neck for us to convince Nicholas to stay or we can just leave and go to Wood Neck. After finding Old Silver, we can see without leaving the car that it is quite beautiful—but no moreso than Wood Neck. And it doesn’t have the same sort of network of tidal pools (at least not accessible to the public). So back to Wood Neck we go, and by then it’s past 3 o’clock and clouding up. As we set up our stuff it starts to sprinkle and for a moment all looks doomed—but we decide to persevere. Almost everyone else leaves and we have the beach just about entirely to ourselves. After a few minutes, the rain stops, the sun comes out, and we are suddenly blessed with fantastic beach weather. We collect fourteen hermit crabs, find part of a horeshoe crab, build a “drip castle” by one of the tidal pools, and generally groove on the peacefully gorgeous late afternoon. Blue sky, white, puffy clouds, and lots of birds singing and stirring in the marshland. It’s hard to leave, and by the time we do we’re hungry enough to stop for a soft-serve ice cream before dinner. Nicholas is very excited about this violation of the rules, and we kind of like it too. As parents, we are of course concerned that this means he won’t eat dinner—but a little later he chows down two pieces of pizza from Zoe’s anyway.

~

Thinking back on the day I remember that we also caught a dragon-fly and examined its needle-thin body, iridescent green toward the head, its two sets of wings, and its top-of-the-head eyes. And when we released our hermit crabs at the beach it was funny how they all headed in different directions, as if following the paths marked by radii extending from a central point. I guess each one is trying to put as much distance as possible between it and the nearest crabs, and that's the pattern that results.

~

Once we get home from hiking, a deer tick scare (we find one in the car) leads us to strip down and self-inspect, to shower carefully, and to throw all the day’s clothing into the washer and dryer. In retrospect I can say that this was all to no avail--at least in my case--since this is undoubtedly the day I got infected with Lyme disease. Oy.

Cape Cod Journal 2007, Part 1

2007-07-18T19:06:00.000-07:00

Cape Cod Journal 2007

Introduction: For me anyway—and I think also for my handful of readers--my Cape Cod Journal from last summer was one of the highlights of last year’s blog. In those notes, I wrote about going to beaches and eating lobster but also tried to grapple at least a bit with the question of how, or if, one can have an “authentic,” even “elemental,” experience in the face of all the processing and packaging that goes along, for most of us, with the word “vacation.” This year, I have returned to the beaches and the seafood, but haven’t done a heck of a lot of grappling. Instead, I have just taken it for granted that Cape Cod is a deeply interesting and amusing place to which we very much like to go. One complication this year—and a major reason that I’m blogging the journal so long after our return from vacation—is that I gotten bitten by a tick after hiking on the Cape and came down with Lyme disease, which meant a really nasty week or so of headache, fever, and chills. Now I’m taking antibiotics and feeling better, and I’m not going to write too much about the whole Lyme disease thing—but I will say that I’ll be using insect repellent the next time I head into the New England woods (strange that I had to go to Cape Cod to get infected since the eponymous town of Lyme is right here in Connecticut, just about 30 miles north of where I live).

Part 1

Friday 6/8/07

I head into this week’s vacation not quite sure that I have the same drive and energy to get some writing done that I had last year—but here I am at 9pm on the first evening sitting down at almost the same table to do a little jotting. By “almost the same” I mean that we are staying not only at the same resort but in the same building as last year, in a unit with a nearly identical layout, though we’re on the first floor instead of the second. Next year we’ll have to see if we can get second-floor unit again (the deck is better than the patio, and you get more privacy), but this place is still quite nice.

~

We have a sunny day for our drive today rather than a rainy one (like we had last year), but it’s supposed to rain tomorrow, just as it did on Saturday a year ago. And Ben and Lisa are schedule to visit for that rainy day once again—only this year Lisa is almost eight months pregnant!

~

We arrived in time to have dinner on the Cape this year, so we head to Oysters Too, quite nearby and recommended by the resort staff. We started with oysters on the half shell, which where very good, and I ordered the Seafood Fra Diavolo, a concoction that is nearly impossible for me to resist whenever it’s on the menu. My dish is spicily excellent, but Suz’s lobster, shrimp, and scallops over penne pasta is not as good. The lobster tail is tough, and the butter sauce is too rich. Nicholas is pretty happy, as usual, with pasta marinara, especially since the waitress grates fresh parmesan on it right at the table with a special little grinder. The only trouble is that he’s done with his pasta by the time Suzanne and I are through with appetizer and salad, so in order to buy time for us to finish our entrees I have to bribe Nicholas for the rest of dinner with lavishly buttered bits of bread (“No gaps!” he commands). As a rule, we can’t let Nicholas butter his own bread for the simple reason that he will, if unchecked, stick his finger directly in the butter and lick it. That is, if he doesn’t try to eat whole chunks of it straight. At one point tonight he says, “I want butter on bread with no bread!” and is quite delighted with his little joke.

~

This year we were able to leave Branford by 1 o’clock, instead of 2:30, and though we had all the usual sorts of last-minute details to sort out the departure was more mellow than last year’s too—and that’s progress. On the way out of town we stopped for a drive-thru Dunkin Donuts lunch of egg & cheese bagel sandwiches and one chocolate munchkin apiece. This is a favorite lunch for weekend day trips, and is really just about the only time we go to a fast food chain. As these things go, it’s not that bad for you, and it’s pretty tasty. The earlier departure means we miss the rush hour crunch at Providence and get here by 4pm, giving us time after dinner to hit Roche Brothers grocery store (already pre-approved from last year) to stock up for the week. We also go to a nice wine shop right next to Roche Bros., which was either mysteriously unnoticed or absent last year. Checking in to the resort earlier, I had noticed brochures for two different Cape wineries, so I ask the guy at store about them. I have been wondering if you can get away with taking a four year old to a vineyard, but the guy says it pretty much a “grown-ups only” scene. As for the wines, he says they are “interesting,” but difficult to compare to anything more familiar because of the distinctive soil and climate on the Cape. Instead of the vineyard route, he recommends going to in-store tastings like the ones he does from 4-7pm every Friday and Saturday. That leaves me only tomorrow as a possibility before we leave—we’ll see if I make it.

~

The Winnie the Pooh bed we used for the first time last year has been a great favorite on all our trips since then, but is nearly outgrown, since Nicholas is shooting up like a beanstalk these days. I see from last year’s journal that he was so excited the first night on the Cape that he didn’t get to sleep until 10 o’clock. This year he still seems restless when I check on him at 9:24, but by about 9:26 he’s down for the count—storing up energy for tomorrow!

Saturday 6/9/07

Cloudy, and it turns out that Ben and Lisa can’t come today since Lisa isn’t feeling so hot--for the usual advanced-pregnancy reasons. Nicholas is quite sad that he won’t be seeing Ben, but a trip to the resort’s indoor pool cheers him up considerably (he just had his first swim lessons this spring, so now he gets to try out his moves). We drive down to Wood’s Hole to visit the aquarium at the Oceanographic Institute (yet another of Thomas Jefferson’s inspirations it turns out), and the aquarium exhibit is small but very well curated. We see local fish like cod, salmon, and halibut that I’m used to seeing only down at our local fish shop, laid out on a bed of ice. Also a hermaphroditic lobster that is half red and half blue and a really big lobster that is all blue. Perusing these exhibits we learn about the phenomenon of “color morphs” in lobsters—something I had never heard of. It’s mostly a matter of genetic mutation, but lobsters can also turn blue if they don’t get enough shells in their diet. We see other cool stuff too, like those creepy Remora Suckers that like to ride on the backs of sharks. The only sharks, though, were little “dogfish,” but this display was fascinating to N. because you could see tiny fetal dogfish hanging about in egg sacs.

In a brilliant stroke, they let you walk around behind the tanks, so you can see the “working” side of the aquarium, with pipes and drains to circulate the water, etc. etc.

~

After the aquarium we head out of Wood’s Hole and along the coast toward Surf Ride Beach, but end up at a little unmarked beach with a small dirt parking lot (we followed a car turning down a likely looking road). This beach has a nice Charleston-like marsh alongside, with a little stream of warm water running through it. Nicholas sets up his water wheel, which—with a little help from our shovels—promptly carves out a small channel down through the soft, sandy bank and into the stream (the sand was fine and soft by the stream but coarse and rocky on the main beach). After a while, we get back in the car and drive a bit further down the road to what must be Surf Ride Beach (though we never saw a sign). There we act the part of “aquarium-keepers” with our nets and pails. Nicholas is determined that we’re going to gather some fish to keep in our aquarium/pail, but ultimately he settles for periwinkles plucked from the rocks of the jetty. We agree that we will study them tonight and make some notes, then release them back into “open water” tomorrow. Come to think of it, though, our aquarium is still in the back of the van as I write this.

~

We make our way back to Wood’s Hole for dinner, fully intending to try the Fishmonger’s Cafe. But we are ravenous by 5:15 and FC doesn’t open until 5:30, so we end up at Shucker’s for lobster boil, just like last year. Somehow it just isn’t as good this time. Part of the problem is that the lobster isn’t hot enough—but it may also have something to do with the fact that we didn’t get the Thursday Night Special price (as we did last year) and we didn’t stumble on the restaurant just as we got an unexpected late break of sun after a day of rain (like last year). Anway, the mussels are scraggly, the steamers are gritty (well, like they are most places), and the corn is pretty mediocre. All in all, it just isn’t the sort of experience that makes you go “Ahhh, lobster!” That leaves us with a goal to reach before the week is out.

The Lives of Books

2007-04-15T13:16:00.000-07:00

I have been thinking for a while that it would be interesting to do a blog entry on The Book Pile--the always teetering tower of books that come under the categories of “current reading” or “current browsing” or “current intending.” Right now that stack would include Susan Cheever’s American Bloomsbury, Kenneth Silverman’s Edgar Allan Poe: Mournful and Never-ending Remembrance, Van Wyck Brooks’s The Flowering of New England, Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto, Chogyam Trungpa’s Meditiation in Action, Thomas Hardy’s Selected Poems, Joanna Russ’s The Female Man, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow: the Psychology of Optimal Experience, Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, Steven Meyer’s Irresistible Dictation: Gertrude Stein and the Correlations of Writing and Science, Thoreau’s Walden, Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia, Thomas de Quincey’s Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, Caleb Crain’s American Sympathy, J. Allan Hobson’s The Dream Drugstore, and Borges’s Ficciones. That’s just the downstairs stack (in the vicinity of my armchair), so it doesn’t include any of the other books piled on the desk in the third-floor study or waiting in the “transitional” bookcase on the second floor or perhaps lingering in what we might delicately call “the smallest room in the house” (I got that one from Ted Enslin). Anyway, a pile like this, with its mix of discernible patterns and odd juxtapositions, does give you a certain lively slice of (reading) life feel, but it would be even better to somehow graph the flow of books that pass under one’s eyes from one day or week or month to the next. Or perhaps one could make a time-lapse film, like the ones that condense the slow bloom of a flower into a sudden dramatic unfolding. A film of book-flow wouldn’t have the same sort of denouement—unless perhaps one happened to capture the book that changed one’s life for good and all—but it would still be kind of cool to see the fluid run of titles registering the little shifts and sideways tugs and athletic leaps of one’s ever-refocusing attention.

One book that isn’t on the list above, but only because I brought it upstairs with me when I came up to write this, is The Langston Hughes Reader, which includes samples of Hughes’s fiction, poetry, drama, autobiography, and song lyrics (it also tosses in a “pageant” and some articles and speeches as well). A couple of nights ago, shortly before nodding off, I picked the book up just to dip in, and turned to the following passage, which launches Hughes’s first volume of autobiography, The Big Sea:

"Melodramatic maybe, it seems to me now. But then it was like throwing a million bricks out of my heart when I threw the books into the water. I leaned over the rail of the S.S. Malone and threw the books as far as I could out into the sea—all the books I had had at Columbia, and all the books I had lately bought to read.
The books had gone down into the moving water in the dark off Sandy Hook. then I straightened up, turned my face to the wind, and took a deep breath. I was a seaman going to sea for the first time—a seaman on a big merchant ship. And I felt that nothing would ever happen to me again that I didn’t want to happen. I felt grown, a man inside out and out. Twenty-one.

I was twenty-one.

Four bells sounded. As I stood there whiffs of salt spray blew in my face. The afterdeck was deserted. The big hatches were covered with canvas. The booms were all tied up to the masts, and the winches silent. It was dark. The old freighter, smelling of crude oil and garbage, engines pounding, rolled through the pitch-black night. I looked down on deck and noticed that one of my books had fallen into the scupper. The last book. I picked it up and threw it far over the rail into the water below, that was too black to see. The wind caught the book and ruffled its pages quickly, then let it fall into the rolling darkness. I think it was a book by H.L. Mencken.

You see, books had been happening to me. Now the books were cast off somewhere in the churn of spray and night behind the propeller. I was glad they were gone."

A gripping scene, no doubt, but how appalling to begin the story of one’s life with such a despicable act of bibliocide! And yet, I think I know a little of how he must have felt. Perhaps one day I will date a new epoch in my life not from the reading of a book, as Thoreau suggests, but from the discarding of one, or all. Sometimes I remind myself of the sort of soul Thoreau describes near the start of Walden, “well nigh crushed and smothered under its load, creeping down the road of life, pushing before it a barn seventy-five feet by forty, its Augean stables never cleansed, and one hundred acres of land, tillage, mowing, pasture, and wood-lot!” I don’t have a hundred acres or a barn, but if I did have a barn it would surely be full of books.

And yet books do give much pleasure to such as me. When I opened the Hughes Reader and began to flip through, looking for a place to begin, I found two small artifacts tucked in its pages: the first a receipt for the purchase of the book, and the second a pale gold bookmark printed in black with the image of an owl wearing a pointed cap, a quill pen grasped in its talons, apparently preparing to write something in a large tome. Above the owl is the name Heartwood Used and Rare Books, a favorite old stamping ground during those long years of graduate study at the University of Virginia. Below the image appears the bookstore’s address on Elliewood Avenue. I got a sort of thrill reading both the name of the bookstore and the name of the street, both of which strike me as evocative and even musical (“Heartwood” a thumping trochee; “Elliewood” a lilting dactyl). Gazing on this bookmark and looking at the April 1997 date on the receipt, I realized that I must have purchased the Reader after Suzanne and I had already moved away from C-ville to work our first post-grad school jobs, at the College of Charleston. In fact, I was probably on a return trip to defend my newly finished (and now dusty) dissertation on the “Objectivist” poets. So Hughes’s book was dragged or pushed around by me across five states—Virginia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Massachusetts, and Connecticut--for a period of ten years, unread, only to be finally “ready” (see how “read” lurks in that word?!) on the shelf at the right moment. That’s a lot of dragging and pushing, but still, I’m glad I never gave it the heave-ho.

Belief, or The Memes

2007-03-13T17:53:00.000-07:00

[I can't get blogger to accept the proper spacings for the poem below, but I'm posting this somewhat mutilated version anyway.]

Belief, or The Memes

The dead live on, not just
as memories, but as “programs.”
Sitting beside a gravestone, we might speak
& think we hear a reply.
It would be natural to ask for advice –
which way to go find water
or the best trail for a hunt.

Drop a bundle of sticks on the ground
or heat a clay pot until it cracks
the pattern forms a map
a communication from the other side.

Centuries later people would fill mosques
cathedrals and synagogues
not really knowing how they got there.

Spreading genes favorable to belief?

Memes leaping from mind to mind?

Wind spirits & rain gods
wood nymphs & leprechauns.
The scary world
a cacophony of superstition
lurking behind the scenes
meme against meme.

At first the winnowing would be unconscious
some ideas would be groomed & domesticated.

Gauging and deciding
slowing the pace
or ripping it up
adding or losing a phrase.

O what a fine protective screen!

We want to believe.
We live to believe.
We believe to live.

[Most of the words and phrases here come from a Scientific American review of Daniel Dennett’s Breaking the Spell.]

Neuroplasticity and Meditation

2007-03-12T19:32:00.000-07:00

Two interesting new books are reviewed in the latest issue of Discover: Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain, by Sharon Begley; and The Brain That Changes Itself, by Norman Doidge. As the titles suggest, both books are concerned with our burgeoning awareness of the extent to which the adult human brain exhibits “neuroplasticity,” or the ability to alter its structure in response to new stimuli. It wasn’t all that long ago, of course, that we were confidently told that adult brains couldn’t grow new neurons, etc. etc. But now researchers are seeing more and more evidence of dramatic neural change in situations where the brain has to compensate for severe brain injuries. And in what is perhaps an even more exciting development for most of us, they are also seeing surprising levels of neural adaptivity in response to plain old “learning” as well, thus offering the possibility that you really can shape the brain you want, even long after the halcyon days of youth have fled. According to the review, Begley reports on the recent collaborations between neuroscientists and Buddhist monks—collaborations which have revealed that these monks show “neural activity that is off the charts, relative to meditation novices, in circuits that involve maternal love (caudate), empathy (right insula), and feelings of joy and happiness (left prefrontal cortex).” Yep, there’s our old friend the insula again, and it turns out that the insulas of these monks are actually significantly enlarged.

These findings are particularly interesting to me right now, since I recently completed a six-week Mindfulness and Meditation course. I have dabbled with meditation here and there in the past, but this is the first time I have ever had a regular practice for an extended period of time, and I’m finding it to be pretty powerful stuff. I plan to keep it up, and I’d like to learn more about specifically Buddhist meditative practices eventually....

Return of the Insula

2007-02-23T17:16:00.000-08:00

However unlikely it may seem, perhaps someone at the New York Times is reading my blog. Or not. But it is interesting that they ended up following the same tack I took in my recent post on the insula. That is, they followed up their original article highlighting the insula’s role in the addiction to smoking with another article focusing more squarely on the insula itself as an emerging “area of interest” for studies of the brain. (The article is here, but it is, unfortunately, only available to NYTimes Select members.).

As this article points out, the insula is involved in so many different kinds of activity that it is difficult to understand exactly what it does. Because it is buried deeply in the brain, it couldn’t really be studied before the advent of brain imaging techniques, but now we can see that it “’lights up’ in brain scans when people crave drugs, feel pain, anticipate pain, empathize with others, listen to jokes, see disgust on someone’s face, are shunned in social settings, listen to music, decide not to buy an item, see someone cheat and decide to punish them, and determine degrees of preference while eating chocolate.” That’s a lot of lighting up! But as I mentioned in my other post, the bottom line seems to be that the insula “reads” the body’s physiological state and then generates feelings that may in turn bring about actions, thus keeping the body in some sort of balance. Since all mammals have insulas, this means they also have “emotions,” in the sense of “sensations that provoke motivations”: “If an animal is hot it seeks shade. If hungry, it looks for food. If hurt, it licks the wound.” But these sorts of “emotions” are probably not quite the same as the “subjective feelings” that humans experience. As the article discusses, human insulas have developed some new properties. Humans have an expanded “circuit” that conveys more information to the insula, and the insula itself has grown larger, so that the frontal insula can now recast body sensations as “social emotions” like disgust, delight, love, hate, gratitude, contempt, approval, and so on. Further, the human insulas have a special kind of cell, called VENs (von Economo neurons). We don’t really know what these kinds of cells do yet, but they are found not only in humans but also in “great apes, whales and possibly elephants.” So although it seems fair to say that humans probably have more sophisticated “feelings” than most animals, the presence of VENS in those last three species raises some interesting questions about what their emotional lives might be like.

"Countless Lives Inhabit Us" (Pessoa)

2007-01-28T14:14:00.000-08:00

Here is Fernando Pessoa’s “Countless Lives Inhabit Us”:

Countless lives inhabit us.
I don’t know, when I think or feel,
Who it is that thinks or feels.
I am merely the place
Where things are thought or felt.

I have more than just one soul.
There are more I’s than I myself.
I exist, nevertheless,
Indifferent to them all.
I silence them: I speak.

The crossing urges of what
I feel or do not feel
Struggle in who I am, but I
Ignore them: They dictate nothing
To the I I know: I write.

I happened to flip Pessoa’s Selected Poems open to this page the other day, and was struck by how perfectly the poem embodies the notion of the “decentered self,” that slippery theoretical construct that was all the rage back in the eighties, and well into the nineties, when I was slogging through grad school. I guess the phrases “decentered self” or “decentered subject” are not quite en vogue by now, but certainly some variant of the concept lives on in other characterizations of postmodern subjectivity like the “posthuman.” Pessoa give us yet another case of a poet getting there before the theorists (and of course Rimbaud was there even earlier with Je est un autre), not just in this poem, but in his whole poetic practice, since he crafted entire personal histories and poetic styles to go along with the set of “heteronyms” under which he wrote. The Selected is divided into separate sections for each of these heteronyms, giving us “Alberto Caeiro: The Unwitting Master,” “Ricardo Reiss: the Sad Epicurean” (the “author” of the poem above), “Alvaro de Campos: the Jaded Sensationist,” and finally “Fernando Pessoa-Himself: the Mask Behind the Man.” I haven’t read enough of the poems to get a clear sense of all these alter egos and how they relate to one another, but what hits me in browsing around the book is how nearly unavoidable the sense of fragmented and multiple identities must be for just about any writer, or so it seems to me. I mean, who the hell knows what’s going to come out when you sit down to write? The remarkable thing is that it took so long (until nearly the twentieth century) for the problem to arrive at full expression, as it does in “Countless Lives Inhabit Us.” And despite Pessoa's comfort with heteronyms, this "decenteredness" is clearly a problem in the poem; Pessoa/Reiss gives us a real struggle for mastery, a willed subsumption of those “crossed urges” under the “I” doing the writing at the moment. But of course the victory is temporary, accounting for just one poem under just one heteronym, and the struggle begins all over again with the next writing. Some poems, of course, do refuse the struggle and make a virtue of their decenteredness, but even these need a compelling reason for existing in just the form they do, which is another (displaced) sort of struggle for identity.
~
Anyway, if I am at all interested these days in a theoretical take on this issue, it is to wonder how the concept of the “decentered self” might intersect with a whole set of developments out of cognitive science having completely different intellectual antecedents (i.e., these developments come out of neuroscience rather than “French theory”). I have in mind, for example, Daniel Dennett’s “multiple drafts” theory of consciousness in Consciousness Explained. And thus I end up not too far from yesterday’s post, with Damasio’s discussion of the insula as a brain region that seems to be involved in “mapping” a whole set of disparate subcortical bodily signals into a “coherent” experience of emotion.

Introducing: The Insula

2007-01-26T12:31:00.000-08:00

The image to the left comes from an article in today's NY Times, "In Clue to Addiction, Brain Injury Halts Smoking." But whether you're interested in quitting smoking or not, the real story here seems to be the powerful role of a region of the brain called The Insula, about which I have so far heard little to nothing. As for the smoking study, researchers have been taken by surprise to see that an addiction like smoking can be wiped out by an injury to a single, small area of the brain, since they also know there is "a whole neural circuit critical to maintaining addiction." Eliminating this one region, though, seems to get rid of the bodily craving underlying the urge to smoke. The insula has already been studied by Antonio Damasio (I'm a fan of his work, including the book The Feeling of What Happens). In an interview for the article, Damasio says the insula is "a critical platform for emotions": "“It is on this platform that we first anticipate pain and pleasure, not just smoking but eating chocolate, drinking a glass of wine, all of it.” As the article goes on to say "This explains why cravings are so physical, and so hard to shake...they have taken hold in the visceral reaches of the body well before they are even conscious. " Earlier studies of addiction had looked at regions of the brain involved in thinking and decision-making, but this study seems to get closer to the bodily, unconscious root of the matter. The insula has connections to both the thinking cortex above and to "subcortical areas, like the brain stem, that maintain heart rate, blood pressure and body temperature, the body’s primal survival systems." Damasio thinks the insula maps these kinds of subcortical signals "so the conscious brain can interpret them as a coherent emotion"(and I guess the "emotion" in this case is the experience of pleasure associated with smoking, though the article doesn't quite say). Anyway, I'm always interested in the ways that emotion arises from the body, and after that, the ways that emotions get tangled up with what we call "thinking." It looks like understanding the insula will give us another piece of the puzzle.

In a further bit of conjecture the article wonders if people looking at MRIs of their own brain can be taught to deactivate the insula, thus reducing their cravings (in another study, people have been able to reduce the sensation of pain by looking at an MRI and modulating neural activity in a cortical region dealing with pain). How long, I wonder, before we have some sort of portable brain-monitoring unit that allows us to become expert at neural self-modulation? This sort of thing has been dreamed about, and even marketed, since as far back as the '80's, when we began to learn about "alpha waves." So far nothing has caught on, but I predict we'll get there in the not too distant future.

On Virgil's Peace, and Ours

2007-01-23T11:48:00.000-08:00

With the latest news from Baghdad still stinging my ears, I dipped into The Aenead this morning and was struck by the passage where Jupiter assures Venus that her beloved Trojans, now beset by adversity, will one day know peace:

The gruesome gates
of war, with tightly welded iron plates,
shall be shut fast. Within, unholy Rage
shall sit on his ferocious weapons, bound
behind his back by a hundred knots of brass;
he shall groan horribly with bloody lips.

I would rather be able to think of Peace as a thing in itself, a kind of center to which we might find our way. But there is undeniable truth in Virgil’s “gruesome” image of Peace as the absence, or rather containment, of an “unholy Rage” that is always straining at its bonds. And the image is even more disturbing when we give up the comforting personification of Rage as some creature apart and realize that it comes from within ourselves, from each of us but also all us, with a terrible cumulative power. Where exactly does this rage come from? Why are we so susceptible to it? What can we do about it? I suppose it “comes from” our evolutionary past and the story of primal struggle, of us against them, that lies behind the founding of every civilization. As for what we can do about it, the answer of the evolutionary biologists might very well be “nothing,” since those evolutionary conditions shaped our very beings—our likes and dislikes, our propensities and predispositions—over many millennia. So what exactly are the limits of the power of choice within the framework of such a “given”? That’s a question for a new philosophy.

New Eyes

2007-01-07T13:30:00.000-08:00

I’m certainly not the first to notice that when a young child enters our lives we are, in effect, given new eyes. Layers (years) of experience and habit peel away and we are granted the chance to discover the world anew—stone by stone, bird by bird, and blade by blade of grass. Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny, the biologists used to tell us*, and to watch a child grow is almost to see the history of human life on the planet played out all over again. The infant breathes and sucks and eats and expels, then the child crawls, and walks shakily, then runs and speaks. From the first, a kind of music is central to the growing life, the baby in the bosom tuning its small, eager existence to the inhalation and exhalation of breath, the steady beating of its mother’s, or father’s, heart--the raw fretfulness of life in the wide world soothed by coos and hums and melodies. Then, after a while, stories are as important as air and food to the continued life of the growing being. The world is fascinating but also bewildering, teeming with possibilities and mysteries, many of them terrifying. The child demands explanations, solaces--just as they were demanded by the first humans discovering the forms of communal life.
~
Right now, Nicholas lives in a world that seamlessly blends magic and science. The fantastic worlds of the storybooks—and for us that means especially L. Frank Baum’s Oz books--call for explanation (“How can he turn from a scarecrow to a bear?”), and so do the natural laws and forces that make our mundane world run (“How can a plane fly through the sky?”). Indeed, what we have learned to call mundane is no less wondrous to him than the magical realms in his bedtime tales. That the sun rises each morning and sets each night—or rather that our planet is orbiting the sun and revolving on its own axis at the same time—is no less miraculous than that a child should fall to the center of the earth to wind up in a city made of glass and inhabited by vegetable people (as happens in an Oz story we read recently).
~
Yesterday we did some experiments in Pop Bottle Science, working from a book Nicholas got for Christmas, with the goal of observing rudimentary principles like buoyancy and surface tension in action. I was nearly as fascinated as he was, even though I had done these same kinds of experiments long ago and would never have taken the time, or found the interest, to repeat them if I were not now seeing through Nicholas’s eyes. Doing the experiments, as familiar as they were, reminded me of all that I don’t know, even about the simple objects of daily life. Indeed, the fun ratcheted up a few notches when we left the book behind and just started playing around with what was near to hand. I thought a Clementine would float, but didn’t know for sure until we plopped one in the water and watched it bob to the surface. An apple floats, too, but as a bonus we also noticed how large its submerged portion had come to seem. I was reminded that water can work like a magnifying class, but was also amused and instructed to see that for Nicholas there was a real question as to whether the apple simply looked bigger or had actually increased in size. I knew oil would confine itself to its own layer when poured on top of the water, but when you look at this layer from above where do those variously sized circles come from? I still don’t know the answer to that one, but would no doubt find out something interesting if I pursued the matter. Even now, without further investigation, I have the pleasure of having noticed something intriguing with my own eyes.
~
Einstein was led to important insights about the relation between macroscopic and submicroscopic objects by thinking about capillary action – a phenomenon you can easily witness in your own kitchen if you have on hand a cup of water, a stalk of celery, and some food coloring. And in his own estimation, one of his greatest strengths as a scientist was that he never lost his essential childishness. As a kid, he was fascinated by the fact that the needle of his compass always pointed north, and this fascination led him to think deeply about all the invisible, yet rational and explainable, forces that might be at work in our world. The “thought experiments” that helped him arrive at his world-transforming theory of relativity have an almost zany, whimsical, kid-like quality. What would happen if you could ride a beam of light? Would you be able to see your own reflection if you held a mirror in front of you? And so on.
~
Einstein also said an explanation should be as simple as it can be – but no simpler. This is a powerful formula for all those who wish to think seriously, and to communicate what they have thought. But in order to follow this formula we would have to give up two bad habits. On the one hand, we would have to stop “dumbing things down” for the sake of expediency; on the other, we would have to refrain from over-complicating them in order to bolster our sense of authority. The fear, of course, is that if we dismantle the linguistic arsenal we customarily deploy in service of our Authority it may turn out that what we have to say will not sound all that impressive. But if, beginning today, at the start of 2007, we would only look at the world with new eyes and then speak to each other simply about our findings, what might we accomplish?

* Only a weaker version of the formula survives now. "Recapitulates" is too strong a word, but there are, at least, "numerous connections" between ontogeny and phylogeny (See Recapitulation Theory).

Frank's Wild Streak

2006-11-21T13:05:00.000-08:00

Frank lived in fear of his parents. He was one of the only kids I knew who actually got spankings, and both his parents—but especially his dad--were pretty strict. Frank’s dad was a Navy guy with a machete on the wall of the basement rec room from when he was in the Phillipines. So mostly Frank did what he was told, but he also had a little bit of a wild streak. He had almost a kind of Jekyll and Hyde thing going—tame and timid and rule-abiding most of the time, but occasionally subject to strange fits when his behavior was unaccountable. Sometimes when his parents were out of the house and he was there alone he would make Ovaltine malted chocolate milk with an astounding number of huge spoonfuls of chocolate, the milk getting so chocolatey it became a rich sludge. It had never even occurred to me that you could make chocolate milk with more than two heaping spoonfuls, like it said on the side of the container, so I was astonished the first time I saw him do it. When he made one of these concoctions for me we sat in his kitchen slurping them down, getting a little giddy from the sugar rush and the taste of the forbidden. Maybe these Ovaltine elixirs were his “Mr. Hyde” formula. At any rate, I wasn’t all that surprised when he told me one day about how he got locked out of the house and then broke the window of the basement door to get in, telling his parents later that some burglars must have done it. Of course they didn’t believe him and he got in big trouble.

The Zero

2006-11-12T12:06:00.000-08:00

If you flew a Zero you were flying for the glory of the Emperor and the Land of the Rising Sun and you had utter disregard for your own life. Your plane was built for attack. Its designers were so intent on lightness and speed that they didn’t even include a parachute. When American pilots first encountered the Zero they were stunned by the agility of the planes and the skill of the Japanese pilots. But through careful probing they eventually discovered the Zero’s weaknesses. For example, the pilots of the 49th Fighter Group learned that their heavier Curtiss P-40 Warhawks could take a lot more battle damage than the Zero, and could dive faster too. You could outturn and outroll the Zero at high speed, and once you got in a fight the Zero couldn’t leave because you were faster. You had .50 caliber machine guns to their .30 calibers, and when you got on their tails you could really tear ‘em to shreds. But in order to get to that point you had to know your machine. You had to be able to ride your plane in the midst of battle like a cowboy rides a bucking bronco.

November Day

2006-11-07T18:19:00.000-08:00

November Day

Sun warm on right cheek
& forearm. Bench hard
on my ass. Shadow of my
hand & pen tip moving
across the page, pen tip
a little moving mountain
of shadow. I look at my
watch again: 12:52. Surf
hitting the rocks & sea
wall, and even an almost
ocean-y sound of waves
breaking on the beach.
Lone seagull standing on
a black rock, picking at
his feathers. Tattered
yellow caution tape on
the rusty fence fluttering.
Blinding sun & its bright
sparkling swath on the
water. A churning foam,
good to see. The mail
truck zipping up Harbor
Street and out to the very
tip of the Point. No mail-
boxes here, but can you
blame him? Reading last
night about the studies
on wisdom. Do we get
any as we get older?
By most measures cog-
nitive function just de-
clines. But we do seem
to get some benefits from
“life experience.” People
react better to big crises,
considering fewer options.
Think positive thoughts
more frequently, & absorb
unpleasantness with less
distress. I forget what else.
The old guys in their lawn
chairs are talking about the
war in Iraq. “It’s a meat
grinder,” they say. “It’s
chopping people up.”
The wind rustles dry leaves
still in the trees, just about
to fall.

(11/7/05; 11/7/06)

The Planes

2006-11-02T17:41:00.000-08:00

[Back to the story...]

I just did whatever came along for the most part, but Frank was the sort of kid who liked to plan, and the sort who liked to build model airplanes. Under his influence I built a few too, but I was impatient, so mine had missing parts, blobs of hardened glue at the seams, and crooked decals. Frank’s planes were neat and trim, carefully painted, properly insigniaed—these aircraft were ready to represent their countries of origin with pride. Frank did like to sniff the glue a bit, but this never seemed to affect his work.

One day we started early in the morning, finishing off some planes we had started the day before: a Curtis Warhawk, a Messerschmidt, a Zero, and a De Havilland Mosquito. Once the paint was dry we ran four parallel lines from tree to tree in Frank’s backyard and attached pulleys to each of these lines. All the lines were hung on an incline, so that when the planes were attached to the pulleys and let go they would “fly” for a good fifty feet before they got to the ends of their lines. We rigged up a starter cord that would release the planes when yanked, and then we got our BB guns. We spent a lot of time roaming the woods with these BB rifles, shooting up bottles and cans, terrorizing the occasional bird or squirrel. Our guns weren’t all that powerful, though, so I don’t think either of us ever actually killed anything—except insects. Frank had invented an ingenious method for spearing and capturing bees, since it was important not to blow them to smithereens if we wanted to be able to look at them under the microscope later. You tied one end of a string to a needle and the other end to the barrel of your gun. Then you pierced a berry—something about the size and shape of a Holly berry—with the needle and wedged the berry-needle combination into the muzzle of your gun with the point of the needle facing out. You got your gun very close to an unsuspecting bee working away on some blossom, and then you fired. The BB would propel the needle and the berry through the air, the needle would lance the bee, and the string would ensure that your newly acquired bee carcass dangled conveniently from the end of your gun.

But today our targets were planes. Once we pulled the starter cord the planes started flying across the yard and we opened fire. They were actually kind of hard to hit, so we ended up standing pretty close. Even so, the planes were still intact enough after the first run that we were able to have them fly a few more missions and take some more flak. It didn’t matter that one was American, one Japanese, one German, and one British-- they were all the enemy. Blam! Blam! Blam! Blam! We shattered wings, cracked fuselages, and blasted cockpits. At a certain point we realized something was missing: fire. With the help of a few gasoline-soaked rags, the poignant spectacle of flaming wreckage rounded out our vignette. It was an orgy of destruction.

Duck Soup

2006-10-26T12:27:00.000-07:00

[taking a break from the story fragments]

The advice of the haiku master is to prefer vegetable broth to duck soup and more often than not I try to follow this principle both at table and in life. But today is cold and brisk, autumn starting to hint rather agressively at the New England winter waiting impatiently in the wings. Departing from my usual lunch routine, which is fairly austere, I unexpectedly found myself at Pot au Pho, a very good Vietnamese restaurant in walking distance from work but outside the usual circuit. When I ran my eye over the menu "duck soup" was what looked good--though I had to overcome the the squeamishness that comes with being a "recovering" vegetarian. When the dish arrived it was a noodle soup with a rich, savory broth and floating chunks of duck meat with the fatty and rather thick skin still attached. In fact, the impression given was that the concoction had stewed and simmered until the duck had simply fallen apart and more or less dissolved. Knowing the Asian penchant for serving the whole fish (i.e., head attached) I was half expecting that my spoon would eventually dredge up a duck bill, but, thankfully, this didn't happen.

So it has been a "duck soup" sort of day. As I ventured back into the nippy air with a full belly, I found myself thinking of my friend Ted Enslin's story about the mountain man who would spend weeks on end in the woods, then drive into NYC, have a nice hot bath and a shave, don a tux, and head to the opera. Not that I've exactly been in the woods lately. But then again, "being in the woods" can also be a state of mind.

Mike's Parents

2006-10-24T17:53:00.000-07:00

No one ever got invited over to Mike’s house to spend the night, and if Mike was invited to your house he would sometimes mysteriously not be able to come at the last minute. His dad drank beer, a lot of beer. When Mike wanted to ask him for something, he would go in after the third beer but before the fourth. We kids called him Mr. Jim, and when you saw him at a flea Market on a Saturday morning or something he just seemed quiet, always a little surprised to see you. Not particularly interested either, but not mean or anything. He was from Texas originally, and usually wore jeans and a denim jacket. When he sat in the kitchen drinking beer he looked like he was probably thinking about Texas. Later, after the divorce, he went back there and got a job on a dude ranch.

Mike’s mom was from Germany, which made her seem odd. She smoked a lot and had a large curved scar on her throat from where the doctors had cut out a cancerous tumor when Mike was little. I always tried not to look at the scar, but your eye had a way of wandering back there when she wasn’t looking at you. She talked German-accented English in a sort of high-pitched chirping way that Mike was good at imitating, and she liked cheap-looking glass and steel furniture that made being in her house feel different from being in the other houses in the neighborhood. She was friendly and a little silly, and she liked art. She would take Mike to museums, and on long trips back to Germany, and you could sometimes talk to her about things that wouldn’t come up with most of the other parents. Once you got to know her, you eventually realized she didn’t like Jews or blacks. Mike told me that when she talked about black people at home she called them Schwarzen.

The Animals

2006-10-14T17:55:00.000-07:00

Frank had a blue Siamese cat named Ming who was a complete wack job. She would fix you with a psychotic stare and then do a back flip--until she got too fat. Then she would just sit on top of the TV set, with her tail swishing down while you were trying to watch Bugs Bunny. I felt sorry for Frank because he didn’t have a dog—it didn’t seem natural. But my dog was also a little nuts. We called him Rick for short, but his full name was Ricochet, because of the way he would take a fit and start zooming around the house bouncing off the walls. He was a poodle, but I preferred to ignore that fact. If you didn’t give him one of those stupid poodle haircuts with the pom-poms he just looked like a normal, shaggy dog with hair in his eyes, and that’s the way he liked it. But whenever he had to get a haircut his fur would be shaved close and the lady at the kennel couldn’t stop herself from putting a little pom-pom on the end of his tail and another on top of his head. She would paint his toenails too. When he got home he would stand outside shivering in the breeze, hanging his head and looking ashamed. Mike had a friendly old sad-eyed brown mutt named Jeannie.

The Acorn Battle

2006-10-11T17:21:00.000-07:00

While raking leaves we had noticed that the whole yard was covered with big, fat acorns, and those acorns naturally made us think of our slingshots. Frank and I both had solid, high-powered slingshots, not the homemade kind that were always breaking on you, but the kind with real steel and a support that rested on your forearm for stability as you pulled back the pocket as far as it would go. Frank’s was better than mine because the part that rested on your forearm was made of leather. Mine was made of metal, and though the metal was covered with sponging, it still dug into your arm when you pulled back. Anyway, we went in, got our slingshots, and popped off some shots at the oak trees. The acorns zinged with satisying velocity and made a nice thunk when they hit.

That’s when Mike, Frank’s next-door neighbor, came out of the house. By the following year, fifth grade, Mike would be my best friend, but at this point I didn’t know that and I didn’t care for him at all. The situation was that Frank was my best friend, but it wasn’t really clear whether Frank’s best friend was me or Mike. And since Mike lived right next door to Frank, and I lived several miles away, Mike had an unfair advantage. Whenever Frank and I wanted to get together we had to make phone calls and arrange for one of our parents to drop one of us off at the other’s house. Whereas Mike and Frank could just walk out their front doors and start playing catch, or whatever. Anyway, when Mike came out of the house either Frank or I, I don’t remember which, tossed over an acorn by way of greeting. And of course Mike tossed one back. So one of us, Frank or I, returned fire. We weren’t using our slingshots, since they could definitely put an eye out, but just throwing. Pretty quickly, though, the throws got harder. After a few exchanges, we weren’t just tossing but really taking our best shots and then ducking for cover behind trees or cars or trashcans. Frank was a skinny kid without too much of an arm, but I had some good speed, and Mike was a tricky lefty with pretty good pace too. Of course it was two against one, but sometimes in war that’s just the way it is.

“Hey, that hurts!” Mike yelled, but we just laughed.
“I’m serious guys, it really hurts!” he shouted. You could tell he meant it, but at the same time the sight of an opponent on the run was too much for us. We pelted him some more until he made a break for the house, and the last few acorns actually bounced off the screen door after it closed behind him. Frank and I looked at each other. We were both cracking up, but feeling a little guilty too. It seemed like a good time to jump on our bikes and let things cool off for a while, before Mike’s mom could come outside and chew us out.

Story in Fragments

2006-10-06T12:26:00.000-07:00

Six weeks since the surgery so now I'm finally done with the sling, and not a moment too soon. The next step will be to get my range of motion back with physical therapy. I've been off the blog for quite a while now, dealing with recovery from surgery, getting back to work, and reeling from a death in the family that has been hard on everyone. Lately, for some reason, my life has been swirling before me in fragments of story, and I've found myself wanting to write some of these fragments down, thinly transmuted into fiction. At this point it really is a matter of fragments, and I have no idea whether they will eventually add up to something more coherent. Here goes:

***

We were just about done getting all the leaves raked into piles. I had spent the night over Frank’s house, and Frank’s mother had a way of getting some work out of you if you spent any time over there. He had the only backyard pool in the neighborhood, but you never got to swim in it unless you put in some cleaning and maintenance first. Now it was leaf season, so here we were. When we got done raking we were going to play our favorite game: war. Our specialty was World War II. We had been raiding the library for probably a year now, and we had seen plenty of movies, so we knew all the equipment, all the armaments—the tanks, the airplanes, the machine guns, the sidearms. The Germans were the bad guys but they had all the coolest stuff: the Luger pistol, the Schmeisser submachine gun (or “machine pistol,” as the Germans called it), the Panzer tank, the Messerschmitt fighter plane. The American Sherman tank had a rough-and-ready, “can-do” feel to it, and you could get pretty gung-ho imagining you were driving one of those around, but the Panzer tanks were definitely cooler, scarier. They weren’t made just to get the job done, they were designed for world domination.

But really, whether you wanted to play American or German depended on your mood. If you felt like being noble, plucky, determined, self-sacrificing, and resourceful, you played American. If it was a cunning, amoral, and brutal sort of day, you went German. Then you favored the lightning-quick assault, the blitzkrieg. The sight of a line of Panzer Tiger tanks, cresting a hill at close to 40 clicks an hour, the muzzles of their 88mm guns pointed straight ahead—this might very well cause your enemy to just shit his pants right there on the spot.

Sometimes we left the whole good guy/bad guy thing to a coin toss, and then you just had to get yourself into the right frame of mind. I wasn’t sure what sort of mood I was in today, but the leaves were swirling in red and gold and it was the kind of bright, spectacular autumn day that made you want to stay outside as long as you could, the kind of day when you would really feel, as they always said on ABC’s Wide World of Sports, “the Thrill of Victory...and the Agony of Defeat.” Right when they said that last part they showed the famous clip of that ski jumper taking a really nasty end-over-end wipe-out that just seemed to go on and on forever.

Dark Days and a Break of Sun

2006-08-30T13:17:00.000-07:00

Well, the good news is that the surgery is over and the recovery has begun. But the surgery went four hours instead of the scheduled two, and I had to stay a second night in the hospital. Afterwards, the doctor said I would feel like someone had really pounded on my chest and arm, and he was right. The whole hospital stay was pretty miserable, with a lot of time elapsing before we finally found the right meds to get the pain under control. And the battle of the meds has continued, with a lot of post-op pain this week but also trouble finding a cocktail of meds that doesn’t leave me dopey and/or nauseated. Suffice it to say that the past week has been pretty dark—literally so, since the sun has been obscured behind unrelenting rain and clouds since back before the surgery (which was last Thursday). This afternoon was the first time I was able to catch a glimpse of the Big Yellow since coming out of anesthesia—and boy was I ready for it! Luckily, I also felt good enough to go for a walk, so I strapped on the sling and ambled slowly down to the Point. The glint of sun on the Sound lifted my spirits immeasurably.

In other news, Nicholas is off on his first camping trip, with Dad and Doris, so I’m glad the sun came out for them as well…

Technology, Pills, and Optimism

2006-08-17T11:41:00.000-07:00

Saw a magazine for the new VW bug today that featured a sort of aerial view of two convertibles, tops down, and encased in ovoid plastic-looking bubbles. The presentation is spare and the only text consists of the words “For Instant Relief of Cynicism.” The image—another example of Volkswagen’s “viral branding” or “buzz” strategy--at first made me think of those transparent computer mice one sometimes sees, and only gradually, with help from the text, did I realize that the layout was simulating one of those little bubble-paks for medication. This strikes me as a rather brilliant fusion of two kinds of technological optimism—the medical and the vehicular. The underlying logic draws on the insight that these two strains really aren’t that far apart. We have a deeply American conviction that zipping down the road in a smoothly functioning, hip-looking automobile is good for what ails body and soul; and we seem to be even more obviously convinced that pills (Prozac, etc.) can work the same way.

I wouldn’t want this analysis to suggest too much critical distance on my part. Right now, I’m able to summon both the physical wherewithal and the mental buoyancy required to sit at the computer and write this largely because of the pain medication (Tramadol) I’m taking for my pec injury. And my own optimism is significantly threatened both by the fact that my body isn’t working right and the fact that my car is currently producing a scraping sound every time I make a left turn. I’ve already taken it to the mechanic once for this problem, but the fix didn’t work. If I take it again, will the repair be successful, returning my vehicle to its proper state of humming vitality? And will the surgeon next week get it right and put my chest and arm back in working order? I guess I’ll just have to take another pill and hope for the best…

MRIs, PT, Movies, and Waiting

2006-08-15T14:30:00.000-07:00

MRIs, PT, Movies, and Waiting

Woke up this morning to find that my empurpled chest and arm are now surrounded by a lovely yellow-green nimbus of further bruising. The effect is quite spectacular. When I went to my physical therapy appointment this morning and took off my shirt the therapist said, “Oh my God!” And after that she didn’t have much to add that was of any use, at least right now. Last night, I went for my MRI and discovered that I really don’t enjoy being slid head-first into a narrow metal tube that proceeds to emit lots of clicks and whirs and eventually a sound that is something like a very loud busy signal. I had to lie there for about forty minutes or so, and I really felt a bit panicky at first. Deep breathing calmed me down, and I gradually learned what to expect (mainly the various noises) and got used to the experience. Today I’m waiting to hear from the orthopedic surgeon, and may have to have surgery next week, depending on what he sees in the MRI image.

Over the weekend I kept myself distracted with some movies from the local video store:

The 40 Year Old Virgin—Quite funny, with some moments that qualify as pretty hilarious, including one where the virgin in question is faced with an inescapable barrage of sexual imagery, mostly in the form of advertising. Reminded me of Something About Mary in its mix of “offensive material” and sweetness, though it’s much raunchier at times than Mary ever is. There is an interesting arc whereby most of the raunch comes early and then the film works up to a silly, funny, but also—after a fashion--sincere “Age of Aquarius” ending.

Better Off Dead—I’m a John Cusack fan, and I was in my early twenties in the mid-eighties when this film was made, so how did I possibly miss it? Coming before the great Cameron Crowe-directed Say Anything, this one is working its way up to the Cusack formula of "smart outsider loser eventually making good," though I guess in this one his character is not really all that smart. The humor is way broad, and sometimes more goofy than actually funny, but it has its moments, and also gets credit for a strange, slightly surreal edge—a kind of proto—Repo Man feel of alienated suburbia. Also a few bursts of odd animation, as with the talking hamburger that pops up during the Cusack character’s inevitable humiliating stint as a grease jockey at the local burger joint. Definitely one for all you Cusack completists out there.

Jarhead—Excellent and disturbing, with the extremely watchable Jake Gyllenhaal (I haven’t seen Brokeback Mountain, but I really liked him in the cult fave Donnie Darko). Paradoxically, this is a war movie where very little actually happens, and it may be the most extreme version of the military “Hurry up and wait” mentality ever filmed. With props to Camus, it captures the estranging, deranging experience of hanging out in the desert waiting for a chance to shoot someone (when mostly those "someones" are getting blown up by devastating air power instead). Ultimately, it puts the viewer in the uncomfortable position of rooting for the Gyllenhaal character Swafford, a sniper by training, to “make a kill,” since that seems—at least in the “jarhead” perspective the movie carefully frames-- to be the only thing that would give meaning to the whole bizarre, frustrating, and boring ordeal. With a good deal of sympathy and understanding for the experience of the soldiers, the movie brilliantly renders the nearly sublime form of brainwashing that goes into “making a marine,” a.k.a. “jarhead” (note the term’s suggestion that the head in question is not only jar-shaped but also empty). Burning oil fields turn out to be oddly beautiful.

My Left Pec

2006-08-12T18:17:00.000-07:00

I had been hoping to do a substantial post on the marvelous Jackson Pollock exhibit at the Guggenheim, but in keeping with the general indignity of being forty-two I blew out my pec on the bench press yesterday—meaning I severely tore the pectoral muscle and probably something in my shoulder too. Right now I have a massive, inflamed, Schwarzenegger-sized left pec, along with a huge purple bruise covering much of the left side of my chest and part of my arm (which I can only use to a very limited extent—tho I can type if get positioned just right). Actually I look like I’ve undergone a Pamela Anderson-style chestal implant but just on one side. So far, I’ve spent about five hours at Yale Urgent Care--three hours Thursday after the injury (it was two hours before I could get anything for the rather excruciating pain), and another two yesterday after I start getting numbness in my arm because the inflammation was putting pressure on the nerves. I’m on painkillers and anti-spasm meds, will be having an MRI scheduled sometime this weekend, and will see an orthopedic surgeon on Monday. Yep, it looks like I’m headed for surgery…not quite the way I was hoping to wind up the summer. Today I sat under a tree and read Coleridge's "This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison."

Psychosomatic Flashpoint

2006-07-28T09:10:00.000-07:00

I read an article about John C. Reilly the other day, and I realized that I find it strangely comforting whenever his ugly South Side mug shows up in a movie. Anyway, he’s in the new summer mega-comedy with Will Ferrell, “Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby,’’ in which they both play race-car drivers. and the article talks about how Will and others were impressed during filming with Reilly’s consistent ability to improvise a punch-line. In the example the article gives, Reilly’s driving partner, Ferrell (the titular Ricky Bobby), is diagnosed with a “psychosomatic” problem, and Reilly says “When you say psychosomatic, do you mean you can start a fire with your mind?” Now, I have no idea if this movie is going to be any good or not, but over the last couple of days I’ve been chuckling to myself every time I think of this line. This suggests that psychosomatic may have to go on the list of funny words, near the top of which, if I remember correctly from an old Walther Matthau/George Burns movie that addressed the subject, is the word “alka seltzer.” Last night Ferrell was on Leno, in character as Ricky Bobby, drawling his credo: "I piss excellence, and crap patriotism." That made me laugh too.

The other “Word Watch” moment for today’s post goes back a few weeks, but it’s been bugging me so I may as well get it off my chest. In an article in the New York Times on the controversial rush to establish ethanol factories, the Times author writes:

“Even in the small town of Hereford, in the middle of the Texas Panhandle's cattle country and hundreds of miles from the agricultural heartland, two companies are rushing to build plants to turn corn into fuel.

As a result, Hereford has become a flashpoint in the ethanol boom that is helping to reshape part of rural America's economic base.”

The word in question, as my helpful bold-facing suggests, is “flashpoint.” In context, the author seems to intend the word to mean something like “a site of controversy.” But what it actually means is this:

flash point also flash·point (fl sh point )
n.
1. The lowest temperature at which the vapor of a combustible liquid can be made to ignite momentarily in air.
2. The point at which eruption into significant action, creation, or violence occurs: "The shootdown did not increase international tensions to the flash point" Seymour M. Hersh.
[Free On-line Dictionary]

The first meaning shows the word’s origin as a term from chemistry, and the second shows a more generalized application to political events. But the key thing here is that when the term is used properly the “point” in question is a point in time not space! I’m sorry to say, though, that the mistaken “spatial” use of the term seems to be cropping up more and more often these days.
(The Times article is called “THE ENERGY CHALLENGE: A Modern Gold Rush; For Good or Ill, Boom in Ethanol Reshapes Economy of Heartland,” but since it’s a few weeks old you can only get it if you’re a TimesSelect member.)

Midsummer Night's ArtFarm

2006-07-19T18:07:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we went to our first evening of Shakespeare-in-the-park since Nicholas was born, a production of Midsummer Night’s Dream put on by an eco-friendly, socially responsible company called ARTFARM, based in Middletown, CT (you can read a little more about them here). Their goal is “creating quality theater with a commitment to environmental sustainability and social justice.” This year, the production was hosted by Middlesex Community College on a lovely, gently sloping, lawn—but the larger goal is for the company to grow “to the point where ARTFARM is situated on a nice piece of farm land in Maromas or some other secluded spot near Middletown, mounts a major free outdoor Shakespeare production every summer, and during the school year draws folks from throughout New England for workshops and retreats, as well as having performances and educational residences available for touring to schools, colleges, and art centers.” The directors and co-founders are Dic Wheeler and Marcella Trowbridge, and on the “social responsibility” front they already have a good record in CT of getting inner-city kids involved in theatre. As for the environment, they’d like to establish their farm partly as an act of resistance to the rate at which CT farmland is being gobbled up by developers.

Before the production started we visited a little composting exhibit, where Nicholas got to plant some carrot seeds in some rich, black earth inhabited by a band of extremely vigorous earthworms. We also made a “sculpture” out of a glass jar, pipe cleaners, and crepe paper streamers, and then hung it in a tree along with a bunch of other audience-made constructions. Roving performers wandered around on stilts, juggling, and, mercifully, there was an ice cream truck to help us beat the heat.

I really love to see well-done outdoor productions of MSND—you get that magical “summer feeling” (as in the great Jonathan Richman song), fairies tumble and frolic in the woods, love is in the air (hey, I think that may be a song too), the usual rules are suspended (for at least a little while), and it all works out in the end. This production was quite student-y, but didn’t disappoint. An impressively dreadlocked Oberon was a little too Black Sabbath-influenced in his bellowing for my taste, but a buxom Titania sexed things up appropriately (given this play’s general randiness), and Bottom brayed his lines joyfully, surrounded by fairies and clearly tickled (literally) by his predicament. We had to leave early to get Nicholas home, and by then it had already become impossible to keep things straight—after all, the play features a pretty impressive tangle of twinings. But for a while it worked, with a little whispered translation to go along with the spectacle: he loves her but she loves that other guy…fairies just like to play tricks on people…everybody’s having a “wild rumpus” (like Max in Where the Wild Things Are)…there’s a magic potion that makes people fall in love…they just turned him into a donkey, etc. etc.

As we left we moseyed toward the parking lot feeling a bit lighter, tossed a little money into the over-sized cardboard “hat” being passed around, and wished them luck.

Thunder, Adrenaline, and Clichés

2006-07-13T18:20:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I was in the parking garage when a tremendous thunderclap hit, and it was so astoundingly loud and seemed so close that I went instinctively into a semi-crouch, thinking for a microsecond that the whole garage was coming down on top of me. When that didn’t happen, I felt better—a whole lot better. I can’t say I had a skip in my step, since I was scurrying along under an umbrella trying not to get soaked, but my adrenaline rush did transform into something like a mini-burst of euphoria keyed to the tune “I’m alive!” When I got to the class I’m teaching these days, I chose to start off with a “totally free writing” exercise rather than the “directed free writing” I had been planning. The freedom may not have been quite total, but it did feel awfully good--and it was suddenly very clear to me, as I was writing, why passionate love affairs and thunderstorms have to go together in the movies (or at least, in old movies). The sky is the heart, and when one opens up, so does the other (I’m sure I could find some mythology to back me up on this). The cliché had been unexpectedly redeemed by a quickened pulse.

DADA AT MoMA

2006-07-11T18:43:00.000-07:00

Drove under Magritte skies and through deadly confetti (a truck shedding part of its cardboard cargo on the interstate) to get to the new Dada exhibit at MoMA. It was an eerily clear blue day in a sort of 9/11 way, and the radio reported as I was driving into town that the FBI had just broken up a plot to blow up the Holland tunnel, reporting also that the plotters had hoped the explosion would flood downtown. Anyway, I crossed the Triborough bridge, exited at 53rd street, and had that strange experience of going in a matter of seconds from driving on the highway at 70mph to crawling along a skyscraper canyon thronging with highly aggressive pedestrians. I met my friend Chris, whom I hadn’t seen in quite a while, in the MoMA lobby and we headed up to the Terrace café for a glass of Prosecco, an overpriced lunch (the highlight was watching the waiter pour Chris’s chilled cucumber soup out of a cute little pitcher), and a lot of catching up. When we were ready to hit the exhibit, we entered through New York rather than Zurich, perhaps drawn by the snow shovel dangling from the ceiling. As we looked, we talked, covering such subjects as the role of the “little mag” in modernism, the current crop of scare stories about China (The Dragon Stirs!), the difficulties besetting university writing programs, the incorporation of commercial art techniques into “serious” painting (think Man Ray’s air brush anticipating Warhol’s stencils), the battle of “gesture” versus “concept,” the surprising amount of Dada embroidery in existence, Japanese innovations in bathroom design, the vagaries of the academic job market, the respective merits of verbal and visual Dada, the mark of Expressionism on German Dada, and so on.

I came away from the exhibit with twin impressions: 1) that Dada had certainly proved Ezra Pound’s dictum that artists are the antennae of the race. Receiving the horrendous electromagnetic disturbances of a ravaged Europe, the Dadaists produced a “deranged” art looking ahead to many of the artistic and cultural developments of the twentieth-century, from the rise of mass media as a vehicle for the manipulation of consciousness to the cyborgian interpenetration of man and machine to the eventual ascendance of “conceptual” art in the late twentieth century to the desacralization or dethroning of “art” itself; and 2) that the Dadaists had, in fact, succeeded so well, especially on that last score, that it’s simply impossible for Dada artifacts to retain even a fraction of the shock value that was once so central to the enterprise, with its revolutionary claims and aims. One piece on display (I’ve forgotten which) was distinguished by a few bullet holes recording the moment when some outraged students (all dust by now) had taken it into the street for a little target practice. Ah, the good old days! I can’t imagine anyone now caring enough to want to waste the ammunition.

Cape Cod Journal, Part VI (A Brief Conclusion)

2006-06-28T19:28:00.000-07:00

Friday 6/15

The “last day of vacation” strikes with its usual poignancy. The skies are blue, the sun is shining, but we have to head home. This is tough, but on the other hand, my eyes are so irritated from a week of sand, sun, sea, and allergens that I can’t even put my contact lenses in. Add the fact that I can still get just as petulant about being removed from the beach as I did when I was nine years old and it’s probably just as well that we decide to skip the beach entirely, limiting ourselves to one last bookstore run before we hit the road. And where else but the coast of New England do you get to go to great beaches and great bookstores?

This run turns out to be killer. All week long we’ve been driving past a shop just down the road called Isaiah Thomas, located in a large, elegant, clearly “historic,” and spiffily painted old house. So it had already registered as a likely destination, but then last night we read that it had recently been selected as one of the best used bookstores in the region. As much as I like Herridge’s, I see as soon as I walk in that this is in a different league altogether. The place is huge, and every nook and cranny, including the large basement, is stuffed with books. But this is no shabby hodgepodge; the titles have clearly been chosen with care and intelligence, across a great, and rather idiosyncratic, range of subjects and interests. They’re also well priced and mostly in very good or excellent condition. The children’s section is delightful and extensive, sporting a sofa and some very large stuffed animals, including an impressive dragon (if you’ve ever tried to look at books with a kid or kids in tow then you know how important all this is). The browsing is a real lark, and the list of titles actually purchased is only a pale reflection of the fun. I come away with J.H. Prynne’s Poems from Bloodaxe; Ed Sanders’s 1968: A History in Verse; Stanislaw Lem’s Microworlds (a collection of essays); Jack London’s The Sea Wolf (I recently reread Call of the Wild, which is brilliant, but I’ve never read this one); and Theodor Adorno’s Prisms (more essays, priced quite cheaply).

What do the books you buy on vacation say about you? Are they a practical reflection of your real interests or a dream of a different life—the one you try to invent and inhabit during the week you’re away from home? Will you ever get a chance to read all those books? Anyway, Suzanne stocks up on some Judge Dee mysteries, and Nicholas (rather relentlessly guided by us) makes a nice haul of illustrated hardbacks of fairy tales and fables, as well as a good copy of The Wind in the Willows, which is one of those books that Suzanne loved well in childhood but I somehow missed.

Now that I think of it, it isn’t much easier to get me out of a good bookstore (o the possibilities!) than it is to get me off the beach. Nonetheless, we do manage to get on the road at a decent hour and make it home in time to order our traditional Friday night pizza from Pacilio’s down the street. Topped with lobster and clams, of course.

Cape Cod Journal, Part V

2006-06-27T20:53:00.000-07:00

Thursday 6/15

They’re calling for showers today, so we skip the beach, drive to Falmouth, and catch the ferry to Martha’s Vineyard. As it turns out, the rain holds off until late afternoon and there are even some breaks of sun, but it stays muggy all day. We make the trip over on The Islander, a pretty large boat, which turns out to have been built in my birthplace, Baltimore, MD, in 1950—so, fourteen years before I was born. The ferry ride is exciting for Nicholas, and there is apparently some sort of car show about to happen on the Vineyard because the hold of the boat is full of all kinds of classic cars in cherry condition, including a silver Rolls Royce. Below decks the engine throbs deafeningly, the hold vibrates, and the smell of gas fumes is strong as we snap a few pics before heading back up into the fresh air.

*

We have been meaning to visit the island for a long time, but as it turns out, we’re rather disappointed. Our friend Andrea has vacationed here for years, renting a house with a bunch of friends, and loves it, and I’m sure that if one knows the island well it yields up its secrets and pleasures. But we are just over for a few hours in Vineyard Haven, the town where our ferry docked (you can also get one to Oak Bluffs, which sounds like it might be more interesting) and the collection of chichi shops just isn’t particularly our scene.

The icecream at Mad Martha’s is good, but the real saving grace, for us, is an excellent bookstore called Bunch of Grapes (yeah, kinda silly). The children’s section is really good, and since Nicholas hasn’t gotten a nap the activity book we pick up turns out to be pretty crucial to our sanity for the next couple of hours. I don’t buy anything (I’m a pretty hard sell when it comes to new books) but copy down some titles as I browse the film and science sections. Film: The Other Hollywood (an, ahem, “oral history” of the porn industry); Death 24 X a Second (new theory book from Laura Mulvey, which I will probably find overblown—but I’m intrigued because I teach a film course called The Art of Time, which keeps coming back to the problem of death whether I want it to or not); Screenwriter’s Masterclass (c’mon, you know you want to write one too); and Lynch on Lynch (what it sounds like, and just as weird as you would think). Science: A Short History of Nearly Everything (I may be the only one who hasn’t read it yet); A People’s History of Science; and Pulse: the Coming Age of Systems and Machines Inspired by Living Things.

*

The long anticipated rain finally comes as we’re catching the five o’clock ferry back, and the ride home is dreary. It’s too wet up on the open-air top deck, so everyone is packed below, where it gets close and muggy real fast. Some local spice is added by a rambunctious crew of workmen making the beery commute back to the mainland after a day’s toil on the island.

Then, surprisingly, though really by now it’s a pattern, the sun breaks out for a last fling as we disembark at Woods Hole (we had parked in Falmouth and taken a shuttle there to catch the boat). We’re only there briefly, and maybe it’s just the sun and getting out into the air, but we find ourselves liking the vibe of Woods Hole better than we liked the Vineyard (or at least Vineyard Haven). We go to a place called Shuckers, sit right by the water, and get an excellent “lobster boil,” which is lobster plus mussels and steamers, for a great price (the Thursday special). There’s nothing quite like slurping seafood close enough to the brine so that you might fall in yourself if you tipple a bit too much wine.

*

Last night I finally punted the John Varley novel which has tormented me all trip, then started salvaging my vacation reading experience by dipping into Thoreau and Chatwin. Thoreau comes, as so often, like a breath of fresh air, though his chastening, relentless, anti-materialism makes me squirm more than it did when I was younger and owned fewer things. And Chatwin is even worse—he doesn’t want to own anything, it seems, and barely manages to establish a small apartment as “A Place to Hang Your Hat,” as the title of one essay has it. Indeed, Chatwin’s “anatomy of restlessness,” makes me so, well, restless, that I go back to Thoreau, as the gentler companion.

Spilling all these words about Cape Cod, about which I know really very little, I take some consolation in the fact that Thoreau had only spent about three weeks on the Cape before he wrote his book. There’s an amusing image, from “The Plains of Nauset” section, of Thoreau and his companion walking along the beach in the pouring rain, reading from their Cape “histories” under cover of an umbrella.

Returning to this book at the advanced age of 42, it strikes me that Thoreau is something of a young smartass here, bemused and ironic about what passes for received wisdom—and yet he’s also a good listener, especially in the classic “Wellfleet Oysterman” chapter, which brims with local lore relayed by his nonagenarian host. Thoreau obviously gets a real kick out of the old geezer (“the merriest old man that we had ever seen”), who can remember back to when he was a lad during the Revolutionary War: “I was a young fellow of sixteen, with my ears wide open; and a fellow of that age, you know, is pretty wide awake, and likes to know everything that’s going on.”

Anyway, Thoreau certainly gets off some good lines, and there is nary a guidebook around these days that can get by without referring to the Cape as “the bare and bended arm of Massachusetts,” where “ a man may stand…and put all of America behind him.” But if you’re going to put America behind you these days, you’d better look over your shoulder now and then.

Interesting that the Cape of Thoreau’s days seems to have been a barren, deforested place (the drearier it was, the better he liked it), a kind of ecological disaster area, even though it did manage to produce some significant crops (particularly corn). I’m sure the place still has its problems, but it seems pretty well forested now, at least to the casual observer, and its various nature preserves and wildlife refuges seem to have reclaimed significant ground, even as development has obviously continued, rapidly. At some point, I guess, people do realize, are forced to realize, that there has to be something left for a place to continue to be a real place—in other words, somewhere you might like to go.

In one passage, Thoreau writes “Generally, the old-fashioned and unpainted houses on the Cape looked more comfortable, as well as picturesque, than the modern and more pretending ones, which were less in harmony with the scenery, and less firmly planted.” And, of course, we still usually feel the same way, only now what was new for Thoreau (his last visit was in 1855) would qualify as pretty old and venerable for us. What is old, if it has lasted, always looks more settled, comfortable, and natural than what is new (and I like my Branford Colonial, from 1820, for just that reason). But we are, after all, continually having to make new things, and if we are a little bit smart, and also lucky, maybe some of the new things will settle, “in their time.” (And one notices now that a lot of the new places are, in fact, in that unpainted, and now famous, “Cape” style that Thoreau liked so much.)

T. is convinced that autumn is the best time to see the Cape. Maybe we’ll try that one of these years.

Cape Cod Journal, Part IV

2006-06-26T13:02:00.000-07:00

Wednesday 6/14

You want to explore new territory on vacation but you also want a certain repetition factor so you will have some “sure things” to count on, and so you can get the pleasure of feeling at least a little bit like you know the lay of the land. So today we go back to Nauset, because we had so much fun there on Monday, and particularly because Nicholas was so into “zooming” and “skating.”

When I wrote about that previous visit, I forgot to mention the seals, four of them swimming together with their heads out of the water about twenty yards offshore. Today we see a few more, including a bold, curious fellow who is only about twenty feet offshore, clearly checking out a few human swimmers braving the frigid water to frolic in the surf.

After a while the wind kicks up and our umbrella pops right out of the sand and starts tumbling end over end down the beach. I sprint after it, and it feels kind of good to get the old fast-twitch muscles firing again. I realize I just never sprint any more. Maybe I should take up soccer or tennis again—except for the little matter of my knees…and oh yeah, my back.

*

After the beach we drive up to Wellfleet, on a mission to check out Herridge’s, a wonderful little used bookstore we had been to before. On the way up, with little sparks of recognition flying off various landmarks, it gradually dawns on us that we have left one previous trip to the Cape out of our accounting, so that this is actually our fourth visit rather than our third. The first was maybe fifteen years ago, back when we lived in the South but made semi-annual pilgrimages up to Maine. One year we had detoured over to the Cape, camped in Brewster, and biked the Cape Cod Rail Trail. The next visit, the one we left out, must have been (we decide) the summer of 2001, and we stayed in a little motel just south of Wellfleet. That’s the year we discovered Herridge’s, and then we returned to the store on our third trip, two years ago, when Nicholas was a little over a year old and we stayed in Yarmouth. It’s funny the way the different years can end up fusing and blending and blurring if you don’t keep track (thus, the journal experiment this time).

So today’s bookstore run is our third, and it turns out that the store has changed owners since the last time. It still looks almost exactly the same, but with the addition of a friendly old black lab who greets each new visitor to the store. I come away from this visit with Nohow On, a collection of three of Beckett’s late “novels,” from Grove Press; Tom Clark’s book of poems from Black Sparrow, Like Real People; Bruce Chatwin’s posthumous collection of essays, Anatomy of Restlessness; Susan Minot’s novel Monkeys; and an old paperback of Thoreau’s Cape Cod (because I left my copy at home and want the book with me, even though I probably won’t have a chance to read much of it before we leave). Suzanne has been brushing up on her French a bit, so she picks up a little French/English dictionary and Alain-Fournier’s Le grand Meaulnes. Nicholas scores a few books, too, though the children’s section is rather weak.

For dinner, we stay in Wellfleet and go to the not very creatively named, but very popular, Bookstore and Restaurant. The bookstore is closed when we get there, but the restaurant is open and very good. By now, some serious vacation logyness is setting in so we decide to limit ourselves to appetizers and salads. The littleneck clams in herb and butter broth are fresh, tender, and tasty, but some herb in the mix is not quite to our liking. The mussels in spicy marinara sauce are excellent, and the salads are really exceptional, especially my Caprese with basil and fresh mozzarella.

Cape Cod Journal, Part III

2006-06-24T09:20:00.000-07:00

Monday 6/12

We drive north to Orleans and take in two beaches today: Nauset (ocean-side) and Skaket (bay). Spend most of the day at Nauset since Nicholas loves the waves, which were probably the most forceful he has ever seen. We aren’t there for more than ten minutes when a rogue three-footer takes him by surpise, knocking him down and rolling right over him. He pops right out of the water (which is frigid) saying “No lifeguards needed!”

*

Skaket is a return visit, a beach we remember with deep fondness from two summers ago when Nicholas had just begun to walk and run. When the tide is out (we get lucky and hit it that way again today in the late afternoon) there is an immense tidal flat, with tidal pools, sandbar islands, and lots of clear, shallow water to play in. Nicholas makes “ocean cakes” with “lucky mud” and gets in some work on his Frisbee toss, which is not bad at all. It’s clear most of the day, with a few clouds thrown in but also another late breakout for the sun.

*

After the beach, we hit The Lobster Claw in Orleans for the first lobster of the trip, realizing as we pull up that we’ve been there before. The lobsters are excellent—even the claws are sweet, which in my experience is often not the case. I doubt if this place had dark greens in the salad two years ago, but they do now, and that’s progress (the good kind). The elderly couple at the next table are enraptured with Nicholas, and he oblingly spends much of dinner with his neck twisted around to face their table. They have been coming to the Cape for 53 years. She was a schoolteacher, and still has dreams about lessons she meant to teach the kids that she didn’t get around to. Somehow she/they also raised eight kids, six girls and two boys. She gets confused, thinking it’s six boys and two girls, and her husband has to remind her, gently. Later in the meal I hear her asking again, “How many boys was it?”

*

Thinking back to Nauset, in the waves. Nicholas was completely exhilarated, bright-eyed and squealing with pleasure. I had the feeling once again, as I have so many times before, that the beach is a place that makes me feel totally alive and at ease in my skin. Only this time the feeling was refracted through Nicholas, and thereby intensified. We could barely keep him out of the water even after he was shivering like crazy. He talked about letting the waves “zoom” him (can’t wait to teach him to body surf one day), and he particularly liked the sensation of standing still and letting the surf rush past his legs as it receded from the beach. He called this “skating.”

*

Before bed, Suzanne and I get to watch an episode from our “Borg Fan Collective” DVD set, a collection of most of the Star Trek episodes (whatever the show) featuring the Borg. This one is from Voyager, which kicks STNG’s ass.

Tuesday 6/13

We drive south today, to W. Falmouth, and check out Wood Neck beach, which is smallish and lovely, with a real “local” feel (at least now, when we’re not quite into “the season”). This is another stony beach, but the setting is picturesque and mellow, even hushed. A photogenic white-and-grey cumulus cloud bank is piled up to the north in a Maine-like effect (as Suzanne points out), and the water flaunts a few different shades of blue and green. You have to cross two parallel bands—one of broken shells and one of good-sized stones—to get down to the water, but once you’re there it’s shallow and clear, with the same sort of sandy, rippled bottom (no stones) we had over on Skaket yesterday.

*

On the other side of the parking lot is another beach and a little marshy area with a network of tidal pools and streams perfect for small kids. A bunch of families who seem local are hanging out, and several boys of seven or eight are running around with nets catching little crabs and generally playing naturalist/explorer. This is the warmest water we’ve encountered on the Cape so far (the waters at the southern end are warmed by the gulf stream), meaning it’s warm enough, even in June, for us erstwhile Southerners actually to immerse ourselves. Best of all there’s a channel of water maybe three feet deep and eight feet across at its widest that makes a good swimming hole for Nicholas to work on his floating and rudimentary swimming strokes. Some other kids have masks and snorkels and Nicholas is very interested in those.

*

We picnic out on the deck tonight with a nice spread from Roche Brothers, a great supermarket just around the corner. Nicholas and I have a little time before dinner to get outside with the “fat bat” and knock the ball around a little (though he cries if I try to take a turn hitting).

*

I find myself thinking about the different kinds of beaches I have known at different times of my life. From childhood until I was about 22, the beach meant Ocean City, MD. When I was little, before boogie boards existed, my father and I would ride the waves on hard rubber inflatatable rafts (not the soft plastic kind) pumped up to be as stiff as we could possibly make them. I’d drag him back into the water again and again and we’d ride for hours. By the end of the day your eyes would be burning from the salt and your nipples would be rubbed raw from the hard rubber (later causing extreme pain in the shower). Lying in bed at night waiting to go to sleep, tired and happy after a whole day in the water, you’d have a ghost sensation of surf tugging at your legs.

As soon as I graduated from high school I moved to Ocean City with a bunch of friends to work for the summer (and then came back for the next two summers). The beach was still about waves, but also about sun and girls in bikinis. We lived up around 27th street and the beach there was dense with the young, exposed, broiling flesh (sunblock? never heard of it) of college kids down for the summer (we called ourselves “locals” to distinguish ourselves from weekend tourists, conveniently ignoring the existence of the real locals). My friend Wingbat and I spent long hours perfecting the art of bodysurfing—with our arms at our sides and our heads sticking up like periscopes (not blindly down in the water like some fools) we could thrash any wave O.C. had to offer. Occasionally we would use our technique to attempt to meet girls, “accidentally” crashing into them in a pretended loss of control. So many people were clueless about the waves, getting bounced around willy-nilly, that this was somewhat plausible.

After we met in grad school, Suzanne and I took our first vacation together at the Outer Banks, off the coast of North Carolina. Like Cape Cod, this is an exposed spit of land, but the water is much warmer, the beaches are composed of fine, soft sand, and the whole scene was much mellower and more paradisiacal than what I was used to. We camped right on the beach and had sun all week, so that by the end we were heading off the movies, desperate for an escape from its rays.

Our first jobs out of grad school took us to Charleston, SC and we lived just outside the city in Mount Pleasant, near two wonderful islands: The Isle of Palms and Sullivan’s Island. If you wanted a little more “buzz,” with waves, bikinis, snack shop, bars, etc. you went to Isle of Palms. If you wanted a gentler, quieter, more mellow experience you went to Sullivan’s Island. Each was a lot of fun in its own way, but Sullivan’s Island probably left the deeper mark on us, and Suzanne and I still talk about going back for a visit some day. We have some indelible memories of floating in that mild water watching the sunset slowly turn everything pink and gold.

Cape Cod Journal, Part II

2006-06-22T17:31:00.000-07:00

Sunday 6/11

Woke up to a bright, sunny morning with a glorious blue sky and white puffy clouds. We head down the road, past the Mashpee National Wildlife Refuge (we’ll have to save that for another trip) to South Cape beach. When we step out on the beach, which is on the “Atlantic” side (though actually it’s Vineyard Sound), it feels a lot more oceany than the Long Island Sound beach near our house in Branford. There’s a steady 20 mph wind blowing that was completely nonexistent back at the condo. Enough to blow away the sleeves of the folding beach chairs if they aren’t weighted down with rocks, and even to tip over the chairs themselves when no one is sitting in them. We layer up with shirts and sweatshirts and determinedly play with Nicholas’s new water wheel for about 10 minutes. Then Nicholas is cold, so he snuggles up in a towel with Suzanne to warm up and I get horizontal and try to absorb a little solar radiation via the few uncovered parts of my body (face, shins, feet). After we’re warm enough we make a few more trips with our pails and get the water wheel spinning vigorously. That achieved, we flee the beach itself and point the van toward the ocean (okay, Sound). Parked about 20 feet from the surf, we put some Marley on the cd player, open the sun roof, and settle in for a “picnic” lunch. In my mind, this officially inaugurates the van as “surf wagon,” a concept which points backward to my days as a beach bum in Ocean City, MD and forward to my anticipated purchase of my first kayak. Anyway, the “surf wagon” thing is important, so I tell Suzanne she has to humor me.

*

In describing lunch I left out all the nagging we had to do to get Nicholas to eat his turkey sandwich. But I also left out the poem he composed as we sat there:

the waves are in the sky
the fish are jumping up and down on the beach
everything’s all mixed up!

I’m a little biased, of course, but I think this is pretty good stuff for three years old.

*

Now the question arises of whether to put in all the potty training adventures this trip has involved so far (and I’m sure there are more to come). Dear Reader, I think I’ll leave them out. But here’s a Cape Cod riddle for you: What kind of canal experiences turbulence but has no boats? Alimentary, my dear Watson.

*

After nap, we head out under overcast skies looking for Sandy Neck Beach in West Barnstable. We possess the usual crude tourist map devoting lavish care to the locations of local businesses but with no concept of scale or proportion. And the little roads on the Cape can be pretty twisty, quite unlike the straight or gently curving lines on the map, so things always seem to end up being farther away than you expect. As we drive, the skies keep darkening, and it’s 4 o’clock by the time we get to the beach (the advantage here being that they stopped charging an entry fee at 3:30). Sandy Neck Beach turns out to be not so sandy, or rather, the sand is buried beneath lots of stones. Since I watched Nicholas while Suzanne got a nap (and Nicholas didn’t) I have earned a solo walk on the beach (we negotiate for “autonomy”), so I head off right away. The initial idea is that I’ll get some exercise, so I set a quick pace at first, but before long I’m sauntering (Thoreau would be proud). The beach may be covered with stones, but it turns out that they are pretty great stones, coming in all sorts of shapes, sizes, and colors. The overcast skies have “rent asunder,” as they used to say, with big rips and tears and pools of blue shining through, and the beach is wide and flat and good for walking if you keep your sandals on. The 20 mph wind from earlier in the day has either died down or never started up over here on the bay side. Soon my pockets are full of stones—milky translucent white, dark purple, pale green, lavender, and so on. Some are big, ovoid, and speckled, like the petrified eggs of some extinct beast. And the bands of clouds in the sky seem to be doing their best to match the grey-white portion of the stony palette, going from translucent white to slate grey to pale ash.

*

When I come back from my walk (just under 30 minutes) I feel like I’ve been somewhere. Nicholas comes running toward me gleefully as I come in sight of the beach towels and my heart leaps. We spend some mellow time hauling water in our pails and dumping it a little ways up the beach for no particular reason. And while I’m taking pictures of Suzanne and Nicholas a thoughtful stranger offers to take one of the three of us. The light starts to get that “magic hour” quality as we head towards dusk, and it’s nearly six by the time we leave the beach for dinner.

*

Trying to remember that poem I composed in my head before we even left for the trip. It was brimming with pre-vacation memory and desire (to paraphrase Eliot) and went something like this:

Pathetic

These red berries, fresh and vivid
in the morning light,
are full of longing.

The crazed hearts of the
seagulls are breaking
overhead.

Even the waves
are just going all to pieces
on the black rocks.

[The title refers to the New Critical principle (actually going back to Ruskin) holding that one should avoid the “pathetic fallacy,” i.e., the tendency to attribute human emotions to animals and things. I had fun violating it, though it’s such a hoary old bugbear I can’t really get much credit for “rebellion.”]

*

After I get done reading bedtime stories to Nicholas, I make a run to the local CVS for supplies. The windows are down, the crickets are chirping, and almost all the shops have closed early for Sunday night. After CVS, I head down the road looking for a gas station, so we’ll be ready to roll in the morning. Riding alone, I get just a pleasurable tinge, or maybe call it an echo, of “lonesome highway” summer melancholy. Back to the condo to do a few dishes, and then Suzanne and I settle in with our vacation books, enjoying the hush.

*

Something very pleasing about working (writing) late at night at a kitchen or dining room table, the day’s bright bustle yielding to the night’s thoughts.

Cape Cod Journal, Part I

2006-06-20T19:45:00.000-07:00

Just back from vacationing for a week on Cape Cod, where I kept a journal that I hope to excerpt on the blog in the coming days. I was motivated to keep this journal mostly by the fact that we’ve been to the Cape a few times before but never written anything down, with the result that we tend to get confused about where we’ve been and where we haven’t, what we liked and what we didn’t. This time I wanted to keep it straight--so this is a simple record of a 21st century Cape Cod vacation, with a few observations thrown in for good measure. But Cape Cod, despite its tourist-ification, retains some of its power as an elemental place—a raw spit of land thrust out into the ocean, blasted by wind and sea—and that’s part of its appeal. That means this account is also a little haunted by the question of how, or if, one can have an “authentic,” even “elemental,” experience in the face of all the processing and packaging that goes along, for most of us, with the word “vacation.” Mostly, though, I guess it’s just about finding cool beaches and eating good seafood (and how could I forget going to bookstores?). I couldn't help noticing, though, that even with Starbucks and The Gap just around the corner, the salt air still fills one's lungs, the sky is still blue, and the waves still leap up to meet the eye.

Part I

Friday 6/9

Rainy, just as they called for, and just as it has been all week. Today we leave for the Cape. About 5 hours of packing and the usual mix of excitement and irritation as we try not to forget anything (“Do we have Nicholas’s elephant?”), and to make sure the cats get fed while we’re gone, etc. etc. Finally on the road by 2:30, but at least with the van we have room for all our stuff. The traffic is heavy, and moving pretty slow by the time we hit Providence, so we stop in Fall River for an early dinner (to let the traffic abate) at a place recommended by the AAA guide: Le Page’s. The food is good, and the restaurant is exactly as the guide described—a place that still shows some of its humble beginnings as a fried seafood joint, but that has moved on to some more adventurous fare. My seafood platter in white sauce over linguini is quite fresh and tasty (the mussels are nice and tender), though really swimming in butter. It’s a pleasing foretaste of the sun, salt, and, yes, sand, to come. Suzanne’s clam dish isn’t as good, so I share, and Nicholas enjoys the linguini marinara. There are crayons and a child’s menu to color (very important), and the waitress is friendly in an unforced way and great with Nicholas throughout the meal.

The plan works. When we get back on the road the traffic is moving at a pretty good clip, and we find the place we’re staying, in Mashpee, with no trouble. Nicholas loves the inflatable Winnie the Pooh bed we brought along, but is so excited it’s 10pm before he gets to sleep.

Saturday 6/10

Again, rain, just as they called for, and it stays heavy for most of the day, though we keep hoping for a let-up. Lisa and her three year old son, Ben, good friends we were sorry to leave behind when we moved from MA to CT last year, drive over from Arlington to visit us for the day, and end up sharing the rain. We go to the Children’s Museum in the morning, along with a good portion of all the other cooped-up families on the Cape. It’s a lot of fun for the kids, but there’s a frightful non-stop din as all the kids charge headlong from one activity to another. We’re all surprisingly beat when we leave an hour later. Back to the place for nap time, and I escape to Starbucks at Mashpee Commons (yep, right across from The Gap) for a latte and a precious 45 minutes to read my “getaway” scifi novel. But I have trouble getting into the book, and spend as much time taking in the crowd (or rubber-necking, as my family has always called it) as I do reading. There are so many rainy day shoppers on the loose at the “Commons”—a sprawling “village”-style collection of shops--that I could hardly get the van parked. The book is John Varley’s Titan and I have a lot more trouble getting into the second thirty pages than I did the first thirty.

*
After nap, even though it’s still raining, we decide to check out South Cape Beach (we’ve never stayed on this part of the Cape before). This is one of those cases where it could be fun to stroll a little on the beach in a light drizzle, or it could end up feeling cold, wet, and nasty--but we are propelled by Lisa’s just-here-for-the-day gusto. Last summer I didn’t make it to the ocean at all, though I swam a bit in Long Island Sound, so the crash of the surf exhilarates me. After a little desultory digging in the sand at first, we all take off in a sprint and achieve pure unadulterated beach joy for maybe four minutes. Then Nicholas loses a rock to which he has already developed a tenacious attachment (as only a three year old can), and Ben remembers that he doesn’t really like the water so much. After some tears, we all head rather sulkily back to the van. But parenting has taught us to live for those bursts, so the beach expedition will definitely go down in the mental books marked “fun.”

*

Very good pizza dinner at Zoe’s, in Mashpee Commons (which sprawls over to the other side of the road), and then Lisa and Ben set off for the drive home. Before we get in the van to head back to the condo for the evening, Suzanne, Nicholas, and I meander down a little path through the woods and discover an empty skateboard park. Ignoring the obscene mottos and pictograms provided by the local skatepunks, we all run up and down the ramps. Probably not the thrashingest moves the park has ever seen, but it’s pretty good fun. Remarkably, the sun breaks through the clouds, putting in a last-minute appearance and stirring hope for tomorrow.

In Praise of Netflix

2006-06-08T18:12:00.000-07:00

Is it ever going to stop raining? I hope so, since we’re leaving tomorrow for a week’s vacation. Meanwhile, there is an interesting article on Netflix (“What Netflix Could Teach Hollywood”) in yesterday’s NYT that I’m seizing on as a sign of hope in these days of cultural blandification. The author reports on having asked his friends how many Netflix titles they would guess to be in circulation on any given day. Most of those friends, going on the assumption that Americans have rather limited tastes and therefore flock mindlessly to the same old stuff, guessed about 1,000 titles. But it turns out that the real answer is about 35,000 to 40,000, or almost two thirds of all titles ever put on DVD. That’s a pretty great factoid, suggesting a much larger diversity of taste than people are usually given credit for, and Netflix deserves praise for recognizing the potential in stocking the 60,000 or so titles they carry. Other companies haven’t come anywhere close to that (Comcast, for example offers only 800 titles through its video-on-demand service), and thanks to Netflix a lot of tremendously good movies (the article gives the example of Coppola’s nearly disappeared The Conversation) are being rescued from the dustbin of history. Now if only Hollywood would wake up to the fact that it doesn’t have to keep serving us imitations of imitations, that we might, in fact, want to see something vivid, intelligent, and a bit different.

Of course, the article also talks about how a lot of people think Netflix is actually doomed. Let’s hope it’s not.

I have a few subjects in mind that I’d like to tackle when I get back from vacation, including the following:

* Flaubert’s Sentimental Education
* STNG’s Borg and “dirty” technology
* Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
* Palm Beach Story (another great screwball comedy)

Stay tuned!

Thin-Slicing The Awful Truth

2006-06-04T13:35:00.001-07:00

Thin-Slicing The Awful Truth

When I was writing about Renoir’s Rules of the Game the other day, I mentioned Cary Grant and Irene Dunne, probably partly because I knew I had their inspired screwball comedy, The Awful Truth (wonderfully directed by Leo McCarey), waiting in my Netflix queue. Anyway, my wife Suzanne and I watched this movie again last night, and I found myself marveling all over again at how good it is, really one of the best screwballs of all time, with both Grant and Dunne in absolute top form. One of the pleasurable things about watching a really good movie that you’ve already seen a bunch of times before is that you have the luxury of savoring the minute details. Once the romantic complications and plot twists and dramatic turns are no longer a surprise, all the sly textural elements and cinematic subtleties can come to the fore. In this case, I found myself focusing on the gloriously refined comedic play between the two leads—the sort of stuff that looks perfectly natural and unstudied but that takes years of schooling and practice to get that way (with the schooling going all the way back to an acrobatic act in vaudeville in Grant’s case). Again and again, my eye was drawn to the quicksilver play of fluctuating facial expression, as one character reacts to the hijinks of the other. The movie is full of reversals, as first one character and then the other gets the upper hand. The guy or gal in the catbird’s seat gets to gloat, the other one is made to squirm, and the wild shifts from squirm to gloat and back again make for a crazy ride. As a director, McCarey is a great practitioner of the “slow burn,” which the critic David Thomson defines as “the deliciously delayed reacton to disaster on the part of the clown.” Here Cary Grant does a kind of reverse slow burn of delectation as he gradually realizes (and he had just been suffering a minute ago) the humiliation Irene Dunne is about to undergo on the dance floor in the company of her new beau from Oklahoma (a very funnily galumphing Ralph Bellamy). After his first dawning awareness sinks in, Grant pulls up a chair closer to the dance floor to watch the spectacle like a member of the audience. And after slipping a tip to the orchestra leader so he’ll play the same number again--thus ensuring a repeat performance--Grant lets out a sigh of perfect contentment that is the exact inversion of the expression of pained disbelief on Dunne’s face as she heads miserably back to dance floor for further torment.

Watching those facial expressions, I thought of Malcolm Gladwell’s sometimes glib but quite fascinating book, Blink: The Power of Thinking without Thinking, where he talks about our ability, at least at times, to “thin-slice” people and situations, i.e., to make fairly sophisticated and accurate judgments based on very little information (this is not the same as, say, stereotyping, when we use very little information to make bad judgments). One of the book’s strengths is the way it draws on a great range of human experience (art forgery, criminology, tennis, acting, birding, advertising, medical malpractice suits, marriage counseling, and so on), and in one of the its most interesting sections Gladwell talks to a couple of psychologists who have learned to read the often fleeting or covert visible signs of emotion by making use of an elaborate taxonomy of human facial expressions (they have come up with about three thousand meaningful variants).

So would it be possible to construct something like a taxonomy of comedic facial expressions that would explain what makes Grant and Dunne so damn funny in The Awful Truth? I guess this could sound like a reductio ad absurdum of the act of “criticism,” fit only for pedants of the worst sort, but I can imagine the great film critic James Agee taking on a task like that and bringing it exuberantly to life (in fact, it would seem almost like a natural extension of his classic, brilliant essay on “The Golden Age of Film Comedy”). But then again, one could also just forget all about why and go laugh at the movie one more time.

Ursprache, Glottogony, and Weltschmerz

2006-06-02T09:42:00.000-07:00

In honor of eighth-grader Katherine Close, who won the National Spelling Bee last night, today’s Word of the Day is Ursprache:

Ur·spra·che ( r shprä )
n.
See protolanguage.
[German : ur-, original (from Middle High German, out of, from Old High German; see ud- in Indo-European roots) + Sprache, language, speech (from Middle High German spr che, from Old High German spr hha).]

pro·to·lan·guage (pr t -l ng gw j)
n.
A language that is the recorded or hypothetical ancestor of another language or group of languages. Also called Ursprache.

Both definitions are from the Free Online Dictionary.

Looking these up on-line led me further, via Wikipedia, to a totally new word for me, Glottogony, meaning “the origin of language”. The Wiki gives a fascinating overview of this complicated subject. Here’s the opening of the article:

“The origin of language (glottogony, glossogeny) is a topic that has been written about for centuries, but the ephemeral nature of speech means that there is almost no data on which to base conclusions on the subject. We know that, at least once during human evolution, a system of verbal communication emerged from proto-linguistic or non-linguistic means of communication, but beyond that little can be said. No current human group, anywhere, speaks a "primitive" or rudimentary language. While existing languages differ in the size and subjects covered in their several lexicons, all human languages possess the grammar and syntax needed, and can invent, translate, or borrow the vocabulary needed to express the full range of their speakers' concepts.
Homo sapiens clearly have an inherent capability for language that is not present in any other species known today. Whether other extinct hominid species, such as Neanderthals, possessed such a capacity is not known. The use of language is one of the most conspicuous and diagnostic traits that distinguish H. sapiens from other animals.”
And with that teaser, I leave it to you whether you want to read more. But I think the subject of the original emergence of language is something I’ll probably be coming back to in the blog.

***

On a side note, I thought it was funny, in a sad kind of way, that the New York Times article on the spelling bee defined the word weltschmerz as “a type of mental depression.” This is a medicalized and trivialized definition of a term that is actually philosophical and literary in origin. Here’s a link to a better definition, which I’m also reproducing below:

“Weltschmerz (from the German language meaning world-pain or world-weariness, see ) is a term coined by the German author Jean Paul and denotes the kind of feeling experienced by someone who understands that the physical reality can never satisfy the demands of the mind. This kind of pessimistic world view was widespread among several romantic authors such as Lord Byron, Giacomo Leopardi, François-René de Chateaubriand, Alfred de Musset, Nikolaus Lenau and Heinrich Heine. It is also used to denote the feeling of sadness when thinking about the evils of the world -- compare empathy, theodicy. The modern meaning of Weltschmerz in the German language is the psychological pain caused by sadness, that can occur when realizing that someone's own weaknesses are caused by the inappropiateness and cruelness of the world and (physical and social) circumstances. Weltschmerz in this meaning can cause depression, resignation and escapism, and can become a mental problem (compare to Hikikomori).”

So after that NYT definition I think I’m starting to feel a little schmerzy myself. Maybe we should have a National Meaning Bee.

The Blue Marble

2006-05-31T17:52:00.000-07:00

It has been claimed that the image on the left, known as "The Blue Marble," is the most widely disseminated photograph in history, and I can understand why. Certainly, it has had a powerful hold on my own imagination since childhood, when I was utterly swept up by the high romance of the Apollo missions. But it hadn't quite been taken yet when I headed off to first grade in 1970, with an Apollo astronaut lunchbox to hold my bologna sandwich (Oscar Mayer of course), apple, and Tastycake. "The Blue Marble" picture was snapped in 1972, taken by the crew of Apollo 17 at a distance of about 28,000 miles from earth as they traveled toward the moon. The picture at right, "Earthrise," came first, with the Apollo 8 flight in 1968. I was four years old and nobody in the history of mankind had ever seen anything like it. To me it seemed like the most normal thing in the world--of course we can go to the moon! What I didn't know was that this view, this perspective, had given us the ability to see ourselves, our world, as we had never actually seen it before, as the tiny piece of the cosmos that it is. On the Apollo 8 mission the astronauts had been startled by the breathtaking "earthrise" phenomenon. They hadn't even been thinking about earth, since all their efforts were focused on getting out there (they were the first people ever to leave Earth orbit), when suddenly, there it was. I tried once (many years later, of course) to capture at least a piece of the moment in a poem (the flight occurred at Christmas):

apollo 8: earthrise

not a thought for
Earth (weightless, thoughtless)
leaving (the getaway)

technique, politics, routine
"a massive infusion
of technological strength"

Christ mass
in space, nostalgia for a
whole (planet)

Earthrise (looking back) floating
ornamental, fragile
"so very finite"

Earthrise, caught us all
by surprise

and there was a scramble
for the cameras

Almost despite ourselves we got, by virtue the massive technological enterprise of the Apollo missions, a profound moment of self-reflection. I think it changed us; I only wish it had changed us more.

***

Here's what Carl Sagan had to say under the inspiration of the later Pale Blue Dot image, taken from a far greater distance (more than four billion miles!) by Voyager I, in 1990:

"We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.

The earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity -- in all this vastness -- there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us. It's been said that astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a character-building experience. To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known."

Avifauna and the LEGO-VAC

2006-05-27T11:15:00.000-07:00

Lots of robins pecking around in the back yard these days. So the Word of the Day is: Avifauna

a·vi·fau·na (v-fôn, v-)
n.
The birds of a specific region or period.
[Latin avis, bird; see awi- in Indo-European roots + fauna.]

[The defnition above is taken from here.]

***

And my Invention of the Day is the LEGO-VAC ©. Inspired by my latest (and approximately zillionth) effort to clean up a well dispersed quantity of my three year old son Nicholas's tiny Lego blocks from all over the living room floor. In my vision, it's like a SHOP-VAC but the Legos are sucked into a storage area with a clear plastic display. Just take the top off when you're ready to use the blocks again! I really think this is an idea whose time has come. But then again, I think that about all my "inventions"...

Renoir's Rules?

2006-05-26T10:53:00.000-07:00

I've had a mini Renoirfest from Netflix recently, seeing Rules of the Game, The French Can Can, and Elena and Her Men. The latter two are enjoyable but fairly slight entertainments, but the first lives up to its status as one of the great movies. To be honest, though, it took me a while to get to that response, and I went through a pretty odd viewing arc over the course of the film (which is already receding in memory, since I saw it a couple of weeks ago). The movie is a skillfully constructed farce centering on a weekend house party at an aristocratic country estate (Altman's Gosford Park owes a lot to it), but I found it difficult to get invested in the characters and the "screwball" comic elements often seemed merely frenetic and zany rather than actually funny. So for part of the movie I found myself thinking that a good Cary Grant film, say with Irene Dunne by his side, could do the same thing better--that is, with more warmth and genuine humor . But Renoir was more interested in giving a serious, even scathing, portrait of "class" than most Hollywood directors have been, and this is where the film develops its real power. And like lots of viewers before me I found its famous hunting scene to be especially intense and moving. I had heard or read the term "beaters" before, but to see a line of men moving forward through the fields and woods beating the ground, the trees, and the bushes with sticks, driving all the animal life before them, so that the waiting aristocrats can blast these animals to bits with shotguns is to be presented with a striking scene of terror, both utterly realistic and highly symbolic (of this society's barely veiled violence). What makes the scene so staggering, and keeps it from coming across as too schematic or propagandistic? That sort of alchemy is one of art's great mysteries, a subtle and unpredictable mix of inspiration and technique, and the way it works here is a sign of Renoir's tremendous talent. To be able to say anything more, I'd have to go back, watch again, and think more about how this is actually achieved. All I can say now is that the scene sneaks up on you, so that you suddenly find yourself in the middle of a massacre, wishing you were not seeing what is before you even as you can't take your eyes away from the screen. I said the film was already receding in memory, but this is one of those scenes that stays with you for a lifetime. And for bonus points, this same scene pays off all over again at the end of the film, so that the death by shotgun of the film's aviator "hero" comes at us with a kind of terrible objectivity.

The Margarita at the End of the Universe

2006-05-25T09:02:00.000-07:00

I got a kick out of the couple who came yesterday morning to hook up the icemaker and water dispenser on our new fridge. For starters, it's unusual to see a husband/wife or boyfriend/girlfriend team doing this sort of thing. They were both sort of scruffy, with the raspy voices of heavy smokers, and though they weren't tanned or conspicuously "beachy" they somehow had the air of long-time coastal partiers who had seen their share of margarita-soaked sunsets. This led me to joke that I had been told that they could hook up the "water" dispenser so it would actually produce perfect frozen margaritas right out of the fridge. He said, "If you figure that one out, let us know, and we'll be right over." After they were done their work, before they left, we came back to the dream of the fridge-based dispenser of perfect margaritas. I said I would work on the invention and let them beta-test the result when I had something. All in all, it was a slightly offbeat and funny way to start the morning and I found this couple lingering in my imagination for the rest of the day, taking up habitation in the bare, partial structure of a kind of never-to-be-actually written short story that I mentally sketched in odd moments. I wonder how many people walk around every day "working on," or playing with, little fragments like this.

Oh, and concerning the title of this blog, here are two consecutive entries from the Online Etymological Dictionary.

lacuna
1663, "blank or missing portion in a manuscript," from L. lacuna "hole, pit," dim. of lacus "pond, lake" (see lake (1)).
lagoon
1612, from Fr. lagune, from It. laguna "pond, lake," from L. lacuna "pond, hole," from lacus "pond" (see lake). Originally in ref. to the region of Venice; applied 1769 to the lake-like stretch of water enclosed in a South Seas atoll.

I started out with the idea of a "lacuna" as a gap or missing piece (and of course the term was made popular by pomo French theory) because of my sense that this blog could be a kind of hole down which certain things might fall, things that would heretofore have disappeared without a trace. I added "laguna" for the sound play and because I like the water, and living near it, but I was unaware that both words have the same root, going back to "lacus" for lake or pond. So the lacuna was already watery right from the start, and the laguna was already just a kind of hole.

For more on lacunae and memories gone missing, see Michel Gondry's intriguing film, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and this humanitarian venture, Lacuna, Inc. As for the title of this entry, I blame Douglas Adams's trilogy Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and specifically the second book, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. The location mentioned in the title seems like it would be a very good place to drink a perfect frozen margarita.