Dry Things

Things that make life easier:

a) A good, sharp kitchen knife, vis a vis the infuriatingly dull hacksaws provided with a furnished apartment;

b) Modish new woollen socks in a late October city;

c) Sushi-grade tuna and salmon sold in $5 blocks easily pairable with home-steamed rice and a saucer of soy sauce--instant, affordable chirashi!

d) Sweet, pure orange juice at a bargain price.

e) Buying the knife, new socks, fish, and OJ in shops nearly right next door to each other.

f) Having a home printer;

g) Decent melons in winter;

h) The inevitable end to deadlines.

Things that make life difficult:

a) When the gales rip through the tree, how can the fruit (nearly ready to drop, but not so) not feel the terror and dismay?

b) Far off-site laundromats, the cooling air, the weight of queen-sized sheets and coverlets, and all the hassle they bring.

c) Unpredictable heaters.

d) Kitchen lightbulbs too high up to change, even with a step-ladder.

e) Presentations of termpapers not only not yet written, but not yet researched.

f) Longterm 5 AM bedtimes.

Thank you, Alexander Graham Bell

I had three important and necessary telephone conversations today.

There is an old saying: "the best friends are old friends."

And: "If there is affinity, you will travel thousands of li to make acquaintance; if there is no destiny, you can be neighbors for twenty years and not meet."

And: "If you don't cry, you just don't feel it strong enough."

Now. back to Jin Shengtan (one of the more memorable self-wrought sobriquets, "Golden Sighs of the Sage", "Sighs of the Golden Sage", "That Which is Golden and Bemoaned by the Sage", take your pick) and his commentary.

study break

I ought to warm every new home with a ritual baking of M.'s cocoa banana bread.

Oh, it's not quite done.

But it smells the same sweet wholesome way as ever, comfort in a cold climate. (The oven makes the entire kitchen very toasty, which may be the best part.)

OK, back to irritatingly authoritative-sounding critics of Li Bai and my three hefty dictionaries. (The bread smells so good!)

Voice

Though it's a tense race, I like vocal music marginally better than instrumentals. Wait, is that true? It depends, but the preponderance of favoured music in my conscious collection belongs to sung songs. There are gems of minimalist and orgiastic instrumentality, too: the ancient zither with its not entirely minor music, complex chorale of drums releasing what Chatwin referred to as "additive" rhythm, vis a vis the European tendency to create structure from subtraction, and of course, the classic pensive room of the piano, the golden autumns of the oboe, the dignified hunt of the French horn, the folksy fiddle from Slavic tragedy, the rolling grasslands of Mongolia in the horse-head violin, et al.

But with chansons and all things sung, one can hum or sing along. Reminds me of carousels, the way I could be carried along by something I loved, larger than I and assuringly mechanised, but musical (the bodiless playback of recorded times). All I have to do is lean into the galloping happening and wait to catch on the next verse or demi-phrase when it swings by confidently with its long arm. Close my eyes and I am whirling past my 6th or 7th year again on the enormous electric glittering wheel of horses and gilt hall mirrors inXiaoyaojing, laughing headstrong into the wind and trees that will always just miss this body in the controlled turbulence.

I was going somewhere into the future, fast. The people who stood behind the menthol green railings were soon spun into the past, even when the machinery slowed and lights came into focus, and I ran towards them still thrumming with momentum, displaced with a glimpse, however unrecognisable, into the future.

* * *
Was a little unwell this morning though I usually like granola. Perhaps it was the salmon sashimi I consumed with nary a bit or bite of shame for the price President Hamilton had to pay. Skipped wushu and read and took a nap while listening to "Saturday Night Fever". I've found my lullabye.

Nothing feels so good as knitting while being entertained. It's not a linear contest--it's not that knitting is better than swimming in waterfall pools or riding through wild lily fields or having a chat with a living poet of some means, but knitting w/b/e is its own peculiar pleasure. I'm planning a new scarf with persimmon- and dun-coloured yarns I bought yesterday from a lady who spoke of C-town and this country (and all its inferior denizens) as unbearably primitive. I've never met a lady with such a cosy hobby who had such a crushing superiority complex. But I liked that she spun her own yarn (quite competently and evenly, a difficult thing to master if my first year at hippie camp was any testament--I did not guess that raw wool would be both so greasy and lumpy--hey I grew up in a smoggy demi-city).

Then she dismissed my favourite yarn, "Manos del Uruguay": "Oh, I just didn't want to get on the bandwagon like everybody else". For those unacquainted with Manos yarns, they are spun and dyed by a co-op of over 200 women in Uruguay. It's a workers' rights kind of place with traditional kettle-dying techniques that produce the most wildly sumptuous colours. The slight striations in hue only add to the richness of the stuff. Clearly, I love, love this stuff--all those earthy, brilliant, TRUE colours--if Keats had seen them, he would have gone a little more crazy. This sublime stuff of the knitting gods was not available to me yesterday. I picked colours from the brand preferred by the lady in the shop, who loomed larger-than-life in her tiny wood sitting room of a business like a queen-bee crowded in by all the spinning wheels, drapes of dyed mohair and sheep's clothing. Her cubby-holes even had the countenance of a hive, close and somehow, crawling, with twisting skeins.

* * *
"Mysterious Skin" was very good, though I suppose there was such insurmountable hype. The acting was non-histrionic and en pointe, the story important. I liked the way it was told. It was sometimes very harrowing to watch, but necessary. A film that elicited more reluctance to keep eyeing yet more immediate urgency to do so was "City of God", which is set in a different time and place, but also considers the extreme losses some children experience. I had meant to see "Mysterious Skin" since last year, when I read about it in a Roger Ebert review. Mr. Ebert and Mr. A.O. Scott of the New York "Times" are my trusted guides through the uneven brambles and meadowlands. I hope Mr. Ebert recovers quickly. It had never occurred to me before this summer that he would one day not be around to share in and illuminate so many people's love of cinema. Mr. A.O. Scott is younger, thankfully, but I haven't taken very well to the newish reviewers in the "Times" and I've already ranted here about the divergence of hermeneutics I share with the Salon critic, S. Zacherek, though her colleague, A. O'Heir, is more my cup of tonic.


During my second year of college, instead of doing reading, I'd often trawl through Roger Ebert's reviews new and old, simply enjoying his experience of films that I may never get to see. I seriously considered entering film journalism then, but still had hands full of fine arts projects and was not about to give them up. After university, I was not sure about what to do with life, but rathered make things than critique them for a living. Self-critique and informed analysis of other are crucial parts of any artist's automatic processes, but not for a living. This is not to be disrespectful to the revered critics. I consider them teachers whose students range farther and wider than most.

Now, I'm beholden to the whims of the orchid plant on the window sill and hunger. How inconvenient is the latter. As much as I love eating, the necessity of eating makes it more trifling. It's a bit like the difference between solitude and loneliness. A good meal is like solitude: deliberate, voluntary, luxurious and something to be sought. Mere satisfaction of hunger is a bit like loneliless: unwelcome yet clockwork, ineluctable, dictatorial.

And now, will enjoy waffles with hot butter and cool jam. Mmm...

Slight perspective for a frog in a well

8 hours of quality time with Gudai Hanyu Cidian is only 2/3 of 12 hours.

I went to bed at 6:30 this morning and then went to class clutching my ant colony (cross-section) of notes. Prof. O only went over the bones of it and left to meet YYM, the brand name cellist. His name reminds me of the zipper empire YYK.

Tomorrow, another famous scholar is coming in to take over the class and I haven't read 1% of what I should have. It's been a double-dosing kind of week and I just want to sleep. And it'll rage on for the next 2-3 weeks without stopping to let the horse have water or freshen its coat. I just want to move house to the rented thatched roofs of the High Tang and write my own cliched cleverness about rustic living and embracing the Dao in my middle years. Except I'm not a semi-retired minister with a thick pension and penchant for wringing out perfect regulated verse like Wang Wei. And though I want to give the moon neverending variations on a name, I do not imbibe nearly enough liquid of any kind to be as taken with non-life as Taibai. And I know too well the embarrassing pitfalls in trying to imitate Du Fu, erroneously coronated absolute master of verse, as per the nodding consensus among bearded literati throughout the ages.

So, what to do? Sleep seems the sensible thing. Gosh, I miss not having this chronic unclarity of throat.

On the other hand, it's been like old times (young college times) looking up at the trees whilst walking around. The reds, yellows, greens, and browns of the leaves I pressed and steadily misplaced years ago are renewed. It's comforting and sad in that Tang poetry sense that in this murky world of troubles on a grand scale, there are still things happening as natural and regular as leaves turning, leaving. Now.

Pro-cras-ti-na-tion n+1

I've put all my f*lm school applications into one folder called "F*lm School Schlock". It feels very appropriate.

Here is a picture of a little piggy I made for Mom's kitchen. I told her to bake him in the oven for a few minutes to "set", effectively ending his protean existence as a piece of lovingly shaped Sculpy, and launching him into relative permanence of form. In fact, he'll probably last longer than any of us, biodegradably speaking. (Is Sculpy environmentally friendly?) I am not sure whether the trial by fire has come to pass. Or whether he has been scorched in the process, like the plastic pork he would be without animation by affection. I am quite fond of him and have named him "Pigsy", after Monkey's love-hate dharma brother.

Oh, and Professor F. is a godsend, as is MW. I am so humbled by their generosity in such difficult personal times. I've picked out nice thank you gifts for everyone, however. Hope they like what I would like them to have: The Up documentary set (excluding 49 Up cos that's newish), "After Life" ("Wanderufuru raifu" in Nihongo), and "Happy Together" (best Wong Kar-wai film, in my opinion) for the noble convalescent and a pair of simply contoured porcelain birds on whose white-celadonish bodies one can rest chopsticks (these are perhaps more beautiful on their own, in dialogue).

OK, back to dictionaries and tea.

Brick

Good dialogue is worth its run in gold. And Joseph Gordon-Levitt is dead sexy as Brendan Frye the tough scraggly high school sleuth with the Dashiell Hamnett lines. He was born in the 80's. The 80's! It's so weird that people born in the decade where I can remember behaving with consciousness are walking the earth as accomplished adults. This is why pop cultural allusions betray everyone's teething age. I bet JGL doesn't know who Alasdair Gillis or Adam Reid is...

Troubled waters

Everyone I speak to these days is getting wisdom teeth out, going to a funeral, getting double knee-surgery, or going on sabbatical with exhaustion. Or off in the hinterlands of humanity with one finger on the telegraph line, lien, whatever.

On the other hand, had a wonderful meal with Z today after years of not seeing each other. Some people do not age or change much, which is quite beautiful. I have been made wiser and warmer by the experience.

Meanwhile, the mean gods of cold have descended and the streets are full of their testimony--this rubbing of outer arms on the cobbled corner whilst saying an extended goodbye--how long it has been. Maybe I am a Californian girl at heart, after all. (Give me boardwalks and sunny train station platforms in January...)

I was going to be a good girl

And go to bed before the usual (of late) 4 AM.

But alas, Gmail died on me while mailing a simple song or three; Grandma is perspicacious; my pater biologique hadn't the guts to face my mater familias, so he sent his girlfriend to spy on her instead, under the guise of meeting up with old school chums. How can anyone miss this subterfuge?

I had two Tim Tams today. It was that kind of a day. With coffee. And then it was eight, EIGHT hours of Matthews dictionary and Gudai hanzi zidian while deciphering (is it my fatigue? hopeless delusion? or a gift of time and experience?) what appears to be increasingly less indecipherable Song poetic theory. I was astounded when I finally rounded the bottom of the stack. Maybe I should do poetry instead of fiction. It's easier. Why shouldn't I do what's easier?

Film school applications are due on Nov. 1st. Yesterday was the day to panic, today for frantic phone calls, tomorrow for ordering what I hope are the last-ever GRE scores, and the day after I can't even fathom right now because it's 4 AM.

I miss my guitar, too. Long-necked Spanish lady of warm tones and full body, sing with me the little songs rescued from the sheerness of foregone memory.

I need sleep, and mooncakes because it is Mid-Autumn, so they say. I am ovewhelmed with love for Mama and Far and Qu Yuan and all the old friends I had and lost to the millwheel movements of time. I want to do something with all these things I've learnt. Give me a light.

Some things in life

Are worth fightin' for.

I realise I have been a bit precious lately--perhaps this entire past year, but especially recently about this move to the Northeast.

"49Up" was worth every moment of frustration, doubt, forlornment, ennui, and fright it took to find the theatre and return to the metro with wallet still on my person. I suppose Landmark theatres don't rake in enough greens to afford a more central or easily accessible location. Or all of Boston is really just a windy tunnel between shallow canyons of soulless concrete blocks with few pedestrians at any hour. Where are all the students? Why does this feel like a sci-fi city where even all the robotics are underground? No, Henry, this was not a man-sized world. Add a dash of Edward Hopperish sun and it's the setting for another dystopic epic about the struggle for survival of the dwindling human soul (queue Ben Stein!)

This evening, the industrial streets were particularly sparsely populated and I found myself jumpy on the deserted sidewalk, preferring in some uncomfortably unlit places to walk instead on the bike paths, also unpeopled. So what if that group going into the seafood restaurant were a little alarmed that I seemed to trail behind, be on par, and pass them within seconds? I am the professional pedestrian these days (miss you, PP). The KST station really is that subterranean and unadvertised at night. Boston's streets were unplanned and consequently, haphazard, filled with unfinished, geometrically irregular, and hidden trajectories and addresses. Even places marked 1 Eponymousstreet are camouflaged by several serpentine blocks of undistinguished architectural assemblies and garages. Like English country roads, this town assumes you should know where you are going before you arrive or you should not be going anywhere.

Well, my love for the cast of the Up documentaries outweighed all of those, in the end. More trying was missing the intended showing of the film at 4 due to my complete confoundment (once again--just like the fabric store) by undeducible Bostonian cartography. It was my own silliness, of course, not bringing a map, but I'd googled the place and thought it was right across the street from H and A's flat. Anyhoo, though I'm sure the audience's love for the Up subjects only grows with every 7 years, this time, they have spoken out about the intrusive and horrific aspects of being filmed for the series. I did feel a bit guilty about my paid voyeurism into their ordinary, photographed lives and wondered whether I would have agreed to do some a program. As the venerable A.O. Scott points out, the series is on the one hand an irreplaceable sociological treasure and on the other, a slightly inethical, almost cruel satisfaction of a curiosity that should perhaps have never been given such a telescope. The director now pays all of his subjects for showing up and shares all prize money with them, but they have been exposed to much judgment over the last 42 years (!)

And no, I don't think I would have agreed to be a subject though I agree with Ebert and company that this has been an important addition to our appreciation of life. Not that any of the subjects (my favourites are Nick, Bruce, Neil, and Tony) will ever read this, most likely, but I thank them for everything they've brought into my own understanding of this earthly existence. As the overly silver-tongued ministers used to say in regards to their pension-dispenser the Emperor: "I have been enriched [literally, "moistened"] by your munificence". Thank you, all.

One last thing before I go tonight. Whilst trying to find the blasted cinema this afternoon, I wandered by many empty lots and blank buildings. I had the feeling I was going in the wrong direction once and happened upon a cafe-like setting with baked goods in the window and two policemen chatting at a corner table. I thought I could ask them for directions because after all, they are policemen, and looked for the entrance to the shop and saw the banner: "Dunkin' Donuts". It was too perfect.

And another thing, the most inspirational thing I've heard in a while. After residing in Country X for the past 16 years and not speaking the language for aesthetic, pragmatic, and time-constraint reasons, Far said he has begun lessons! I am so proud of him, especially at his age. Learning languages is never really easy and only becomes more cumbersome as one grows older, but he piped in: "Sometimes, you just have to discipline yourself." I am so glad he is my father.

The river going east has turned west today. They say that happens after ten years.

Maybe Mama G was right

Maybe if I had been an Amazon, none of this would have happened in B-town, C-town, or anywhere else. Even in future tense.

But alas, I am a lesser lass and must suffer the meaty advances of street men across the country (though I am, strangely enough, spared this in Europe). It had been a while since the ill-swept curbs of B-town where witnessing the defecation of muttering, utter strangers was not out of the ordinary, where waiting to cross on a greenlight made one a captive audience of their body parts, ripped parts of speech (from limb to soiled limb), and the miasmic anger as endemic to their marked territories as the amassed putridity of life without running water.

It is not that I am not sympathetic to the homeless. But at least in B-town--I am not sure about this place since it is new--there are facilities, shelters, and services to provide food, housing, and medical aid if they were interested. There are lots of rules at those kinds of establishments, however, and some don't ever want to return to an institution again, sometimes very understandably. I don't think "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" is far off from the lying truth. Nevertheless, I don't think it gives anyone the right to assault another person, verbally or physically, or try to menace them into yielding money or other favours.

Somehow, I thought C-town would be different. Everyone I had met so far on the street had been quite civil and non-harrassing. Laundromats are apparently another arena of social acceptability all together.

It is BS that there are no laundry facilities in this house or within 1 full American mile. I don't mind the walking, but the thought of thick winter and the mere wastage of time waiting at a non-space out of paranoia and necessity (perhaps necessity engendered by paranoia) is discouraging for times to come. I do like clean clothes, however, and don't dispute the virtues of doing laundry. In fact, I have enjoyed the products of the relatively small labour (compared to old-fashioned beating of vestments on a stone by the chilly river till it stops moving in January) since age 11. Mama G put me on laundry duty young and I plan to do the same with my own brood one day. It is good for children to learn to be responsible for their own cleanliness and luxuries (such as fresh sheets) once they are old enough to do such things.

The irony in a way is that the text I'd brought to read for the duration of this sloshing and churning behind closed doors was a popular storyteller's tale (vis a vis composed for a reading audience tale) about Sariputra, Buddha's most dense and wildly popular-in-China student. It begins promisingly enough alluding to the subduing of demons, but then unspools a long obsequious sequence about the greatness of the Tang Taizong emperor. And then it's about the absolute blahblahness of the Diamond Sutra (surely, I am going to be carried off by mara for writing this), which sounds almost exactly like the absolute blahblahness of the Lotus Sutra found in the Lotus Sutra. Disappointingly, I have yet to happen upon any actual demons in the Dunhuang text (from the later Tang times, 7-9 century) as usually there is some magic swordfighting.

The first part of my laundry expedition was without much excitement (especially due to the shyness of the demons in "Sariputra"). I dropped off the clothes, traded three hours of my life for quarters, walked to a neighbourhood coffee shop, enjoyed a savoury tuna melt and a hot cup of not-bad green tea (whole leaves!) in a fancy cloth bag, and read about the magic flowers that rain down when the Buddha wants them to.

Returning to the laundromat to pop the clothes into the dryers, I thought it was strange that everyone else opted to put their clothes into the wall of dryers on the right. I loaded mine into the machines on the left because they were open, though there was a smelly pile of clothing emanating from one of the dryers in the corner, some articles of which lay in a crumpled heap on a table next to it. Paying not much mind to it, I slipped President Washingtons into the slot and sat down once again to delve into the greatness of "Sariputra". When the smaller load was done, I began to fold.

Shortly after, a man in a blinding aqua t-shirt appeared right in my face and nearly shouted, "Hi!"

"Hi," I said stonily, taken aback by his sudden appearance and the creeping realisation that the pile of clothes in the corner smelled the same as he.

"Spare me change for something to eat." His hairline was receding, but what was left had a troll-like, airborne tendency. He stood uncomfortably close and leant forward.

"No." I tried too look as emotionless as possible, and when he was about to press the matter further, added: "Please don't bother me".

He looked at me intently and circled around my back slowly, stopping at the open door of my dryer, one down from his. He examined the contents with great interest as I looked over at the couple staring at us from chairs by the entrace. Their faces said nothing. I wondered whether they would intervene should anything happen in this lonely place whose bright cafe-suited soundtrack mocked the empitiness all around. I stepped in front of my dryer to block his gaze and remove the rest of my clothes. Briskly. The man left abruptly then. His smell lingered.

When I began to feel relieved, I looked up again at the couple by the door. They were still looking at me. I noticed then that the man in the aqua shirt was peering in at all of us through the window, his arms raised and face pressed against the glass. I moved all of my things to the machines on the right side, even the second load that was not yet finished. New quarters flowed like rivers into the mouths of the machines and I felt hot. It must have been the heat of the dryers.

When folding the rest of the wash, the man came back in and, while he did not walk towards me (now on the right side of the room) again, he glanced over. Eventually, he decided to fall upon another single woman. I did not hear what was said and was somewhat relieved, but I saw that she was all right. After presumably not being able to extort money from her either, the man reached into his clothing pile in the corner dryer and announced to the large room: "I'm gonna change my socks now. Yeah, changin' my socks! Changin' my socks!" The odours continued to waft over as his waved his bits and pieces around.

I only looked at my own clothes and once more, the implacable couple in the corner. When I went to speak to them later, they were both unperturbed by it all--the harassment of two single girls, the leering, the shouting. Was I overreacting? No, because the creep tried to intimidate me with his physical proximity and persistence, and leered at my clothes, all intimates and camisoles, in the dryer at length. The latter was probably the most disconcerting--if I hadn't been there while the clothes were drying, would I have found something missing from or added to the loads? I shuddered to think of either outcome.

In the interest of saving time, getting out of the way a mile-long trek in the growing darkness, and avoiding further contact with the man, who seemed to come and go from the place as if it were his own living room, I packed all the clothes, even the slightly damp items, and headed out, but not before stopping to speak to the couple by the door.

They looked very much like each other, though it's clear they are from different clans: dowdy hiker types who had healthy body hair images and read mass market paperbacks. Maybe they've seen it all at this kind of place. They'd been there once before and had never seen this man. Maybe they just moved here from New York or B-town.

No time or heart to appreciate the falling light on New England maples or the greenness growing in gardens and on sidewalks, I marched home with two evenly stacked bags and tried to dream up a solution.

I have neglected to mention that I did telephone the laundromat/drycleaning owner in between the man's ins and outs, and left a message. I am not sure how much good that has done and even less convinced that my landlady's suggestion to phone the police would have accomplished anything, for me and the other customers, the laundromat, or the man, in the long run.

It would be nice if I could just avoid these encounters with creepy, pervy people. I am also tired of moving around months at a time, renting costly crappy apartments where things either don't work or fall off, shooting off in random directions while seeming to pursue trajectories that go where my heart doesn't. A remedy is in the works, but like everything else, including laundry, it takes much patience and time.

In other news, went for a swim at the luxuriously spacious-laned and illumined Olympic-sized pool with W the other evening. Very beautiful place, beautifully unhurried swim--it was almost like being back in my little runabout waterhole in California, but it was a bit cooler, the company more professional (lifeguards and some kind of team enthusiast), and I did get the chills some hours later. But will try to do the same thing again next week as a 1/2 hour of nonstop laps did not leave me the least bit sore or tired. Rather, it was quite elating and relaxing. There is nothing like floating on one's back and watching the clouds or rafters move off the horizon.

Mom and Far are in Weihai this week and will press onto other parts of the old country, one of them on an informal lecture circuit and family-rousing tour, and the other a round of business accompaniments on the golf links. Rather revolting, golfing in China these days, but apparently such a part of the vulgarian "culture" that one cannot afford to be too moralistic for it. When Mom said to one of those "delegation" members over dinner last month: "Call me old-fashioned, but I do feel sorry for the inequality of the boom experienced by farmers who had their ancestral lands seized by local government without compensation so that golf courses can be built. Some of them do get jobs at the links, but most don't and these new courses have facilities more luxurious in terms of human service and grooming than even places abroad. What a contrast!"

The head of the delegation snorted witout missing a beat: "Which country in the world doesn't have an economically divided society?" I will always remember this man for this remark and for his insistence that the "international" style of eating chicken was not in fact, via aid of knife, fork, chopsticks, or fingers. Rather... he demonstrated the proper decorum by personally ripping up his serviette into inch-wide shreds and stubbornly (and clumsily) wrapping these around the bony parts of the drumsticks like a sort of... legwarmer (?) Then, the warm-hearted and worldly man proceeded to hand out these drumsticks to us around the table. The paper fibers stuck to the skin uncannily well. Mercifully, I wasn't hungry.

Will see the wonderful 49Up documentary tomorrow. Wonder if I can work in "Little Miss Sunshine" as well as wushu. Busy day for leisure and Sariputra. Also, YouTube has "Wonder Years" episodes! This show was so good. Ben Stein has the best consistent cameo as a depressed science teacher fond of showing films of apocalypse-worthy natural phenomena (raging volcanoes and massive floes dropping off from ancient polar caps) while spicing them with Wagnerian sound effects triggered by Ozian buttons and levers, and simultaneously narrating in his gleefully monotone drawl about the inevitability of death and destruction for ancient and modern man. I want to hire this guy for future projects. Any project. I'll even take out a bank loan.

How did I grow up without "The Wonder Years"? I am much inspired by its thematic breadth and intelligent sentimentality.

Random things making me happy

1. Talking with JW because she's so darned sensible, except when she isn't and I am :P I also enjoy thinking about sending her (international) cookies.

2. I've discovered yellow kitchen gloves. My hands are elated.

3. Getting into what Heidegger might have termed the Zen Zone if he had been weaned on today's selfhelp culture when making interminable photocopies of books no longer in print. One can become an efficient machine with very little wastage of energy or posture. Is there anything like mindless photoocopying to remind one of the actual good things in life (which have nothing to do with mindless photocopying)?

4. Leaving voicemail for Penguin or talking with him (though his accent is getting a little shaky).

5. Hearing about another imminent package of presents from abroad. Yay! I am much too spoiled, V.

6. The heat coming on this week. Now the apartment is all toastee.

7. Catching up with old friends from OZ who haven't changed a bit in the important senses and still manage to be their adult versions. Catching up with old friends' husbands and talking to them for real for a good half hour (rather than the tagalong spouse type greeting).

8. Apparently not yet killing my orchid plant my landlord so thoughtfully bought as a cheering gift. This will be the first plant to survive my (in)attention, ever. But then again, I am not inattentive to it. It is watered quite regularly and spoken to as well. It is tentatively named "Bunny", not after certain nicknames, but the way Jane Birkin pronounces "Bonnie and Clyde" ever so Frenchily though she is, of course, British.

9. Having delightful dinner guests who get that last allusion and sing along!

Life should just be a big singalong (but no "La Boheme" or "Rocky Mountain High", sorry).

Honestly, Hermione!

The various schoolgirls of thought on dreams:

a) they are prophetic;

b) they are a mere laundry line of one's recent experiences, hence starker hopes and fears;

c) depending on the time of day (e.g., dawn, vis a vis 2 AM) conceived, they are somewhere between the two.

I am sometimes surprised by the potency of upsetness that wakes one from a storied sleep. Even the unmistakable combination of absurd elements (from television not personally watched, but read about), public figures, and very real personal emotions (and their fueled genealogy) isn't quite enough to explain away the mood while waking, the morning after.

There were no tears, just a dread disappointment in the apparent limits of any one's uniqueness in the world, even as conventional wisdom and handpicked memories protest otherwise.

* * *
Had a wonderfully social weekend. Did miss telephoning Miss JW, about which I feel terrible, terrible. I hope she'll forgive me and accpet some more choco-pie-type treat in the mail.
Evening with H and A was lovely. We had a savoury meal at a highly regarded Afghan restaurant that deserved its sterling reputation. The company was an interesting mix--I never thought I'd be dragging my old, cursory exposure (largely skeptical) to literary and culture theory ever again. But it was quite fun and I always enjoy H and A's calm bemusement at the world. She had told me recently of purple Thai cats. Apparently, they are dyed that way for their role in temples, and all this came about because H had mentioned she would name her cat, Murasaki, after the lady in the "Genji monogatari". And I had mentioned that "murasaki" was "purple".

Last night's Operation Dinner Party also came off very well. R and C had been such gracious hosts last time and this time they were equally pleasant guests. We had rich servings of fresh baby cucumbers rolled in salt, sesame oil, and garlic, a full-on seafood pancake with scallions, steaming bowls of oxtail soup with real stout radishes (rather than the limpid linguine-like daikon), fluffy-sweet Chinese rice, basil and lemon-cardamom ice cream (quite celestial), little corners of Cote d'Or milk chocolate, and authentic Tim Tams sent in a care package from Australia dipped in hot cream coffee.

The conversation was even better than the food fare. We ambled the globe. A good night.