I’m in psuedo-shock at the coming end of vacation. Right now, writing this, I have all the sensations of being on vacation with little reality attending it, as I’ll report back to Routine in twelve hours. It feels like I could’ve used the time better, like I should’ve gotten more sleep or reading in, or at least visited the Dayton Art Institute and the glorious mosaics that Amy Welborn reported seeing. I was planning on going there Sunday but time got away from me and the museum is closed Monday & Tuesday. The Columbus Art Museum has a Monet exhibition going on, but it feels like Monet has been overexposed, such that I won’t appreciate it, as crazy as it sounds to say of such a great artist.
Vacations are precious times for refueling, for enrichment, for art, for history, for art history, for historical art, etc.. (Speaking of art, there’s a volume I’ve been stiff-arming due to its outrageous cost – “The Sistine Chapel” by an author named Pfeiffer – which promises a tour of the famous ceiling accompanied by the unveiling of the tremendous theological significances encoded in Michelanglo’s great work. That thirst for hidden knowledge still appeals to my inner gnostic even though it’s really just: “Love God and love your neighbor”.)
I suppose I can’t expect all that refueling to occur in five days, let alone engage in an elaborate art enrichment program or even quench the thirst of writing of a semi-decent page of fiction. Thru last Thursday there was a steady stream of family gatherings and visits, which is good and well. So there was mainly only Friday-thru-Tuesday for refueling, which is a small window indeed.
I’m hungry to write well, to write that sort of cryptically-pleasing line that Ham o’ Bone recently penned:
“I want to take this moment to thank you, gentle reader, for exploring the cliches of what passes as knowledge in the mind of a modern autodidact. The grave insights that we've explored over the last twelve months have been. I repeat, they have been. (Haven't they?)”Besides liking any sentence with the word “autodidact” in it, I love the period after “have been”. A sort of winsome shorthand because yes, we know they have been. (Haven’t they?) A little thing, perhaps, but… You ignore poetry and novels and dreams and lost reveries and breakthrough learnings at your own risk. Man cannot exist without the pleasure of those sort of deeply Proustian thoughts. There is nothing I’ve written that was so revelatory as that old “Uncle Bud” writing.
Heard a bit of Gigi, and I don't understand The Parisians. The beginning sounds crassly materialistic, a sort of "everything is grace" transported to the earthly sphere, but then it gradually opens out from the carnal:
The Parisians
from the soundtrack of the muscial GIGI:
A necklace is love.
A ring is love.
A rock from some obnoxious little king is love.
A sapphire with a star is love.
An ugly black cigar is love.
Everything you are is love.
You would think it would embarrass
All the people here in Paris
To be thinking every minute of love.
I don't understand the Parisians
Making love every time they get the chance,
I don't understand the Parisians
Wasting every lovely night on romance.
Any time and under every tree in town,
They're in session two by two,
What a crime with all there is to see in town,
They can't find something else to do.
I don't understand how Parisians
Never tire of walking hand in hand,
They seem to love it,
And speak highly of it.
I don't understand the Parisians!
...
When it's warm, they take a carriage ride at night,
Close their eyes and hug and kiss.
When it's cold, they simply move inside at night,
There must be more to life than this!
The last quatrain says basically: when it's warm - who cares? They have love. When it's cold - who cares? They have love. Reminds me of a line from St. Padre Pio, paraphrased, "what do you care whether God leads you to Heaven through plentiful fields or through desert?"
So what else is on the docket? Well, from our esteemed pastor, the learned and eurdite European history professor, came the dour one-liner concerning 2008, saying he felt we’re entering a trying period which would echo our Lord’s prediction of the Last Days – of famine and wars and rumors of wars and bad economic times and assassinations and… And I couldn’t help feeling that he wanted, somehow, for this to take place, in maybe the way Christ thirsted for his own Baptism of Fire, because it was if our pastor has become disgusted by the props of a sound economy and materialism and all the things of this world, tired of our leaning on them as our hope, and it was as if he wished away the faux stability of this great economic juggernaut called the U.S. economy. Still a scandal, it is, to wish away the good things just because they are so often misused.
The last day of 2007 was mild and sunny and pleasant. Was able to spend much of outside in only a t-shirt. (Well, and pants.) The object was to sand and stain a newly renovated bookcase. A small act of creation, and it felt satisfyingly productive. My wife actually did the creating part, by taking the 8ft wide by 4 foot high single-shelf bookcase and converting into a 2-shelf bookcase adorned with two new crown moldings using the new table saw I got her for Christmas. Under the ugly paint and scratched surface hid fine oak wood, and where once was an eyesore in the back of the bookroom is now in the process of holding its head up high.
Watched Michigan defeat Florida in the bowl game today. Wow. Now that was a pleasant surprise. Heard my bleeds-Ohio-State-scarlet-blood (that doesn't work too well does it? It's a shame that teams with red colors can't bleed a different color blood as the Dodger fans do) father-in-law say "we" when talking about Michigan. That's unheard of, and is scary in that it's one of the signs of the Apocalypse. Our pastor might be right. He immediately apologized for it but the damage was done. It's one thing to root for Michigan, as we were all doing, but it's another to refer to the Maize & Blue under the personal pronoun.
Supposedly it’s not always about me, so I let Mom choose the movie on her birthday (no applause, just throw money) and have to admit I liked “Enchantment” more than I let on. It was a tonic to “I am Legend” and after awhile Gizelle, the main character, grows on you. The meal at the Worthington Inn was astonishing in two ways: how great the food is and how high the price. But they are complementary: the food is so delicious it numbs the pain at the sight of the bill. I would rather go to the Worthington Inn for Mom’s birthday than anywhere. It fits us to a “T”: full of personal and historic tradition. We’ve haunted the old inn with its array of colorful, art-covered rooms for over twenty years and it packs more tradition than merely our own; the eldest part of it was built in 1835 and it began its life as an inn in 1854.
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