For about 5 minutes at around 10:30 AM on most days, shortly after my first cup of coffee has kicked in, I have a very positive and optimistic outlook on life. It doesn’t last much longer. But at that point, I believe good things will happen, and that I can make good things happen.

I sort of understand the impulse, but it’s still a little annoying to me when people walk up to the urinal and flush before peeing, as if to say, “That water is not pristine enough to receive my urine.” I suppose it’s similar to those who don’t like “remnants” in a toilet they are about to use. Maybe it’s a natural animal instinct. After all, cats and dogs are often very particular about where their waste is deposited. Not sure what underlies it, but it’s there and true nonetheless. But shouldn’t we be able to overcome the impulse? What’s the point of flushing before you yourself defile? I almost never walk away from a urinal without flushing, so the prefatory flush is not a personal affront to me. But it does annoy me. Admittedly, though, I’m more annoyed at the person who left without flushing. Once in a while I’ll step up to the urinal and look below to see a thick, deeply rusty-colored puddle of urine--more like a highly concentrated human spray than a urine. This annoys me, first because the person didn’t have the courtesy to flush, but also because he clearly hasn’t drunk a glass of water in decades. It’s evidence of sloth in my mind, and I don’t like sloth. So please drink plenty of water and flush after peeing (but never before). Simple rules to live by.

There is another restroom phenomenon which I find funny. There are two urinals—one at a normal height and the other for a child. People always use the regular urinal if available. That’s understandable. Now if someone has just finished at the regular urinal when another person walks in, the guy walking in will take the second (and low) urinal instead of the regular urinal, even though the regular is available to him. People don’t like to step into space recently occupied by someone who was pissing. I think the same is true for people choosing between vacant stalls. A recently vacated stall is less desirable. I suppose that’s understandable, given the potential for smells. But the urinal really brings home the point. There’s really very little reason to avoid the recently vacated urinal, as far as I can tell.

The other day I stepped up to the urinal and almost stepped INTO a pool of urine on the floor. Who does that? Well, I immediately formed an answer in my mind to that question, someone on my floor who might do such a thing—a particularly lethargic and knuckle-headed person whose personal hygiene habits I know nothing of. It just seems to fit him… Well, I’ve done that a time or two myself—what male hasn’t had an accidental misdirection. But I clean up after myself. No one should be stepping into urine.

I recently finished reading Ray Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles. In a few unimportant ways, it’s dated. But mostly it still holds up today. The one thing that struck me as I read the first few sections was how different the orientation seems to me today. In Bradbury’s mind the aliens are always being invaded by the exploring earthlings—we’re the occupiers. Today earth is always invaded, infiltrated or overwhelmed—we’re the occupied. It’s perhaps not too flippant to say that something profound, and probably profoundly sad, has occurred in the American psyche over the last 25 years or so.

I’m now reading a collection of short stories by Annie Proulx. It’s solid writing. Before settling on these stories, I toyed with reading Electra by Sophocles—I’ve never really read any of the classic Greek dramas, so it feels high time… But I didn’t get far before getting distracted by other books on the shelf. I turned to The Ambassadors by Henry James, still wishing to spend my precious reading time with the classics. But it’s just too much effort for a questionable return. I’m sure those out there who love his writing will roll their eyes, but his prose is so labored and so very unnecessarily dense. I say “unnecessarily,” understanding that it’s his style and one has to embrace it. But the man knows no economy of words. Why say something in one short sentence when it can be said with more labor in ten lengthy sentences? (I can’t very well argue this point effectively with an author of the stature of Henry James, but when does poor writing pass into brilliant, stylized prose? I love Proust, and he certainly can be charged with some of the same faults, yet I don’t feel it with him. I LOVE Proust with a deep sense of personal connection. I don’t love James. While working through the third page of the novel I found myself irretrievably distracted by how the words seemed to align perfectly on the page so that the spaces between them created a perfectly straight diagonal line across much of the page. Imagine the chances! Also, the contractions all had odd spaces between the verb and the contracted “not”—did n’t. How could I read an entire book with that nonsense.) I used to have the time and inclination to invest in such writing, but as I get older, I’m feeling a greater urgency to read as many varied works as I can. If I spend umpteen weeks reading this James book, I will have missed the chance to read three other contemporary works. It’s just not worth it. Still, a part of me feels guilt. I’m always arguing the case for investing the time and effort in difficult things because there’s often great reward in it. Don’t always take the easy course. I’m often making that point with music. People complain about “difficult” or immensely obtuse new music and want nothing but easy, tuneful pleasantries. The lazy ignoramuses. I don’t know how to reconcile this with my rejection of James. But all the same, I reject him. I’ll read my Proulx stories and move on to another contemporary author after that. It's decided.

Someone with a cubicle on the main thoroughfare of my floor at work has recently taken to displaying two large calendars--one with a new picture of a kitten every month, and the other with a picture of a puppy. Clearly she thinks (and I’m assuming it’s a she, though I’ll need to verify) that everyone will enjoy these photos. The thing is--she’s right. Who wouldn’t enjoy large glossy photos of kittens and puppies every time they leave their desk to go to the restroom or kitchen area?

A while ago Ann and I went to a wedding. It was conventional, so very conventional. I like the couple, so I don’t mean to malign them or their wedding. Actually, I liked the location of the reception—a nice museum in the heart of Rochester. But, for example, the music… Of course I focus on that. Pachelbel’s Canon and Ode to Joy. Lord. Did they even try? Some effort, please. Does anything say “I have no ideas and no input on this” more than these musical selections? Well, before the wedding, Ann and I were (purely co-incidentally) listening to our own wedding music, which I had collected on a CD. I made the selections—my (sole?) contribution to the event. But having now re-listened to the selections, I stand by them all, with perhaps a few alternatives. (Of course, one thing to keep in mind—there was no thought given to whether the music could be performed live. Live performances would have been too complicated for our ceremony, and we were happy with recordings. ) Here it is:

Prelude:

• Appalachia Waltz by Mark O’Connor. Ok, I think this is a terrific piece, but it’s become rather popular for weddings. So now I might have chosen in its place something else--the music from the balcony scene from David Diamond’s music for Romeo and Juliet. I LOVE this piece, sooo beautiful, and it holds special meaning for me—will always remind me of Ann. But I think Appalachia Waltz was still the right choice, given the setting in the Adirondacks.
  
• Philip Glass: String Quartet #4, third movement. This is a profoundly beautiful piece. This and a movement of his 5th quartet are among my favorite pieces ever. I keep telling Ann that she can have this played at my funeral (a recording—needn’t be a live performance, of course). (Why leave these things to chance? Otherwise someone will be playing a George Beverly Shea rendition of “Amazing Grace” at my funeral. Please, no.)

Processional (as Ann was coming down the hillside towards the lake):

• A piano rendition of Gershwin’s “The man I love” played by Alan Feinberg. I know what you’re thinking—The man I love!?! But there were no words. We just enjoyed the wonderful melody, full of nostalgia. It worked.

Recessional

• G Song by Terry Riley, played by the Kronos Quartet. I LOVE this piece. It’s accessible and lovely, yet new and a little unusual. It has a slightly celebratory feel, but a little somber too. Perfect for a wedding, and I’m surprised it hasn’t been picked up by string quartets.
  

Cocktail music before dinner

• I chose a lot of music from the 20s and 30s, Gershwin and Cole Porter tunes, Joplin rags, a few Kurt Weill songs. My only reservations here were that I didn’t include some newer music, and that with Weill (also see Cohen below), it wasn’t completely American music. If I had to do it all over again, I would have included some music of Michael Torke, probably his Overnight Mail and the Telephone Book. Jazzy, hip and fun. Would have been perfect.
  

First dance

• Leonard Cohen, "Dance Till the End of Love." This song, and a few others from the same album of 10 New Songs, is *our* music, if anything is. It’s heavily infused with emotion for us (or at least for me). I mean, if Ann were to die, this would be the music that would instantly make me weep. So it’s personally meaningful, which is exactly as this event should be. Pick something that means something to the two of you. (But pick something good, people.) I think this song is perfect. Credit Ann for this and the song below.
  

Last dance

• Leonard Cohen, "Here it is." It’s really the same as above, though a little more somber. A perfect ending.

Lately I’ve been listening to a lot of Christopher Rouse. I’ve come to believe he’s one of the great composers writing today. His violin concerto is utterly satisfying music to me, and it was written in Fairport, New York, just moments from my home. It’s a rather traditional piece—one might say even a little old fashioned. It almost seemed a little corny upon the first few listening, when the orchestra enters and strikes big, bold chords with timpani and crashing cymbals. The passage that follows reminds me a little of Rachmaninoff’s Isle of the Dead, which I also love—cellos and basses in slow movement beneath the surface noise--suggesting the rising and falling of deep waters, and the rocking of a boat above. As a side note, in a few passages he uses the celesta to beautiful effect. This violin concerto is wonderful from start to finish, and it will surely be among the great concertos of our time. His piece Rapture is also wonderful. It reminds me a little of Joe Schwantner’s music, which I suppose is no coincidence. Rouse’s concerto for percussion is good, though generally I dislike percussion as unmusical. (I share Rorem’s opinion on this. I think only Reich, with his marimbas, has been able to make beautiful music for percussion.) I’ve gone back and re-listened to Rouse’s cello concerto, and have discovered that it is also very strong. The second movement is beautiful. That first movement is a little rough going for me, though. From the cello concerto I went to the trombone concerto, which won Rouse a Pulitzer Prize. Surprisingly, it’s remarkable. I had low expectations, given all I assume about the trombone, but he manages to create a convincing piece of orchestral music using this otherwise banal brass instrument as the focal point. It’s serious music through and through—not a light moment in sight. But it’s really wonderful, and of our times. His flute concerto is also good, though I haven’t given it as much listening as I should. Finally, the guitar concerto is growing on me. The guitar is such a hard instrument to balance against the volume of a full orchestra, and I still wonder if he’s solved that problem completely, but I like the piece. His two symphonies are good, though I don’t think they reach the level of his concertos. I’m looking forward to new music from this composer, because he seems to be getting better and better as he gets older. My interest in Rouse was renewed because I heard a little of his piano concerto on the radio. Without knowing whose music was being played, I thought to myself, this is a great piece (although I couldn’t begin to truly understand it upon one listening), and this composer is a composer to be reckoned with. And after waiting to hear who it was, I discovered that it was indeed Rouse. I wish there was a recording of that piano concerto. After Rouse, I took a tour through Stravinsky, mostly his post-Le Sacre pieces. I always end up pausing for extending times on his concerto for piano and winds—a wonderful and under-played piece—and his Concertino, which is short but perfect. The last few days I’ve returned to Michael Torke. I can’t say enough about him. So satisfying to listen to. I want to hear more. I hope new recordings are coming. Finally, I spent a few weeks listening to Elgar. I’d never heard his first symphony. He’s a great one. Now I’m a little adrift, listening to a few Mozart operas which I’ve never listened to—Marriage of Figaro and Cosi Fan Tutte. But I need something else.

Things I’m listening to this week: the string quartets of Aaron Jay Kernis and Zemlinsky. Also Lamentate by Arvo Part, Ligeti’s Requiem, and a string quartet by Wynton Marsalis. It’s too early to give my impressions, except to say that the Part is a pleasant surprise. The Kernis is good, but not inspired. I’m often disappointed by modern string quartet music (not that Kernis is disappointing here). It often seems more obtuse than I like for the medium. Everyone wants to write the Bartok quartets, which I don’t much care for either (or shall we blame the late Beethoven quartets?). I have enjoyed the Philip Glass quartets, the Reich triple quartet, some Golijov pieces, and some quartet music of Jennifer Higdon, to mention a few contemporary composers, but in general the string quartet music is often too dense, chromatic, and harsh for me. It just strikes me as particularly odd, since often I'll like the orchestral music of a composer, but not the string quartets. It's true of Bartok, and it's true for many modern composers. Why is that?

I’m reading Watership Down—no, I never read it as a child. I don’t retain any of the Lapine language from day to day, except that I can’t stop thinking about silflay. Quiet grazing in the early dewy morning and during the soft breezes of the evening hours… when life is worth living. Those crazy rabbits know how to live.

I’m still working on the stained glass windows outside of our bathroom, though these will be done soon enough. Then onto the two large 6-paned windows at the base of the rear stairs. I’m really looking forward to working on those. I think they’ll look great, with a mix of blues in a stylized landscape design. And then there’s the painting—about a dozen paintings that I want to finish, and one firmly in my head to begin.

At work I’m in the thick of designing an estate plan for domestic partners. It’s tricky. At home I’m beginning to scrape and paint the house, replacing siding where necessary and repairing gutters where I can. Mostly I can’t.

I'm facebooking, though I'm conflicted about it. It consumes too much time--time which would be better spent working on glass or painting, or...well, even blogging. All of those people writing pithy comments under a 1000 characters. It all feels too social, too much like high school, and too totally devoid of substance and depth. No thought is sustainted for more than a few sentences. But I like writing pithy comments too. And lately I've been feeling a need to be engaged in a way facebook enables. I don't want or need a lot of online socializing. What I'd enjoy is corresponding with one or two interesting and intelligent people. But, well, until that happens I guess I'll have to settle for correspondence with my friends. hahaha

Here's something I wrote back in May.

Last month Ann and I spent a week in New York City. I loved it. I love being in the city. I’m made for city living. I think I’m a bit of a snob. I like being at the center of culture and having access to things. I like being around rushes of diverse people on busy streets. I love rows of townhouses and charming neighborhoods. I like reading the Times on the subway, reading of the dozens of coming cultural events and reviews of past events. I love having quick access to great paintings. All things of significance come through New York at some point. I like not dealing with cars and with driving.

I remember lots of things about our trip, but a few things come to mind more frequently than others. I remember Ann and I sitting at Starbucks across from Lincoln Center before seeing Satyagraha at the Met. I was excited to be seeing this Glass opera, and I enjoyed the anticipation, and knowing that this wasn’t some university production, or a regional opera company. This was the fucking Met! And a Philip Glass opera! I’ve been listening to Satyagraha a lot since seeing the Met production, and it still seems as fresh and exciting to me as when I first bought the recording a decade or more ago. Say what you will about Glass’ work of the last 15 years, there is no doubt that he’s written some of the most beautiful and exciting music of the 20th century.

I also remember walking through the upper Village at night, wandering through the small streets and discovering little restaurants, with couples hovering around candle-lit tables and enjoying their drinks, as if they do it every evening. I will always be a small town kid marveling at the big city, and I think it’s a good thing. The city always holds excitement and satisfaction. I’m never jaded in this way. When I’m in the city, there’s no feeling that I’m missing out. When I lived in Philadelphia, I always felt that. It never became commonplace to me.

Change of time and subject …

Ann reads lots of blogs. I don’t. Lately she’s been reading one written by a stay-at-home dad. I read a sample of it a few days ago, and it was good. I just don’t seem to be drawn to blogs like I might expect. I am a bit of a voyeur, and so such glimpses into the lives of others should appeal to me, but lately I just don’t care. The exception has been Ian’s blog (though I’m not sure I should be identifying his name—he’s gone anonymous). I think the reason I like to read his blog is because I sort of know him—we’ve corresponded a bit. And he’s likeable and in London, which is different enough to interest me. I imagine he leads a charmed life in a wonderful city. But otherwise, the blogs of strangers don’t interest me. And I don’t expect anyone to be interested in mine either. In fact, the less interest the better. The one point the stay-at-home dad made which I certainly agree with is that the more people who read his blog (people he knows, that is), the less fun it is to write. He’s become inhibited –once upon a time he could write anything, but now he has to be concerned with what people might think. What we both want is to make our thoughts available to the public, but only to the unknown masses, no familiars allowed.

I’m going to try to resurrect my blog. I’m going to finish the stained glass windows for the bathroom. I’m going to paint my two newly stretched blank canvases—I think in a Lionel Feininger style. I’m going to remove the windows at the bottom of the stairs and work on them throughout the winter. I’m going to stop thinking about the surfaces of our cats’ litter whenever I see large grassy expanses. I’m going to try to focus more on work when I’m at work. I’m going to try to get to bed early tonight and sleep a long time.

I’ve finished reading the Christopher Rice novel. It wasn’t good. He can develop a narrative—he’s a story teller and can deftly piece together scenes and events. But it was very weak, even bad, embarrassing on content, character, and substance. Nothing that he wrote felt true. He’s like the Jon Lovitz thespian character on Saturday Night Live—“Acting!” only Rice is “Writing!” Either he’s unable or uninterested in writing about real people. I’m now reading a book by Annie Proulx. Nice to be back reading good work.

Two words that I should use more often: unbidden and persiflage.
“His unbidden advances were fodder for endless persiflage around the lunch table.” “Filled with the persiflage of a thousand nattering grandmas, his mind fluttered to and fro like a summer azure butterfly, landing intermittently always on the unbidden but inexorable truth that he could no longer focus on the employment tasks at hand.”

Much of the time it’s true- I can’t stomach religious persons or their stupid beliefs. It’s not nice of me, but it’s true. I heard a middle-aged woman with frosted hair and a loud voice talk at work about how she loves tattoos and is planning her fifth, but she just hadn’t decided where on her body it would go. “Oh, what have you decided upon?” someone asked. Answer: A cross with the text of a Proverbs 3:??-??, which she then dutifully recited. Yuck.

Last night I went to a concert of the Eastman Philharmonia. I sat near the front, just to the left of the conductor. In general I had a very nice time. It was an excellent program, from start to finish. It’s just that I’m never quite happy about the people I sit near. People are never as invisible as I’d like them to be. There was an aged woman sitting alone a few rows in front of me and to the left . Dressed very presentably, in a long black skirt and nice sweater, proper shoes. She seemed the perfect no-nonsense companion to a concert . . . except… throughout the entire performance of Wagner’s Liebestod she never stopped nervously flapping her program in front of her face, as if nearly overcome with heat. It was October. It was not hot. I fixated on it. I couldn’t focus on anything but the flapping. I tried to shield her from my view, but it was hopeless, impossibly distracting. She might as well have been waving a giant flag, or holding an enormous bird by the legs as it tried to fly away. I wanted her punished for ruining my first piece on the program. Moving to the second piece, mid-way through the slow movement of the Mozart piano concerto, I heard a clatter near my feet as something fell to the floor. Again with the audience noise! To myself I cursed the man behind me for this second distraction. After intermission, I milled around in the hallway for a while. When I finally returned to find my seat, I looked down and saw beside my chair my own cell phone, which must have been the clatter I blamed on the man behind me! So much for my blamelessness. I don’t know why I even brought the damned thing. For the second half, and third piece of the evening, I held my cell phone in my hand, wrapped in the program so as to conceal from the man behind me that it was my cell phone that fell on the floor earlier--and also to make sure that no one in the audience confused me with those cell phone people who bring their noise makers into the concert hall, unable to sever ties to the wireless world. But somewhere in the middle of the Brahms symphony, as I clutched the phone in my right hand, I accidently pressed the On button, which caused the phone to intone its start-up ring pattern. Good god, what have I done! Well, there was no concealing it. I’d become one of them. Mark my word, though--I’ll never bring a phone to the concert hall again. It’s unforgiveable.

A week or so ago Ann and I went to the Adirondacks for the weekend. She’s now a board member of a not-for-profit organization, a summer camp in the Adirondacks, and so attendance at periodic meetings is necessary. This actually has an unanticipated benefit for me, which I realized during this past weekend. It was on the early side of the fall season up there. We arrived on Saturday morning, after a pleasant drive, gorgeous weather, sunny and warm. The camp was relatively quiet, with only board members and, in some cases, their families, in attendance. (I say relatively quiet because it was still annoyingly difficult to find a spot where one could sit without surrounding noise, or wanderers, small children running about with parents following behind, etc. It’s one of those things about the camp that I always forget about until I’m up there—a most gorgeous spot but for all the damned people and their communal ideas and habits! If only I could have the camp to myself. The location is everything there—all else detracts. But enough of this short rant….) Anyway, we arrived on Saturday morning. After a brief period of greetings, I realized I had the entire day free to myself in this wonderful location, in this wonderful weather, while Ann was trapped in day-long meetings. After bouncing around for a while trying to find a place where I could be alone and read in peace, I finally settled into a long Adirondack chair facing the lake, wrapped in a thin blanket to keep the breeze off of me, and a book in my lap. There I sat completely alone and undisturbed for hours, a little coffee resting on the arm of the chair, the occasional boater passing by, and the sounds of geese in the distance. I sat for hours reading my large tome on the life and paintings of Van Gogh. What could have been finer? It was an exquisite fall day in perhaps the most beautiful place to be at that moment. It’ll stick in my memory for years as one of those times that comes rarely and without effort. Such times can’t really be repeated or recreated , even though on this day I wanted to buy a cabin in the Adirondacks and relive that day over and over again-- much as I wanted to buy an apartment in Paris after similar experiences in that beautiful city a few years earlier. I think one of the important factors in this day was the forced exile from all concerns that intrude. I had hours to kill with few options for distractions. This is part of the problem even with time of my own during weekends. Sure, there are no work distractions, but still an entire laundry list of activities presses upon me, a list of things that I must sample, an agenda of things I must move forward. It’s tiresome, my mind and its goals-orientation.

I really want to write a play. Someday I will. A good one, I hope, but if not, then multiple plays, many efforts. Coincidentally, I was just listening to the radio. The announcer commented that Brahms didn’t complete his first symphony until he was 43. I’m 43, so I took comfort in that, momentarily. But of course what one must understand is that by the time Brahms was 43 he’d already written several masterpieces. By his early 20s Brahms was already being called Beethoven’s successor. So take no comfort, my friends.

I have great friends. [One always says so just before the zinger. Hopefully they’re not reading this. Of course they’re not.] But often I tire quickly of them. In truth I often don’t feel like they share my interests, or that they have a clue what I’m thinking most of the time. It’s not a new feeling. I’ve felt this way about my friends throughout my life, even as the friends have changed. The only difference now is that I have Ann to compare them with, for how little they know me. So it’s not about my friends… probably. I wonder sometimes, though, whether I’d feel differently if I had a friend who truly shared a passionate interest with me. Maybe what I need are a collection of niche friends —e.g., someone I only get together with to play poker, an annual camping trip companion, a friend who only goes scuba diving with me (if I scuba dived), deer hunting friends, friends who only help me move, the friend whose phone calls I always dodge, the fuck me buddy, the fuck you buddy, the resourceful guy, the creative guy, the bore, the guy I keep on deck for when I eventually take up jazz, or bridge.

Last week our chief operating officer visited Rochester. I’ve seen this guy via his many video web casts on the company web site. He always seemed to be a bit of a tubby dolt, likeable but not particularly sharp nor able to inspire confidence. He rolls his head back and forth too frequently, like a bobble head that’s slowly coming to rest, a white and visually able Stevie Wonder, someone who knows he should turn his head from time to time to cover the crowd but who hasn’t quite acquired a natural rhythm for it. When he spoke to the full Rochester crowd of several hundred people, however, he was pretty entertaining, and he had more of a presence, a presence befitting a man who heads a multi-billion dollar company. In the afternoon after his talk, he toured the buildings, bringing his video camera with him. (In prior visits to other locations he’s created videos of his trips which were then incorporated into his video casts to the company, typically funny little pastiches of various characters from the company and his encounters with them.)

I happened to be coming out of a meeting when out of the elevator steps the COO with his entourage, camera rolling. I tried to slip around him unnoticed, as surely the last thing I wanted was an encounter with the COO of the company … while being videotaped. I found my way to my cube and believed that I’d avoided disaster. But of course my cube is right next to the heavy foot traffic patterns, and here he comes, turning the corner to face me in my cube, camera pointed at me as he begins commenting on what he sees. I smile as my mind races. What am I to do? There’s some very brief chatter, perhaps an exchange of some words between us, none of which I remember now. Then he comments that I look like the type of person who says nothing but intelligent things. Frantically my mind searches for something witty to say, something that could both live up to that expectation and yet deflect attention from me so that he moves on. Of course these two are antithetical to each other. Anyway, it doesn’t matter because I can think of neither. What I manage to say is, “I don’t respond well to such pressure.” At this he says something like, “Well, ok, let’s move on,” and he turns his camera to the women in the cube across from me and begins to question her about her shrine to the Red Sox. That man’s no fool. Well, I’ve since thought of several ways in which the whole episode might have come out better for me. Yesterday his video web cast was sent to the company, and I was not in it. But there was the lady across the way, and her Red Sox memorabilia.

Following are some random thoughts collected over the last couple of weeks.

I haven’t been motivated to write anything for quite a while. But I thought recently that I’d just begin writing some lists, since I’ve always enjoyed listing things. It’s a way to clear the mind, of ridding the mind of clutter, instead of mining the mind, which is painful. (My mother always used the phrase “ridding up” to mean cleaning up, as in ridding one’s room. I thought it was no worse than Ann’s “neatening up,” which I was certain was not a real word until I checked a dictionary and indeed found it.)

Anyway, here’s a list of things I do nearly every day—things of no particular significance.

• I remove from the refrigerator my lunch parts and assemble them into a little brown paper bag tower—everyday the same things.
  
• I avoid pigeon shit as I step down the top flights of the parking garage, and I avoid conversation in the elevator up to my office floor. Please don’t make me talk in the morning.
  
• Upon reaching my cube, I immediately turn on my computer and wait until it boots to a login prompt. I log in and take my lunch and my coffee cup to the kitchen, placing the lunch in the refrigerator, cleaning out my coffee mug, and filling it with strong coffee. We have one pot of regular, one pot of “strong,” and one pot of decaf. I often have to make a pot of strong. For me, strong means using two packets of coffee; others often use one and a part of another. This parceling of packets is irritating to me. The partial packet will often be sitting beside the coffee machine for the next person to make strong coffee. Usually I ignore the open packet and use two full packets. Why must I adopt their nervous parsing of such insignificant differences, the uptight twits. If they’ve already broached the divide between regular coffee drinkers and the greedy others who need more, then why bother to acknowledge the difference between 1.6 and 2 packets? Just throw the damned coffee in there and stop this nonsense of partial packets.
  
• When I arrive at the gym after work and find a locker, I mentally review a list of items I’ll need to pull from my gym bag before putting the bag in the locker. The items rarely change, but about half the time I forget something and have to reopen the locker door.
  
• When I arrive home from the gym, I pull from the gym bag my work shoes, my wet gym shirt stuffed in a corner and out of the way of other things, my work clothes folded on top, my leather work belt coiled inside my thick rawhide weight-lifting belt, and my work socks placed haphazardly anywhere inside. About a third of the time I forget my work socks. From my work bag, which hangs from my shoulder and carries my lunch and other junk papers I never seem to throw out, I pull my paper lunch bag, the spoon I’ve used that day, and the bowl which in the morning contained my rice and tuna mix. I place the bowl in the sink to soak, its inside crusted with the day’s food and the smell of day-old tuna.
  
• I’ve grown tired of this.
  

For the last several days I’ve been listening to nothing but Cherubini’s Requiem, over and over again. I particularly like its quiet, solemn ending, but the entire piece is a gem. I wonder why it’s not performed more often, given that it’s relatively short and requires no soloists. Instead, chorus’ around the country continue to force feed their audiences the Mozart and, for Christ’s sake, the Rutter requiems, ad nauseam.

A list of Latin phrases or words I like:

• Above all, mutatis mutandis. I have never found an occasion to use in which I don’t seem incredibly pretentious, but I like it.
• Sine qua non. Not as pretentious to use.
• None others come immediately to mind

I’ve been noticing that of the topics that I’m drawn to write about, the gym comes up much more than it warrants. I can go through long periods of eventful topics—including getting married, changing jobs, taking up new hobbies, etc.—but I never write about them. However, I do often write about the quirks of gym people. (I’ve been reading a biography of Samuel Beckett recently, and in it the biographer notes that James Joyce believed that poetry should be personal and particular—that is, written about what you know, and about the details of one’s life, not about big ideas. I absolutely agree.) Yesterday, a rather large young man was working out near me, a man in his mid-20s, with long straggly brown hair, a square jaw, and extra pounds around his belly. I hadn’t seen him before. He had the look of a football player, truly a rugged type, big, athletic, unquestionably strong, with a beefiness that I’m never really attracted to. But he did have a narrow ass for his big frame, tucked tightly into nylon shorts. He was doing push-ups, his feet elevated on a bench, which I suppose adds difficulty to the exercise. I haven’t done push-ups since I was a kid, and my impression is that no one who knows anything about body building would waste his time doing push-ups. So, I thought, he must be one of those who comes to the gym once every month or so, for an hour. I’d already dismissed him as not a serious gymer. Still, his physique suggested otherwise. Anyway, at some point he asked me to place a 25lb plate on his back while he did push-ups. Of course I would, I said, and of course I did. He got into position, hands on the floor, legs outstretched. And I laid the plate delicately onto his back and stood over him. In an odd way it was sort of sexy. Maybe it was just being that close. And so he began to lower himself, his hands splayed out on the floor from the weight of the plate, and then to push up, again and again, up and down, and I watched that the weight didn’t fall. But mostly I was watching his ass held tight to his nylon shorts, thinking to myself how very nice it was, this beefy guy’s ass, which I wouldn’t have given a second look at had I seen him passing on the street. And I wondered afterward, if I had been free to pull down his shorts and look (or lick) at his ass, would it have been a nasty white jiggly mound of tofu, or the deliciously hairy and muscular ass of an athlete that I had imagined. Maybe I’ll see him in the shower one day. Either way, it’s surprising to me that my tastes extend to larger, more manly (and older) men with fuller bodies. A good thing, I think.

Speaking of beefier men, just last night I walked into the locker room, placed my bag on the bench and looked around quickly to survey the room, not to look for pleasant scenery, but just to get my bearings as I would when entering any room. And there, turning the corner to enter the public shower, was another man, perhaps 30 years old, with golden, Mediterranean skin and dark hair, and a wonderfully rounded ass, hairy and full like the other man I had helped earlier in the week. This man had a full beard, which you don’t see much these days. I didn’t mind it, once provided with a visual of his butt. All things can be overlooked with such an image. I got dressed for my workout and necessarily passed by the shower room again on my way out, hoping to get another glimpse. And I did—a quick, fleeting glance. It seemed , though I wouldn’t swear to it, that he had the start of an erection. A shrunken dick (as one might expect after a strenuous workout) that was just popping outward a bit as if he’d just begun to get aroused. At least that was my fantasy reading of the scene. Probably it was nothing. But it reminded me of another image that’s remained with me for years now. I was in a bathhouse in Toronto once a few years ago, and had just entered the public shower area where there were perhaps 6 or 8 shower heads lined up. Standing about half way down, all alone and with his hands on his head shampooing his long dark head of hair, was a man in his early 30s, about 6 feet tall, very fit, hairy with a tanned complexion. No reason for this to stick in my mind except that he stood there with a full and impressive erection. The visual was stunning--mostly because there was no one else around, and he wasn’t touching himself. There was no stimulate for his arousal except his own fantasies, which, my god, was sexy. He was probably turned on by being naked in public, where other men could watch and examine him. I looked discretely, and showered beside him as if nothing was unusual. And frankly, in the bathhouse, this was not so notable. In that setting little is out of bounds and nothing is unexpected… well, except that I was surprised just then. The sexually explicit is not surprising there, but the sexy still often is.

I really dislike all those people who bring their toothbrushes to work and brush dutifully in the restroom after lunch, their little plastic toothbrush holders and tubes of toothpaste, and sometimes even a little toiletry bag, lying on the sink beside them. Can’t we keep our personal hygiene habits confined to the home? Why is this so necessary? Neither do I want to see people clipping their nails in the gym locker room, or even shaving. You can apply deoderant and comb your hair. That's all. At the office, you may wash your hands, look in the mirror and adjust your hair... with your fingers. No combs or brushes. These rules apply only to men. I don't know what you ladies do in there, and I don't need to know.

Earlier this week I had an eye exam. The receptionist, optician and optometrist are all women, each very pleasant and friendly. The same is true of my dentist’s office, but for some reason I always find the eye exam somewhat erotic, or not exactly erotic, but serenely pleasing in the way a non-sexual massage can be. I often have the same sort of sensation in the office, or in other settings where hushed voices are talking in controlled tones and volumes. There’s something about subdued voices talking that can make my hairs stand on end, which is a sensation I love. In fact, often in the afternoon, when I’m bored with my work or in need of a diversion, I’ll hone in on a quiet conversation among the cubes, or on a telephone call across the way, and let the voices wash over me without listening to the content. I can almost invoke on demand this odd primordial pleasure, like goose pimples without the accompanying chill. Anyway, my eye exam was much like this. The doctor or optician would talk to me in the darkened office with calming tones about medical tests and issues of the eye, while introducing bright green and white lights into my eyes, or positioning my head this way and then that, or lifting my eye lids and placing droplets into my eyes, blurring my vision and caused the external world to recede further from me, or me to inwardly withdraw into a silky, solipsistic cocoon. It was well worth the co-pay price of admission.

On a totally different subject, I was thinking recently about the phenomenon we’ve all experienced. We hear some music that we haven’t heard in a while, and it suddenly evokes a vivid memory or sensation from the past. That’s occurred to me a couple of times recently, songs that brought back powerful memories of my childhood. I don’t have many memories of my early childhood, which makes it all that more remarkable when this happens to me. They were good feelings, though. They made me think, my god, I was alive back then, but yet it was another life. At the time, I meant to make a note of the song and of the memory, but I’ve forgotten them. I suppose it’s just as well. Otherwise the association in my mind of the memory and of the song might be muddled, and it wouldn’t happen again. I was reminded of these recent episodes when I was poking around my computer at work looking for something different to listen to. (I have a bunch of music files on the hard drive.) I found David Diamond’s balcony scene from his music for Romeo and Juliet, which I’ve written about before. Such gorgeous, satisfying music. For me, this music will always be saturated with memories of Ann and me during Thanksgiving, as I worked on a piece of glass, and of our wedding last year. Tendor feelings that one only feels for one's lover and life-time partner, memories that run deep to what it means to share a life with someone. I had really wanted to work the music into our wedding, since the other music was American, and since I was wearing Diamond’s suit! But it didn’t work out. No one would have really heard it anyway, as it turned out. Nor would they have felt what I feel when I hear it. Ann wouldn't either, for that matter, so it's a private thing between me and the music.

Note to self: Things to write about, maybe for next time.

• One small change I’ve noticed about my life with an SO (now wife).
• How difficult it seemed to get laid when I really wanted gay sex back in the day. The yearning. I hadn’t a clue.
• My first gay sex. Not THAT notable, but it’s worth a paragraph or two.

I recently read the same book as Ann just wrote about—Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. I really liked it on many levels. It was exquisitely written, with poetic prose that did not get in the way of the story. That’s a very rare thing. While reading it, I was always engaged in the story, yet the language was beautiful throughout. I also really liked that the story was bare. The characters bounced from incident to incident, without subplots and without a host of minor characters or a sense of carefully crafted development. There was no sense of inevitability about it. It felt like anything might happen to the characters, and that the novel would have been equally good no matter the particular events that unfolded. It was how the characters lived in the world McCarthy created for them, rather than the events themselves.

This novel was, to my reading anyway, a well executed thought experiment in the way my philosophy professors used to talk of such things. Imagine the world gone hopelessly wrong—a world where life truly is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” Now consider what your view of life would be. What gives life its value for us? This is what the novel was about. And I agree with McCarthy’s conclusion. I suppose we all would agree with him in the abstract, but minds change when reality hits.

The world McCarthy creates evoked for me at some points the same sort of feeling I had when watching the recent movie “28 Weeks Later”—a momentary but powerful sense that I wouldn’t want to be alive if I had to live in such conditions. In both the movie and the novel, life for the characters has been reduced to bare survival. All of life’s joys, pleasures, and goodness are gone. McCarthy’s novel seems to argue that life stripped of goodness is not worth living -- that we can loose much and still find purpose in living, but that there are limits beyond which life isn’t worth it. I certainly agree. There’s a kernel of insight here that I feel the need to tease out and to clearly articulate, but I think it’s probably just bullshit on my part—always trying to reduce everything to philosophical principles. But still … hehe … still, I feel like often there’s a dichotomy of beliefs or values out there—those people who feel that there’s something about life that is sacred and of inherent worth. I don’t believe that. And then there are those who think life’s value lies somehow in how it is lived. If you loose all of the things that make life good—human dignity, the joys of everyday existence in the world, whatever—then there’s no particular value in life. And it’s not worth living. I myself don’t feel like I must live at all costs. There’s nothing special about my life. And I like how McCarthy’s book challenges us to think about how we’d react to a fundamental disintegration of our lives. For me, I think it comes down to the fact that I simply don’t have a tenacious spirit in the face of severe adversity. If I can’t have my sunny Saturday mornings looking out at the garden with a cup of strong coffee in hand, I don’t want to go on!

As an aside, Ann had a few quibbles with the book. I don’t share those. She makes a very good point that the narrative slide by unnoticed. She’s absolutely right, and it’s part of what makes the book so compelling. My only quibble is that in a few spots it seemed like the narrative poked through—a jarring first-person “I” when the reader doesn’t expect it. It seems like McCarthy should fix those few occurrences (listen to me giving McCarthy advice!), and he’d have a near perfect novel.

First a few old things I never posted:

Toward the end of Sartre's novel "The age of reason" there's an exchange between Mathieu, the protagonist, and Daniel, the unlikeable gay. Mathieu has gotten his mistress or part-time lover, Marcelle, pregnant, but after failing to secure the money for her abortion, he refuses to marry her. Daniel steps in and promises to marry Marcelle himself. “Homosexuals have always made excellent husbands—that’s well know,” says the homosexual.

Then later, Mathieu says, “Look here, what you are is none of my business. Even now that you’ve told me about it. But there is one thing I should like to ask you: why are you ashamed?”

Daniel, the homosexual, responds, “ I am ashamed of being a homosexual because I am a homosexual. I know what you’re going to say: ‘If I were in your place, I wouldn’t stand any nonsense. I would claim my place in the sun, it’s a taste like any other,’ and so forth and so on. But that is all entirely off the mark. You say that kind of thing precisely because you are not a homosexual. All inverts are ashamed of being so, it’s part of their make-up.”

“But wouldn’t it be better--to accept the fact?”

Daniel replies, “You can say that to me, when you have accepted the fact that you’ve a swine. No. Homosexuals who boast of it or proclaim it or merely acquiesce—are dead men. Their very sense of shame has killed them. I don’t want to die that sort of death.”

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Much of the time my mind feels like it’s deteriorating. Maybe it’s just my imagination. But I can’t seem to focus or follow complex material. I constantly forget what I’m doing or where I was. And it’s not just at work. As I work on my house, I’m always having to retrace my steps. Why did I drop what I was just doing and set out for the stairs? What did I need and what was I going to do? This doesn’t happen after I’m half way down the stairs. It’ll happen just as I’m dropping my hammer to rise to my feet before approaching the stairs. It’s as if I’m slowly leaving my life of interweaved memory for a new life of countless unconnected moments. Will Ann be driving me to the park ten years from now, to walk the dog in silence, dementia having finally overtaken me. The prospect makes me sad for Ann, but I’m oddly ok with losing my wits. It seems like a painless way to fade from the world. I don’t feel a driving need to keep up with others--those sharp, young whipper snappers who can complete entire tasks and then later recount it to friends. Cohesive mental function is overrated. Of course the real sign that I’ve lost my mental facilities is that Ann and I are walking a dog in the park. So far I’m still able to recall from day to day that I do not want a dog to care for.

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Our neighbors have hung a single string of white lights around the top of their otherwise unattractive enclosed porch. These sorts of all-season lights give me a warm and fuzzy feeling, sending me back to childhood days vacationing at campgrounds, or at my family’s musty cottage along the Allegheny River. These lights, or strings of similar lights covered by cheap plastic globes, would often decorate the dingy pop-up campers parked at summer camp sites, lending the sites a sense of enviable permanence to those of us vacationing just for the week. How were they so lucky to be on vacation all summer at this get-away spot? Often when I looked at these seasonal sites, with their strings of lights, wooden decks, and lawn ornaments, and the deflated camper tires, I wondered if perhaps they weren’t going anywhere at the end of the summer season. That prospect, even for a kid of 10 or 11, was not so enviable. At our river site getaway, the cottage was actually owned by my great grandmother. We kids would only be allowed to enter on Sunday mornings at her invitation, to sample the greasy bacon she had just fried. It’s funny to think now how that spot had any appeal for the adults. There were little cottages all along the river, and probably still are. It seems so depressing now. I remember going there a lot as a child. My aunt and uncle had a place further away from the river, almost a second home, with an in-ground pool, which seemed to me soooo very special, something one could only dream of. Sometimes my siblings and I would be asked if we wanted to swim. Or course we did. I can remember going in the pool in my underwear on at least one occasion, having arrived unprepared. What was my mother thinking, arriving without swimming suits? Once the field between the river bank and my uncle’s second home was plowed shallowly in preparation for some construction. Much of that day I spent combing through the dirt looking for arrow heads and other relics. We found many things, those of us kids who were excited by the buried past. I remember finding a couple of fine arrow heads and keeping them among my other treasures through much of my youth.

I see the plain strings of white lights now at the gay campgrounds I sometimes go to. The bears will string lights around their big-ass RVs and elaborately decorate their semi-permanent camp sites with lights, lawn ornaments and figurines. I've seen yellow brick roads, pink pelicans, disney characters, and leprechan forests. The gays are a fun bunch. By day they decorate their lawns with unpretentious whimsy, and by night you're find them pounding ass in the open fields, heads bobbing and voices groaning, as if just another pair of animated figurines in the larger spectacle of a fanciful dream world. I half expect strawberry shortcake herself to emerge from the misty fog, or perhaps some pastel unicorns with curly manes.

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Sometimes during lunch I walk down to the atrium of the B&L building and sit there for a few minutes, just to get away from the tedium of my desk. Often I feel like I want to lie down at the bottom of the indoor water pool and fountain , face up, looking through the still water, my arms folded on my chest as if lying in my own tomb, the silence of the water’s depth protecting me from life’s dull daily concerns. Wake me when something interesting happens.

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Once in a while at the gym, when I’m feeling uncharitable or am simply in a bad mood, I’ll survey the crowd of assembled people, in my head sorting through those that I recognize and those I don’t. I imagine approaching those unfamiliar souls and telling them simply, “I’ve never seen you here before. Get the hell out of here.” Hahah There is a sort of comradery among the faithful. Yesterday, as I was walking through the parking lot to the gym entrance, one of the most faithful blurted out to me, “New Years resolutions.” I didn’t know what he meant, so I said, “What about them?” He turned his head and waved his arm in the direction of the parking lot and said, “The parking lot’s full of people who’ve made New Year’s resolutions,” meaning he couldn’t find a parking spot nearby. I responded, “I know. Well, in a few weeks it’ll begin to die down.” He agreed. “True. It happens every year.” And so it does. To all of you slackers who show up for a few weeks after the holiday season and in the late spring … the rest of us at the gym secretly have the utmost contempt for you.

A few days ago I wanted to do my leg workout, but a new couple had taken over both squat racks with a marathon session consisting of every conceivable permutation of exercises involving legs and back. Special pulleys were used, as well as ropes attached to bars and other apparatus. I’ve never seen them before, nor since (and I hope I never do). But clearly they were determined to do in a single day what others can only do in months. On this singular day they were walking in as red-faced marshmallows but would walk out as tightly bound and shellacked fitness gods. The fools.