Finished readingAtonement by Ian McEwan. The first third or so of the novel is an extended Virginia Woolf-like passage on an afternoon in an English country house in 1935. I thought the homage was nearly too obvious until (don't read if you don't want to be spoiled) the final reveal that the entire novel is a novel by one of the characters. My mind was set to read critically, but one passage near the end struck me.
...how can a novelist achieve atonement when, with her absolute power of deciding outcomes, she is also God?... In her imagination she has set the limits and the terms. No atonement for God, or novelists, even if they are atheists. It was always an impossible task, and that was precisely the point. The attempt was all.
My only quibble is that one passage in the beginning of the novel describes the matron of the house having a heightened sense to hear the family and servants about the house as she rested to avoid a migraine. Later in the passage the matron complains that the same house is too quiet and that she can not hear the servants. So which is it?
I woke up in a familiar bed in a strange room. Senses rushed in--I remembered that my parents had converted my former bedroom in an office and moved my bed into my sister's former room. Next thought was (crap) it's Christmas. Months of planning and waiting come down to one day. Every gift for someone feels somehow wrong. Then after all the presents are opened that post-anticipation melancholy floods in. Some combat this with eggnog. "Jingle Bells" and "Frosty The Snowman" can only hold up cheer for so long. Songs like "Christmas Time Is Here" from Vince Guaraldi's A Charlie Brown Christmas album acknowledge the accompanying blues of the season.
As I waited for my mother to finish in the bathroom, she began to cry. "It's 8.30, it's 8.30," she muttered over and over to herself. My father and I asked what was wrong and she repeated that again. We asked if she was upset that we would be late to my sister's for breakfast... if she was mad I wasn't in the shower yet. She began to blow-dry her hair and repeat that neither my father nor I get it. Get what? What don't we get? This is a good lesson in relationships. One can not complain that the partner doesn't get them if one does not let oneself be gotten, so to speak. Apparently, we were meant to remember that my mother's parents would arrive at 8.30 on Christmas morning, before my grandmother passed away and my grandfather married my mother's good friend. I always thought they had arrived later in the morning.
Plenty of gifts were under the tree at my sister's house despite all our efforts to scale presents back this year. My father's company closed, my sister and her husband had bought their new house, and I will always be broke. My Christmas tactic is to open gifts until one is a book to read then I can happily sit in the corner. Last year I read about the road to financial freedom. This year I flipped between a law school survival guide, stories of past slayers, and the toddler guide again.
HappyWill, my three year old nephew, was the focus of the day. He wiggled around in his reindeer pajamas in excitement the night before and nicely opened each gift. Until his other grandmother arrived and started shoving cheap wooden IKEA toys at him. He's a good kid and bought for me Shoot Out The Lights. I spent most of dinner wondering if the spot on the sleeve of my new shirt would come out.
Sneakers the cat spat at me to wish me a merry holiday. Then he slapped me with his little white paw though I think that was out of pure spite.
Outside the bedroom window, over a door in my neighbor's backyard, is an aluminum awning. The rain hits it with a rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat, though not as rhythmically as that. Rain was pouring from the sky in the morning. And it could have been snow if the temperature were just a bit cooler. Christmas eve tradition is having some parents' family friends over, opening the gifts to and from them, eating dinner, and attending the Christmas eve service at the church (the good one where everyone holds candles). My mother thought that my arrival to her house would be immediate--she forgot that taking the train the forty-odd miles can take as long as three hours from door to door. So when she called at noon to ask if I were nearly to her house and I told her that I hadn't left yet, she was none too pleased. Later I learned that she called all her friends and my sister in tears to tell them of her rotten son. My horridness must have missed Santa's deadline since I received no coal for Christmas.
Waiting for my train in Hoboken, I popped into the station liquor store. The cashier was giving all her favorite businessman boozers hugs. Shopped for wine via price for brother-in-law mother. Ah, $9.80 is perfect vintage and it has notes of plum and spice. Brother-in-law mother gave me card with crisp $10 bill in it so that's a perfect exchange. The cashier asked if I wanted a cup to drink my wine on the train. No, no, I still prefer a jolt of caffeine to a boozy languor of alcohol.
I was instructed to go directly to my sister's house to occupy my nephew before any people arrived. When I was changing his diaper and clothes, he asked for powder. I obliged. He asked for more powder. Again, I obliged. He asked for more. So I made the powder fall down on him like snow. My sister walked into the room to find powder on the curtains, on the floor, and, fortunately, mostly on the kid.
Gift were exchanged though most of it seemed to be my mother and her friend giving each other things they had picked up on their trip to England together back in September. "Remember the rain and not finding a place to eat on Regents Street?" "I bought this in Yorkshire when you said you liked it and..." We didn't go to the church service. I flipped through book on what to expect of the toddler years; most of the book was focused on toilet-training.
I spent the night at my parents' house. Time changes there--everything is moved up by about one hour or more. I usually go to bed at midnight; there, I'm exhausted by 11 pm. I usually wake up around 7 in the morning; there, radiators are hissing, televisions are blaring and people are stomping around by 6. Began to read my father's copy of Atonement though hope to read it as quickly as possible since the other twonovels of his that I read weren't quite worth the time.
Last year on Christmas Eve, I gave up, wanted to stay home, laid on the bed when it was time to leave and just didn't want to do it, any of it. There was not a repeat of that this year.
The biggest problem I had with Panther was an issue with transferring messages between mailboxes in Mail.app. The most frustrating part was that I couldn't find any official word from Apple if this was a bug or just me going crazy. This time it wasn't me though: Mac OS X 10.3: Mail - "The destination mailbox does not exist" Message.
Now that my father's car was safely returned to the suburbs of New Jersey, I decided to take a wander around Manhattan. This is actually a rare occurrence--idly walking down the city blocks is usually not the first thing on my post-work agenda when I'd rather flee to the apartment. Weekend wandering doesn't count either because Saturdays and Sundays do not really begin until noon. Those are more like pointed excursionism. I took the PATH train to the newly reopened World Trade Center station. The train snakes around the tower footprint and construction site before stopping at the station. I tried to recall if the staircase and escalators are in the same spots as before. As far as I can tell, yes, they are, but the little landmarks are gone. The saddest bar in the world on the station concourse level that no sunlight ever found, where down-on-their-luck stock market traders listened to Patsy Cline and sipped scotch on the rocks, is now simply a temporary wall. On the other hand, the Hudson News seems to have taken up residence quickly. Perhaps they had squatter's rights. The only survivors of the nuclear holocaust will be cockroaches, a Duane Reade pharmacy, and a Hudson News.
The antsy Wall Street secretaries on their lunch breaks and I waited in the long line at J&R. I used up a credit that's been sitting around for two years after an attempt to purchase smaller speakers and bought Lord of the Rings: Return of the King for the GameCube. The game is kind of violent but violence is fine as long as the enemies are demons or robots. Unfortunately, I, as Gandalf, was killed many, many times. Sorry about that, Middle Earth.
Continued up Broadway and past Canal Street for some shopping. Late shoppers had a look of desperation in their eyes. I told the sales woman that I didn't need a box or gift receipt for my new shirt because the gift was for me. That statement was meant to note my expert planning rather than any sad social status. Soho is apparently full of English people. A girl in the Apple store was using one of the display computers to rip her compact discs for her iPod. I felt like a rebel for checking my email. Other Music didn't have the CD that Brian wanted; I couldn't remember the name anyway. Finally my legs gave out and I settled down at the Astor Place Starbucks with the laptop to catch up on some email. The lady at the next table was complaining about how stupid it is to leave your fingerprints on your gun.
At home for dinner and Brian and I exchanged gifts. He bought for me: (1) Jack Spade messenger bag, (2) Jonathan Adler vase (and looking through his catalog, I realize the pronunciation should be vAHse not vAYse, and (3) a button down shirt. Mr Adler's design scheme is apparently "waspy chic". I can relate since dirty rocker boy never fit on me. The diet of peanut brittle and caramel popcorn continued; I stayed up too late. Before turning off the light for the night, I read how Andy Warhol would always accept a Quaalude if offered one and then sell the pills back later.
Due to the Jersey City Parking Authority's increased vigilance for checking car registrations when renewing the parking permit on my father's car, my first day of vacation was home-bound to keep an eye on the car and to avoid getting a parking ticket. I could have put the car in a lot for the day but that seems like a waste of ten dollars when I could just as easily move the car in automobile hide and seek with the meter maid. Ten dollars is... a bottle of wine, an album on the iTunes Music Store, the better part of a new shirt on holiday discount...
Fortunately, I had a to-do list for such a contingency. Number one was that closet--the one that collects junk of all sorts and varieties. The major curse of apartment life is the lack of storage space. Things that have no home: old cassettes, nicely framed drawings from the early years of my artistic journey (kindergarten) that my mother keeps giving to me, a bag of buckwheat for Brian to make a pillow, and a bag of old sweaters that I insist will be used to make pillows one day. Sorting the closet led to under the bed sorting with a small detour to the mystery box over the kitchen cabinets. The box has been in the same spot since moving in nearly two years ago. Heidi thought it would be full of biddles; Brian insisted his VHS copy of The Last Days Of Disco would be in it. (I had a fear of mutant water bugs). None of us were correct: the mystery box contained old fanzines, issues of Sassy and Cutie, and a clarinet. Apparently that box had been packed with neither rhyme nor reason. All contents are dispersed to places elsewhere. Brian told me to do something relaxing for my first vacation day, but, honestly, listening to NPR and home organization isn't a bad way to whittle a day away according to me.
In the afternoon I wandered over to Newark Avenue for some shopping. Stood in line at the 99-cent store with a shower curtain while everyone else spoke Spanish and bought cheap plastic things. The man at the vegetable store gave me a calendar for 2004. I don't have the heart to tell him that I'm only patronizing his shop until my regular one reopens on Grove Street. The sign in the window had insisted they would be open for Thanksgiving. Last week the note changed to read that Confucius is wise but confused, continues with China only had one wall to build while the deli has three.
And by "popular demand". matins can now be viewed as an RSS feed via the link below right. If all the Blogger Pro features are supposed to be rolled back into to the regular Blogger features, then why is this one thing still not integreated? Thank you, RSSify. Boo on you, Blogger.
Against my better judgment, I agreed to participate in the office Secret Santa exchange. Glitter pressured me into the thing since she was organizing it. (Note: she has been dressing better since the run-in with with Style Court. The deal to appear on the show fell apart when they asked for pictures of the inside of her closet). Last year Glitter and I fixed the thing so we were able to give gifts to each other. I got a lovely scarf out of the deal though a few coworkers were surprised by the coincidence. This year I pulled an easy name to shop for--what does one buy for a recently divorced man who lives in Tribeca? Bottle of red wine, naturally. The biggest issue was wrapping the thing.
The other week Molly and I were shopping in some store and she showed me some coat hanger-hook thing with two cats on it--one has written "Good cat" and the other, naturally, has "Bad cat". I told her that that item shouldn't be given even to the worst relative, even one with a country-craft fixation. She put the thing back and we agreed never to speak of it again.
Friday afternoon was the office gift exchange. I started rustling through the bag for me and found... the very ugly cat thing.
Me (under breath): Crap
Coworker Bonbon: Don't you love it?
Me: Yes, I love cats!
Bonbon: Everyone said you liked cats.
Me: Yes, I love cats!
Looks like I need to find some relative with a country-craft fixation. On the other hand, I overheard that my gift was not received well. Apparently my giftee suffers from gout and has to avoid red wine. I thought gout never left the 19th century like scurvy and fainting spells. The important lesson reinforced here is that one should not participate in any group gifting activities (aside from this). It ends badly.
Natalie asked recently why "no one else curious about his interest in Napoleon?" Well, as written in my mother's annual holiday letter recap, the world is mine to conquer. Actually, I'm not really sure what she meant by that. My despotism is confined to my apartment only, and the cats don't take to tyranny much.
Let's take a guess at some things that are going to be big in 2004. I predict black currants are going to become very popular in the USA and that Napoleon will become the new style icon. No one will care in a year if either of these are true. The December 03 issue of Boston Magazine predicts that Norah Jones will be big in 2004. That's a safe bet like clouds in the sky.
So most of the compositions on the Deutsche Grammaphon Entree series are obvious and a tad overplayed. On the other hand, the covers for the CD's keep a simple graphic aesthetic that reflects the mood of the music. I would imagine that if any young bon vivants would like to round out their education then this would be the way to start. As for me, my musical history lesson began from two ends and is currently working its way through the 60s. It's not so bad... Elvis' ghost is here while a pale John Lennon seeks counsel to determine what the hell some of the lyrics he wrote while high mean... Koo-koo-cha-koo or something.
Life choices come down either to working in a bad restaurant or receiving an MFA degree, so says Colin Meloy of the Decemberists in an interview. Actually, that is a pretty fair assessment of career choices as far as I can tell. Castaways & Cutouts has been on frequent rotation this past autumn, if only to ponder the line "And what do we do with ten baby shoes, a kit bag full of marbles and a broken billiard cue?"
One college roommate, the son of an opera singer though that was a secret, told me I looked like Leonard Cohen in my peacoat. I thought I looked cold. The summer before last I finally played a record by my face-sake and realized I should have taken the tip from the roommate sooner. Leonard Cohen is also an author of several novels and collections of poetry. In Beautiful Losers, plot is consumed by a man's tortuous visions of his life with his wife and friend and the life of an Iroquois saint. Kerouac's writing can whip up the frenzy of words; Cohen's writing falls into place, each word as a brick, constructing a temple for the horror of living. It's comforting, in a way.
I wanted to smile at dogma, yet ruin my ego against it. I wanted to confront the machines of Broadway. I wanted Fifth Avenue to remember its Indian trails... I wanted to attend cocktail parties wearing a machine gun. I wanted to tell an old girl friend who is appalled at my methods that revolutions do not happen on buffet tables, you can’t pick and choose... I wanted to fight against the Secret Police takeover, but from withinthe Party. I wanted to deal in secret real estate, agent of ageless, anonymous billionaire... I wanted to write a tract against birth control in very simple English, a pamphlet to be sld in the foyer, illustrated with two-color drawings of shooting stars and eternity... I wanted to be a junkie priest who makes a record for Folkways.
Any erstwhile Shangri-Las should note the following.
The Leader of the Pack lies mangled under his Honda in a wreck of job prospects... Oh, my poor top ten, longing to perish in popularity, I have forgotten my radio, so you languish with other zombies in my memory, you whose only honor is hara-kiri with the blunt edge of returned identification bracelets, my weary Top Ten hoping to be forgotten like escaped balloons and kites... I sentence you to National Anthem hard labor, I deny you martyrdom in tomorrow’s Hit Parade...
The Raveonettes and Interpol both get called out for imitating their influences (JAMC and Joy Division, respectively) a little too blatantly in the New York Times Magazine's "Year In Ideas" (Tribute Bands in Denial). Article goes on to state that "allegiance to the faded sounds of yesteryear is the new authenticity". That statement already seems like an empty pronouncement. It goes on that in the past lack of originality hurt the copying band. I always thought that bands that copy a more successful band can more easily ride coattails into fame. If the music industry were to be purged off all bands without an original concept on their record, the charts would be a ghost town with Bjork and Josephine Baker duking it out for the title of supreme queen. Bjork's arsenal contains eggs from her swan dress while Ms. Baker has an outfit constructed from bananas. Who would win?
Woke up this morning with a horrible headache and listened to the rain outside. Getting out of bed was a downright Herculean task (one the easier ones, but still...). The saving grace was the coffeemaker and its amazing timer feature. My alarm usually goes off around 6.50 AM, and the coffee begins to brew at 6.45 AM. This is a good working relationship for us. Initial coffee burst wore off so I headed back to bed to bury my head in the pillow. The headache has now honed in around my left eye. Squinting is the only thing keeping the eye in its socket.
My head seems to ache whenever a stormfront moves over the east coast. If I were an exhibit in a carnival, the barker would yell, "Lookee, lookee, the human barometer! See a man in pain!"
Remnants from the blizzard over the weekend. This was my second favorite blizzard of 2003. The top honor went to the one back in February. I caught up on a Marlene Dietrich film festival that day, cleaned the closet, and listed stuff to sell on eBay. For this November blizzard, I was only able to wrap some auxiliary relative Christmas gifts and bake cookies. The cookie-baking opened up a time vortex and snatched a large part of the day away. Damn those little sugar cookie men and their raisin eyes!
Mark Twain writes as Archangel Lucifer (before the fall obviously), camped out on earth back before things went really downhill for the human race (the flood, etc.), in the title story of Letters From The Earth:
"Life was not a valuable gift, but death was. Life was a fever-dream made up of joys embittered by sorrows, pleasure poisoined by pain; a dream that was a nightmare-confusion of spasmodic and fleeting delights, ecstasies, exultations, happinesses, interspersed with long-drawn miseries, griefs, perils, horrors, disappointments, defeats, humiliations, and despairs—the heaviest curse devisable by divine ingenuity; but death was sweet, death was gentle, death was kind; death healed the bruised spirit and the broken heart, and gave them rest and forgetfulness; death was man’s best friend; when man could endure life no longer, death came and set him free."
Since this site lacks an 'About' page currently, below are the results to a music survey that I was asked to complete. Consider it an introduction.
1. Top 5 Favorite Album Cover Art?
1. New Order "Power, Corruption, And Lies"
2. Belle and Sebastian "3..6..9.. Seconds of Light"
3. The Smiths "The Smiths"
4. Blueboy "If Wishes Were Horses"
5. Saint Etienne "Foxbase Alpha"
2. What albums(s) do you own in more than one format?
Only the albums that were worthwhile enough to bridge the sea change from from cassette to compact disc. In that case, the Go-Betweens, the Smiths, the Jam. Also, my music collection now resides with another so mulit-format doubles abound: Tracey Thorn, Belle and Sebastian, Carole King, etc.
(All the good stuff is on the iPod anyway).
3. Analog or Digital?
I do like the warm sound that vinyl produces but digital music is just more convenient. I saw a portable LP player in some store and dreamed of listening to old albums on a screen porch on hot summer evenings while drinking lime rickeys. None of that has happened yet.
4. Which albums have you eaten?
No idea what that means.
5. What albums of your parents did you borrow or steal?
My parents' stereo broke when I was little so no one played music in the house until I was twelve (which is strange in hindsight since my mother is a musician). But my father made up for lost time with a CD habit greater than my own. I have borrowed from him Sam Phillips' "Fan Dance" and "Martinis & Bikinis", Ute Lemper, Erik Satie...
6. Secret guilty pleasure album?
Buffy The Vampire Slayer "Once More With Feeling" soundtrack
Kylie, Britney, whatnot.
7. Favorite movie soundtrack?
"A Charlie Brown Christmas" Vince Guaraldi
"The Royal Tenenbaums"
"Our Little Corner of the World: Music From Gilmore Girls"
"Drowning By Numbers" Michael Nyman
(yes, two of those are from television shows)
8. Favorite compilation album?
Is this different than the above?
9. What do you drink when you listen to music?
Depending on the locale: diet coke, water, tea, beer, wine. But mostly water.
10. Top 3 on your wishlist
1. The Decemberists "Her Majesty The Decemberists"
2. Jackie DeShannon "The Best of Jackie DeShannon"
3. The Byrds "Sweetheart of the Rodeo"
11. Favorite place to buy music?
Amazon.com because used is good enough for me (most of the time). Other Music in NYC.
12. First concert?
The Spinanes. Or God Is My Co-Pilot. That depends on interpretation of 'first'.
13. Best concert ever?
Nancy Sinatra.
14. Favorite venue?
Something with seating.
15. Farthest you've traveled for a show?
Across the Atlantic.
16. Favorite crooners?
Dusty Springfield, Frank Sinatra, Scott Walker, Patsy Cline.
17. Favorite musical decade?
Ten random years is a stupid way to group music.
18. Favorite label?
Sarah Records.
19. You're the DJ at a small party of close friends. What do you play?
Pet Shop Boys, Sugababes, Saint Etienne "Casino Classics", something with the beat going.
20. What do you listen to when you are getting ready to go out on the town?
NPR (excellent for gaining tidbits of knowledge to fill awkward conversation lulls)
21. Favorite cover song?
Kirsty MacColl singing Billy Bragg's "A New England"
22. One hit wonder?
Who? Me?
24. Favorite box set?
Dusty Springfield "Anthology"
Nick Drake "Fruit Tree"
25. How do you usually discover new music?
Often a band is asked their influences. Often, listening to those influences, you'll find a better band.
26. Best road trip sing-along album?
I was told not to sing in the car by an unhappy occupant.
27. What are your desert island top 5 records
1. Velvet Underground "Velvet Underground with Nico"
2. Tracey Thorn "A Distant Shore"
[...]
Since I don't ever plan to be on a desert island, I really don't think in terms like this.
For the past year or so, I have been noting down interesting phrases or passages from any reading. Here are two from Philip Roth's American Pastoral:
"Yes, alone we are, deeply alone, and always, in store for us, a layer of loneliness even deeper. There is nothing we can do to dispose of that. No, loneliness shouldn’t surprise us, as astonishing to experience as it may be."
"That’s how we know we’re alive: we’re wrong. Maybe the best thing would be to forget being right or wrong about people and just go along for the ride. But if you can do that—well, lucky you."
(However, I must admit I am not feeling nearly as woeful as the quotes might imply).
Of course, I should have guessed that Natalie would want to send Brian and I a set of fez-adorned monkey salt and pepper shakers to thank us for an evening of burlesque (we did not perform).
Yes, cheers! I have a soft spot for animals wearing clothing or with items balanced precariously on their heads. Poor Evie, when sitting on the sofa next to me, is soon given the shelter of a lean-to of remote controls and the cordless phone. Which is fine as far as she is concerned until the phone rings and she jumps....
A package with mysterious contents for Brian and I should arrive at my office this afternoon. The UPS man left a delivery attempt notice on the apartment door on Tuesday and again on Wednesday (package requires a signature). Odd part #1: Friends and family members know to send packages to our offices. Odd part #2: Neither of us know what is in the package nor recall ordering anything via UPS. Odd part #3: The sender is, according to UPS, either one "Archie McPhee" or "accoutrements". The first sounds like the name of a spammer while the second is unpronounceable to UPS phone operators. A little research led us to this novelty store, but that doesn't clear up the mystery at all. Anyone care to take a guess?
