The good news is that
she wants to eat. The bad news is that she wakes me up to see what I will do
about it. Cooder has moved on from Greenies obsession and is mostly enjoying
roast turkey. I am glad there is something that pleases her. I do wish it
wouldn’t cause 6:00 a.m. cravings the way that it does. That early morning deep sleep can be some of the sweetest.
Monday, not manic.
The workers are still laying pavers and what not next door. The rhythmic ring echoes down the street. We have another week of this. The trains are hauling and braying in the distance. The sun is not knifing through the opening as it usually does here.
I usually have Netflix or something going by this time, 8:11 a.m., as I do my morning job. I thought to have some quiet and do some writing, but the concrete saw going next door is not particularly conducive to matutinal musing. (I would have though it was matuDinal with that 'd' instead of a 't'.)
Yesterday, I headed to my old stomping grounds, Beachwood Canyon (which is beneath the Hollywood sign) to visit my friend, MN. She had lost her two kitties within the last year or so and wanted to go replacement cat acquiring. There's an excellent adoption cattery/kennel out in the San Fernando Valley, a no kill shelter where they actually go around Los Angeles county and rescue animals on the euthanasia list. We didn't end up with any cats, but we had a nice time looking at them and had a fun lunch at The Bear Pit: Missouri BBQ.
Missouri is not one of the "barbecue states" to the best of my knowledge. That's nearly like saying "Minnesota barbecue" or "New Hampshire barbecue." And the turkey sandwich was excellent.
As I have mentioned, I always like to have something with me to read in case of emergency. I picked up a novel that has probably been kicking around my house for 20 years, Shirley Hazzard's The Bay of Noon. This is off of my current reading list, but the first page had something to grab me:
When I was a child I used to be filled with envy when adults recalled events of twelve or fifteen years before. I would think it must be marvellous, to issue those proclamations of experience — "It was at least ten years ago" or "I hadn't seen him for twenty years." But chronological prestige is tenacious: once attained, it can't be shed; it increases moment by moment, day by day, pressing its honours on you until you are lavishly, overly endowed with them. Until you literally sink under them.
A centenarian has told me that memory protects one from this burden of experience. Whole segments of time dropped out, she said: Of five or six years, say around the turn of the century, all I can remember is the dress that someone wore or the color of a curtain." And I would be pleased, rather than otherwise, at the prospect of remembering Naples in similar terms — a lilac dress Gioconda wore one morning driving to Caserta, or the Siena-colored curtains of an apartment in San Biagio dei Libra. But memory, at an interval of only fifteen years, is less economical and less poetic, still clouded with effects and what seemed to be their causes. The search is still under way in unlikely places — too assiduous, too attenuated; too far from home.
Wednesday night.
I am also making my way through Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel. I think I came across it on some Flavorwire list or something, and also two or three people I know mentioned it warmly on Goodreads and there it was at the library. I would recommend it, although the New York Times Review did make some salient negative remarks. However, she is a good writer and it is more or less easy for me to overlook those negatives.
She was thinking about the way she'd always taken for granted that the world had certain people in it, either central to her days or unseen and infrequently thought of. How without any one of these people the world a is subtly but unmistakably altered place, the dial turned just one or two degrees.
Hell, yes! Disturbances in the field. Holes in the fabric of being and consciousness. Life stretched thinner, less resilience, less bounce, less give.
Monday, not manic.
The workers are still laying pavers and what not next door. The rhythmic ring echoes down the street. We have another week of this. The trains are hauling and braying in the distance. The sun is not knifing through the opening as it usually does here.
I usually have Netflix or something going by this time, 8:11 a.m., as I do my morning job. I thought to have some quiet and do some writing, but the concrete saw going next door is not particularly conducive to matutinal musing. (I would have though it was matuDinal with that 'd' instead of a 't'.)
Yesterday, I headed to my old stomping grounds, Beachwood Canyon (which is beneath the Hollywood sign) to visit my friend, MN. She had lost her two kitties within the last year or so and wanted to go replacement cat acquiring. There's an excellent adoption cattery/kennel out in the San Fernando Valley, a no kill shelter where they actually go around Los Angeles county and rescue animals on the euthanasia list. We didn't end up with any cats, but we had a nice time looking at them and had a fun lunch at The Bear Pit: Missouri BBQ.
Missouri is not one of the "barbecue states" to the best of my knowledge. That's nearly like saying "Minnesota barbecue" or "New Hampshire barbecue." And the turkey sandwich was excellent.
 |
| The street where she lives. #1 |
As I have mentioned, I always like to have something with me to read in case of emergency. I picked up a novel that has probably been kicking around my house for 20 years, Shirley Hazzard's The Bay of Noon. This is off of my current reading list, but the first page had something to grab me:
When I was a child I used to be filled with envy when adults recalled events of twelve or fifteen years before. I would think it must be marvellous, to issue those proclamations of experience — "It was at least ten years ago" or "I hadn't seen him for twenty years." But chronological prestige is tenacious: once attained, it can't be shed; it increases moment by moment, day by day, pressing its honours on you until you are lavishly, overly endowed with them. Until you literally sink under them.
A centenarian has told me that memory protects one from this burden of experience. Whole segments of time dropped out, she said: Of five or six years, say around the turn of the century, all I can remember is the dress that someone wore or the color of a curtain." And I would be pleased, rather than otherwise, at the prospect of remembering Naples in similar terms — a lilac dress Gioconda wore one morning driving to Caserta, or the Siena-colored curtains of an apartment in San Biagio dei Libra. But memory, at an interval of only fifteen years, is less economical and less poetic, still clouded with effects and what seemed to be their causes. The search is still under way in unlikely places — too assiduous, too attenuated; too far from home.
 |
| The street where she lives. #2 |
Wednesday night.
I am also making my way through Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel. I think I came across it on some Flavorwire list or something, and also two or three people I know mentioned it warmly on Goodreads and there it was at the library. I would recommend it, although the New York Times Review did make some salient negative remarks. However, she is a good writer and it is more or less easy for me to overlook those negatives.
She was thinking about the way she'd always taken for granted that the world had certain people in it, either central to her days or unseen and infrequently thought of. How without any one of these people the world a is subtly but unmistakably altered place, the dial turned just one or two degrees.
Hell, yes! Disturbances in the field. Holes in the fabric of being and consciousness. Life stretched thinner, less resilience, less bounce, less give.
 |
| The street where she lives. #3 |
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