The Confessions of St. Augustine

This was by far the book that took me longest to read in this series so far and also almost as long as any book I can remember.  Walden took me a few months as well, but that was because I loathed Thoreau.  I found a lot to love about St. Augustine, but it was still a long haul.

This morning to Laurie  I likened it to the first time I saw Casablanca.  I think I was about 18 at the time, and I had heard so often what a great film it was, one of the best ever made, by many people whose opinions I trusted on such matters.  I then saw the film and thought, "Huh.  I don't get it.  It was just an average 1940s noirish film, the likes of which I've seen dozens of times."  It was a revisit years later, viewed with the benefit of a modicum of maturity, in which I realized the perfection encapsulated in that film as well as it being the source and inspiration of so much other great material in popular culture.  I realized in reading St. Augustine that I had been reading St. Augustine for years, although through the filter of many other minds, some of which may not have even realized the wellspring of their thought.  He is so ingrained in my religious path and in our culture as to possess the attributes of invisibility and postulation.  Indeed, much like reading Dante and Milton, I came to understand how much of reality has been formed by this man's thinking.  I came to understand through my reading that he served to mold a great deal of Christianity, and this wasn't even City of God.


Before I go any further, I should probably elaborate on what specifically I found.  Augustine came out of the Gnostic religious path called Manichaeism.  Manichaeism was a Gnostic religion and was, in fact, one of the most popular religious paths of the day.  It followed the teachings of the Persian Gnostic Mani.  Augustine reacted very strongly against Manichaeism after his conversion and there is an argument one can make about perhaps going a bit beyond the call of duty with his objections.

I am inclined to agree with Augustine's rejection of the Gnostic sort of "salvation through knowledge, learning, or wisdom."  I might suggest that Augustine's rather severe doctrine of Hell might stem both from coming out of dualism and also a reaction to the "ebb and flow" view of good and evil in Manichaeism.  But, to be honest with my own reaction, I also have to lay my Annihilationist cards on the table.  I would also mention at this point Augustine's admitted heavy influence by the writings of Plato (a heavy influence which I share), with the specific intention of recalling my reaction to Socrates' view of the afterlife and how much it resembles the popular Christian view of Hell (which was, in essence, Augustine's as well.  Yeah, I said it.)
 
I should probably also state that I am not saying that Augustine formed early Christianity in his own image, rather that he monkeyed with the hues a bit.

As for the difficulty with the text itself, I find it difficult to express why it took me four months to read 300 pages (except that I was also reading other things in the meantime including Proust and the Diaries of Andy Warhol.)  Augustine did have a cyclical style of writing, possibly a translation glitch, which ground me down a bit.  I also found myself disagreeing with the man, again more in matters of hues than with specific points.  At the risk of an ad hominem explanation and speaking as one who sets up camp in the grey area of radical grace which often gives off the appearance of antinomianism, Augustine could and did smack a bit of the Pharisaical at times.  He also made a few moves that made me uncomfortable.  I thought his expulsion of his mistress (and mother of his son) was a bit callous.  Still, being faced with such moments gave occasion to check my judgmentalism, so there may have been some profitable humility exercises to be mined from the work.  Although I would hasten to add that it wasn't that I didn't like Augustine as a person.  I liked him quite a bit.  I just suspect that he would have grossly disliked me.

The biographical section was the easier part of the text.  The real challenge came in the last three Books where Augustine mainly talked around and about Creation.  This could also be a bit excruciating to me at times, especially as one who has no problem reconciling contemporary science with his religious path.  For example, Augustine talked about time for what seemed like an eternity, and his pre-Einsteinian, pre-quantum, heck, pre-Newtonian and pre-Copernican view of time and the universe I found to be some of the most challenging wading of the entire project.

Of course, there was a lot to love about Augustine as well.  His early but solid Trinitarian view I found quite lovely and engaging.  I especially loved how his expressions were so steeped in scripture.  He spends a great deal of his work "praying the scriptures" to God.  His example in that regard may have been one of the greatest lessons I gained from reading Augustine.

Would I recommend Augustine?  Do I think Dr. Eliot was correct in including the work in this series?  I would recommend it with a few provisos.  I would not recommend it to a non-Christian, nor would I recommend it to the sort of young zealous types who are captivated by The Law.  I would recommend it as an important work in Christian history.  It was an exceptionally challenging read and clearly one of the most influential works in Christian history, ranking it high as one of the most influential works in human civilization.  I would speculate that this was Dr. Eliot's reasoning.  I, however, was more joyful back when I was basking in William Penn.

Dream Roles, Types, and Drama Lit 101

“A Chinaman of the T'ang Dynasty—and, by which definition, a philosopher—dreamed he was a butterfly, and from that moment he was never quite sure that he was not a butterfly dreaming it was a Chinese philosopher. Envy him; in his two-fold security.”

-Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead



One of the better features of the internet culture is the abreviated, expedited interaction with people one admires but who live in high castles.  When I was growing up, there were these things called fan letters which were wonderful.  You would write your thoughts out on paper and send it by post to the person you admired.  The person would eventually read the note and possible send a response or at least they would sign one that their assistant wrote.  Or have their assistant use the stamp with their signature.  You would hear the stories of famous people corresponding with normals like the gods descending Olympus to mess with the humans. 

I've always felt that it is a good thing to write to people who one admires.  First of all, it's nice to tell people that you admire them and explain why.  You are a better person for being the type of person who takes the time to actually do that.  It is its own reward, but it is also nice to have a response.  On the internet, such interactions are usually far more brief and less substantial, which is why I am still an ardent advocate for the dying art of letter writing. But I will also say that on the internet, in my experience, such interactions are more commonplace than trying to wring a letter from a celebrity.

Still, in the past week I've had two such brushes with people I admire, one of which inspired this blog post with a call for inspiration.  Naturally, I follow fashion icon Michael Kors on Twitter and the other morning he asked what music people were listening to that morning.  I responded "I opened Spotify, typed "Sondheim" into the search bar, put it on random, and am letting it play all morning."  Mr. Kors expressed that he loved that response.

Heartened by approbation from so revered a source, I've been listening to a lot of Sondheim over the past few days.  I adore Sondheim and it always reminds me of my first love: the theater.  I majored in Theater in college with the intention of becoming a playwright.  That didn't happen (or, rather, it may happen while I have another job throughout my life or happen after I'm dead) but the exchange and subsequent music reminded me of dream roles.

I think anyone who has been on stage has probably had roles which they would love to play.  I imagine it has something to do with appreciation for the art and point of view which the character expresses.  I am increasingly aware that I am on the far end of the portion of my life in which I could play The Dane (although there are still arguments to be made from the text for my potential in that role.  I submit to you Gertrude's reaction to Hamlet's early poor performance in the fencing match: "He's fat, and scant of breath."  I know!  Sounds just like me, right?!!?)  In about 20 years, I would love to play both Falstaff and Lear.

But I could talk about the history of theater and my favorite roles for... well, I imagine I could start a whole separate blog on that topic (I should like to ask Emily Post how many blogs are too many for one person.  Perhaps I'll just pop down to the Underworld for a moment and see... Okay.  No more blogs for me.)

So, as brevity is the soul of wit, let's get back to Sondheim, I was never cast in leads.  I was always the slightly dark, slightly mad character who comes in at a point in the show and spices up the narrative, then leaves.  I think I may be too dark for Pseudolus or The Baker but too light for Sweeney Todd or anyone in Assassins.  My body reflects my fondness for the taste of hops too much to ever be cast as Seurat. 

One of my favorite works by Sondheim is one of his less performed.  He wrote a musical based on/rebooting The Frogs by Aristophanes.  In the original, Dionysus descends into Hades to bring back the world's greatest playwright, Euripides, to the world of the living to solve the problems of modern life but, after a battle of wits between two dead playwrights, decides to bring back Aeschylus instead.  In Sondheim's, Dionysus descends into Hades to bring back the world's greatest playwright, Shaw, to the world of the living to solve the problems of modern life but, after a battle of wits between two dead playwrights, decides to bring back Shakespeare instead.  It is a wonderful play and if you've never seen it or heard the music from it before, I advise you to seek it out with all speed.  Someday I would love to play Pluto.  He has a number which is rip-roaring fun even while posing some serious philosophical and theological questions.  How ought we live and why?  What's stopping us?  What is the meaning of life?  What is the meaning of afterlife?:

As a final thought in what's turning out to be a buckshot blog post topically speaking, I am rather chomping at the bit to get through the early Christian writing in the Harvard Classics because next is a volume of ancient Greek drama.

Plays are some of my favorite forms of literature to read.  Much like poetry, they allow the reader to engage in the literary conversation so deeply.  One gets to build the sets, cast the characters, and play all of the parts within one's own mind, free from any budgetary restraints.  More importantly, one also gets to interact with the ideas expressed in the script, imagining ways to interpret, express, and possibly even subvert the material.

As a man whose dream life is that of a playwright and a man who is working toward a lively posthumous career as one, I encourage everyone to read more plays.

True Story

I had an unusual form of disappointment this afternoon.  On my lunch break, I caught a few moments of a local NPR show called Nancy's Bookshelf.  Nancy Wiegman interviews authors who either live in the area (usually having written things like The Conifers of Bidwell Park) or who are passing through (authors who are squeezing in an extra book tour stop between Sacramento and Portland.)

This week's guest was Professor Jonathan Steinberg who has written a 600 page biography of Otto von Bismark.  It is not a subject I would normally have pursued left to my own devices, but the author was passionately informative during the interview and I love furthering my education.  In short, he really sold it, at least as far as I was concerned.  Then came the point in the interview where Nancy asked Professor Steinberg what brought him to Chico and he replied that he was here to do a book signing.  I suddenly became very excited realizing that I had off this evening.  I rushed home to Google the details of the time and place of the book signing, only to find that the interview had been recorded in April.  It was as though the radio said, "Hey, Paul, here's something you really would have enjoyed but missed a long time ago on account of not knowing it was going to happen."

But that's not really what I came here to write about.  I came to write about a thought experiment sparked by a comment from Professor Steinberg on the Genesis of his biography.  He said that he was approached and asked who he would write a biography about had he the opportunity.  He instantly responded "Bismark" who seems to have been a figure of some fascination for him throughout his life.  The difference between me and the professor is that he then went on to be permitted to write a biography which was published by a major publishing house with the expected admirable remuneration for such an effort.

The hypothetical in my mind and kicked around at our dinner table this evening is "How would I respond were I asked that question?"  My initial immediate response was "Glenn Gould" although it strikes me that there are already an awful lot of books available on that subject.  Which lead me to think about biography in general.

My experiences with biography have given occasion to note the vast array of types and styles of biography.  Some are highly academic, some are highly popular (both of which I've found can turn off readers if they oscillate too far in either direction.)  Some raise the subject to heroic, godlike proportions while others are nothing more than character assassinations (again, both of which blah blahdy blah.)  Some offer a unique perspective from the biographer (longtime readers of this blog will remember my review of Detmar Blow's biography of his wife Isabella Blow.)

Some of the more sucessful and engaging focus on a specific attribute.  I recall a wonderful biography of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec which posited the thesis that Lautrec's work was highly political in spite of our modern perception of it being all dancing girls and circuses.  Some other successful biographies I've found focus on a figure involved in a notable historical instance, but who for one reason or another have not been in the forefront enough to have previously thought to merit a whole biography.  I remember being highly moved by a biography of Lord Alfred Douglas.

Another form of biography I enjoy depends on the skill and verisimilitude of the author.  That is to say when a biographer seeks to explore a figure in history about whom we know very little.  I have a whole shelf in the other room devoted to such books about William Shakespeare.  I thought perhaps I would like to write a biography of Socrates.

And there are the great tomes which become widely viewed as "The Authoritative."  One of my favorites is one which perfectly balances the academic with readability.  Michael Schumacher wrote an 800 page stepstool of a biography about poet Allen Ginsberg called Dharma Lion which is among the most enriching experiences I have ever had in reading a biography.  I cannot recommend it highly enough.  The only criticism I could possibly imagine to level against it is that it was written before the subject died and therefore leaves off the inevitable ending to all true stories.

Occasionally, but worthy of making the distinction, there also comes along "The One To Read" which can differ from "The Authoritative" or not.  The obvious example is James Gleick's incomparable biography of Richard Feynman, simply and appropriately titled Genius.  I do make the distinction because there are so many books by, about, and surrounding Feynman that are must reads.  This is the one that you buy a case of and hand out to everyone you know.

As Plutarch wrote, "To be ignorant of the lives of the most celebrated men of antiquity is to continue in a state of childhood all our days."  The impulse to read biography or historical accounts seems to stem from the human urge of seeking wisdom, learning from lessons that others have learned, and an attempt to glean the well-spring of greatness (or, in some cases, the cautionary tales) contained within the life of a world-historical figure.  Therefore, I feel that there is a sort of nobility and, indeed, hope in the popularity of biography.

As a fun diversion, how would you answer that question given the offer to research and pen a biography?

Oh, and by the way, you can listen to the full interview with Professor Steinberg here.

Digging Deeper

I've just had the most remarkable experience which may be difficult to express the enormity in simple words and pictures.  I was driving home from a weekend trip to pick some things up at my place of work.  I work in a neighboring town and I normally commute to it by means of a highway that runs through orchards of some kind (I'm not even sure what they are growing but I do know that almonds are a very common crop in our area.)  Most of my commute looks like this:

And I am usually driving with either the time constraint of clocking in or the time constraint of wanting to get home.  Today, as Laurie was teaching a class, I had no such time constraints and I remembered my friend Matt Raley telling me about the River Road.  While living in that neighboring town, he would often have occasion to drive to the town in which I live, and he told me that he would sometimes take the River Road.  It served no practical purpose and, in fact, added time to the trip, but it boasts a stunning view and takes you right by the Sacramento River.  I was told that it makes a sort of loop from Highway 32 back to Highway 32 after a time.  Which, upon arriving home, I found a map on http://www.chicovelo.org to illustrate:

I had no idea how it worked at the time, but when I saw the sign on 32, I turned.  First of all, it is a country road, which meant that I had the road to myself (even to the point where I could stop and take photographs.)  Second, it would wind around and there would be these startling spots of something simple, lovely, but unexpected coming into view:

Unfortunately, I was unable to take photos at the majestic Sacramento River.  There was also the moment of exhilaration at realizing that I was only half convinced that I would be able to find my way back home and the subsequent delight of reaching familiar landmarks. 

So often in life I find that simple acts of re-examining the ordinary through different perspectives to be some of the most rewarding and joyful acts in life.  Anticipating life continuing in a similar vein for some time, I have the option of taking a different path now and seeing entirely different views.  But even if I choose not to at the end of a long day, now as I drive I shall at least know that that is there.

Bouts-Rimés project poem the third: Christopher

My friend Christopher sent me several eclectic lists of rhymes for my Bouts-Rimés project.  I decided to do something a little different.  Rather than choose one list, I cobbled together a few of the lists to create three sets of four rhymes and a final set of two, which as far as I know is not an established form, but rather feels like one.

What emerged was a set of words which, to me, seemed to paint a span of time and space.  A few languages and one specific dead city suggested themselves.  Initially I thought of a person who had been alive far longer than a human ought to be, but when it came time to put pen to paper (which, believe it or not, I always actually do in the poem writing process.  I don't know why.  It just feels more written to me when I do that.) I found a rare love poem coming out of me, in some repressive, ragamuffin world.

I feel that the end result is one of my stranger efforts, but I found the creative process to be highly satisfying with this one. 

The Reach
by Paul Mathers

She and I were a digraph.
Leaving 'twas my life's great gaffe.
All action since, not much chaff.
Like Tantalus or a giraffe,
I reach back to those days in Edo.
We kept our love so incognito.
Her grandson called me 'abuelito.'
Oh, those scornful looks from Padrecito.
He caused all hospitableness to pickle.
Goaded the gossip's ears to tickle.
This sailor's dollars weren't worth a nickle.
We lived off tossed out pumpernickle.
I fled by night on my tricycle.
Was ever love so farcical?

Podcast Roundup!

Here is yet another look at some of the exciting podcasts I have recently discovered. As usual, all of the podcasts mentioned are available on iTunes:

APM's Dinner Party Download- The Dinner Party Download is the pinnacle of slick, hip, and urban American Public Media.  I, myself, am about as urban as they come.  I recall a recent dinner party where three of the other gentlemen were remarking on the trend of survivalism, which is to say people going into the wilderness with nothing but a mustache cup and a compass, and remarking that I think I would shrivel up and die after two days without my French Press coffee maker.

But I digress.  The Dinner Party Download claims to be a guide for people to "win" their next dinner party.  The format starts with an "icebreaker" (in other words, a joke), small talk (an offbeat or interesting news story from the preceding week which probably did not get the attention of most), cocktails (which takes a "This Date In History" event and applies a drink recipe to it), and a short interview with a famous person or something like that.  It ends with an eclectic song to listen to on the way to or on the way back from the party. 

My only issue with the podcast previously (I understand that it's très gauche to complain about free entertainment, so don't take this too seriously) was the length.  Having a long commute, there is a slight annoyance in listening to a podcast less than 20 minutes.  However, I am given to understand that they intend to expand the podcast to closer to an hour starting with the next installment.  So, this is a great time to jump onboard.


In Our Time with Melvyn Bragg- My recent discovery of this program was like tapping into an ocean.  It has years of backlog and it is an intense experience.  One way I've described it is that it is to Stuff You Should Know what a steak dinner with mashed potatoes and asparagus is to a Payday candy bar (both will give you protein, but one is far more nourishing.)

In essence, Melvyn has assembled a panel of some of the smartest humans on the planet to talk about a subject.  They will talk about anything in the human experience.  They will talk about things like Abelard and Heloise or Sparta or rhetoric or happiness and what function it serves and so forth.  It really is like an autodidact graduate degree.  Along with that, you have to pay VERY close attention to what they are talking about because they do not slow down and the labyrinthine lines of conversation often lead away from the topic.  Bragg has a sort of genius for being able to discern when this has happened and shepherd the talk back to the question at hand. 

I cannot recommend this podcast highly enough.  I will spend a very long time catching up on it, but those who know me probably realize that I like the sensation of being hit by a tidal wave, not knowing where it shall take me. 

The White House audio-  Some may consider this sort of a cheat, but it has recently come to my attention that one of the most prolific podcasters on iTunes is President Obama.  The White House podcasts not only every speech given by the president (which is a daily occurance) but also every cultural event held at the White House (I recently downloaded a whole Blind Boys of Alabama concert from this source.) 

While having mixed feelings about our current president (as I've had for all previous presidents), so often I have found in life that one gets a fuller and more accurate picture of information by going to the source.  We get so much of our news from highly edited, often highly opinionated sources.  I like to hear the man speak for himself.

Also, I find the daily download painting a very different picture of my nation than the one so often presented me.  First of all, a ridiculous amount of the president's job is public speaking.  Second, in the midst of the soundbites about "passing this jobs bill," we miss the president decorating a soldier who showed tremendous courage in the course of duty.  I feel that this skewed focus robs me of some of my awareness of the beauty of America. 

Time simply does not permit me to listen to every speech that Mr. Obama makes, especially with Melvyn Bragg turning my head.  But I find this to be a valuable and informative resource, a glimpse into the inner workings of our government, and, I would add, yet another service of our government available for our use.

A Tour of My Office

Subvestment Investments

We are embarking on yet another project which has been a long time coming.  I am of the school of thought that clothes, largely, make the man in so much as that people believe what they see (including the person wearing the clothes.)  I also feel that a male dressing nicely is a counter-cultural act in this day.  We live in the age of the t-shirt.  I should like to be one vote for a more beautiful world.  I think I reflect that in my interests.  I feel it is high time I attempt to reflect that in my appearance as well.

I've lived for some time now with a scattershot wardrobe.  A good deal of it remains from my college years in which I too was a jeans and t-shirt man.  I have a few articles for more formal occasions as the need has arisen over the past decade.  I have a few articles from my intense working out period in which I needed to buy smaller clothes.  They remain in my closet as a testimony that I do retain some capacity for optimism.

So, a lot of the time I find myself dressed like this:

Which shows a light spirit and isn't quite so Death In Venice as continuing to wear band t-shirts into my mid-30s.  But, as I've said before, Jeeves is my spirit animal and I know what my inner Jeeves thinks when I dress in this manner. 

Ideally, I would like to wear a suit at any time in which I am not in pajamas with possibly a few articles for gardening or hiking.  I would like to unleash my inner dandy.  But how does one get from Comic Con to the Literary Establishment?  How does one get from dress of the students in the ivy covered lecture hall to the dress of they who stand at the lecturn?

I know that throwing piles of cash around is one answer, but I am hardly in a position to effect that outcome.  However, just because one is of limited means is not an excuse for allowing one's surroundings to go to pot.  One can brighten any corner of the world that they are given with a bit of care and attention to loveliness.  My marriage to Laurie has largely broadened me in this way.  Before we were married, I understood this concept, but lived like "the crazy used bookseller" which is to say amidst stacks of books with paths to the kitchen, bedroom, and bathroom.  Laurie and I both value the house beautiful.  Laurie just happens to be the one in our pair with the tools to bring that value into realization. 

I am learning though.

My road to this shift started very young.  There was a high school chum of mine who always wore a suit and tie and I've always thought that there was a wisdom in that.  He had a seriousness without sacrificing the natural rebellion of the adolescent (although he came at it in a very fresh way.)  One can wear a suit anywhere and the idea of being dressed appropriately for any situation appeals to me.  This has been in the back of my mind for decades.

Right on the heels of my discovery of the musical genre known as chap-hop (see example below),

Laurie discovered an online television show which has rather turned my head.  It's called Put This On, with the subheading "A Web Series About Dressing Like A Grownup."  It was not so subtle of a hint, but certainly one which I was completely primed to run with.  I think Laurie's words were "it's time for you to start geeking out on all the right things."

Of course, there has also been the influence of our fashion blog.  I wasn't wired to watch nine hours of Austin Scarlett without coming away with a desire to dress better.  I think our field trip to the designer end of South Coast Plaza this past July also got my sartorial salivary glands watering.

Inspired by the webseries, I went out and got the book Dressing The Man by Alan Flusser, which deals with what he refers to as "permanent fashion."  Mr. Flusser teaches on gaining the look of "seasoned simplicity," the emergence of the peacock in the previous century (beginning with the ubiquitous suits up to the second World War, to the rigid conformity demanded by the era of the grey flannel suit, through the 1960s gift of personal expression in dress, to the modern man of style), by mainly giving instruction on the foundation of understanding proper color and proportion.

Hopefully arming myself with these lessons, I am about to embark on a journey.  I was recently telling Laurie about my spiritual path and the shattered remains thereof.  I told her that it was as if I knew what I was supposed to do, but I wasn't doing it.  Likewise, or perhaps as a reflection of same, I intend to now become the man that I intend to be inside and out.  More on this soon.

Bouts-Rimés project: Poem the Second: Poem Girl

Poem Girl left a charming list of rhyme in response to my call for help with this Bouts-Rimés project and I hoped to do it justice with a retelling of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice.  If you're not familiar with the myth, here's the dumbshow, a lovely little shadow puppet student project adaptation I found on Youtube:

Or you can read the story for yourself here. You'll notice that the original ends rather more brutally than this shadow play.  Or, better yet, seek out one of the hundred or so operas based on this myth. 

Mythology is a rich source of material for the arts and the Greeks contributions have abided for good reasons.  They strike at universals.  Here we have love, loss, death, art, and in one act a major lesson in faith.  So here now is my modest contribution to the grand tradition of retelling the Orpheus myth:

Sight Regained
by Paul Mathers

I remember my song of her grace
and her anguished connubial face
when the Underworld stretched out its lace,
drew her to the Erinyes' mace.
So I forfeir my rights in this race
to the banks of the dead gave my chase.
At Persephone's feet made my case,
Calliope's inheritance my ace,
I was called upon my steps back to trace,
return from existence's base.
As I turned, Hades claimed my embrace
and my flower returned to his vase.
Now through savage woodlands I pace.
In severance, returned to my place.

Let's All Write Bouts-rimés: Poem the First- The Ardingers

As I said before, Bouts-rimés is a collaborative form in which one gets a series of rhymes from another person and crafts a poem from them.  Alexandre Dumas, père, compiled a whole book from famous poets of the day with the same set of rhymes.  It can be both a delightful and extremely tricky form.

I am finding a natural tendency toward poems for a precocious but dark child.

I sent out the call to my readers for a set of rhymes and found myself crippled by the choices.  I instead have chosen to do all of them.  Here is the first in the series from the set of rhymes sent by my good friends The Ardingers :

The Dissolute's Dirge
by Paul Mathers

My liver I keep in a sog
for my pneuma's in a bit of a bog,
a condition that circumstance fathered,
to ammend it I shan't be bothered.
Existence is best viewed through fog
to keep horrors from filling your log.
Savoir faire one can glean from my story:
Be the amaurotic in the observatory.
For in a world where the dog eats the dog,
I would sooner make camp with the frog
who on trifles and pests will grow fatter
and not give a rip towards the matter.
So exhausting the state of agog.
To the alehouse for a measure of grog!

August was a drag

Something that may not be abundantly clear to readers of this blog is the great mass of cobbled together neuroses which comprise Paul Mathers. 

I was thinking about my hypochondria last night and how it's actually worse to be aware of my own hypochondria because I have one track running that says "I think I'm getting sick" while another plays simultaneously which says "But I always think that.  But is this the time it's for real or am I just doing it again?"  Which is like the magic shell on the scoop of ice cream which is my constant illness panic, a scoop which is in amongst one of those sundaes where you win free t-shirts for your whole family if you can eat it in one sitting. 

In short, I'm a bit of a mess. 

This past month has been a mammoth case of the mulligrubs for me.  I have every intention of resurrecting this September.  I am not seeking to make excuses or elicit sympathy.  Just stating the fact.

Out of the ashes comes the muffled cackle of the phoenix.  I give my solemn pledge as a doctor of divinity to be more consistent in my blog posting.  The good news is that I've crawled out from behind the couch and picked up pen to finally begin composing the long promised Bouts-rimés project of which I took on a Herculean amount.  I shall begin to post them at (hopefully) regular intervals starting immediately after I finish writing this post.

Thank you to the people I am supposing exist for your understanding.  Life does have a way of slipping through one's fingers.  As does love, empires, and mercury.

Some Quick Housekeeping

1) The bouts-rimés poems are coming.  Patience please.  I did no writing over our vacation.  I am self-imposing a deadline of the end of next weekend since I've chosen 5 poems to write.  They are coming.

2) Please do check out Laurie and my new blogging project.  It is barking mad.  We are discussing existence through the filter of watching every episode ever made of Project Runway.  If you like what I do here, you will very likely enjoy it.  You may also enjoy it if you feel otherwise.
http://runawayprojectrunwayproject.blogspot.com/

Fin de Vacances

So it goes. Jiggity jog and so forth.

I feel as if I've turned a corner this week.  More soon.

Days 7 & 8: Pastime With Good Company

It took one week before people told me that I looked relaxed.  I slept for most of Friday, got up, went out to the armchair, and fell back to sleep with a book on my lap that I had intended to read.

Laurie's friends, and my new friends (hereafter shall be known as "our friends"), Robin and David had invited us to dine with them at Primitivo Wine Bistro in Venice, CA.  Past the line of gourmet food trucks, Primitivo is a chic little tapas restaurant (the bacon wrapped medjool dates were transcendent.)  I am given to understand that it has been over 25 years since Laurie and Robin had seen one another, so, in a sense, we were all catching one another up with a lifetime. 

We rose early on Saturday and drove to the South Los Angeles neighborhood of Watts.  A high school chum of Laurie's is the proprietor of the acclaimed Watts Coffee House.  Gathered were six or so friends.  The conversation was lively and delightful.  The food was some of the best of the entire trip.  I had chicken sausage, lightly spiced, eggs which I doused with the Louisiana Rooster Sauce provided at each table, and waffles.  The waffles did not need butter.  We tarried, enjoying the food and company, well beyond the time in which the establishment closed. 

The Backhaus Dance Company was formed in the early 2000s by a handful of dancers who went to Chapman University at the same time as I.  I knew several of them and The Facebook has been ablaze for the past several weeks with news of their recital from other friends from my graduating class.  The preeminent New York dance venue Joyce SoHo has numbered the Backhaus Dance Company as one of the seven emerging North American dance companies to watch.  Needless to say, I had been eagerly anticipating taking in their performance for some time.

And the performance exceeded our expectations.  It was a wonderful night of dance, very smartly infused with commentary and choreographic exposition by Jennifer Backhaus.  These interludes served to draw us deeper into the performances and, much like the brilliant decision to have the dancers warm up to the performance onstage in full view of the audience from the moment the doors opened, gave a tour of the clockwork behind such a performance.  I especially remembered their Disintegration piece which, if memory serves, was performed at the Kennedy Center back when I lived down here (and which I believe I saw in a student recital.)  The Pink Martini piece Love and Other Impossibilites was delightful.  Capping the evening, however, was their new piece (performed by long term members of the company, rather than Backhaus Dance Intensive graduates who, I think, comprised the other pieces) Duet(s).  We were stunned by the perfectly bridled mastery and emotion of the piece.  It was a meditation on love, the accompanying pain, separation, and I would go so far as to say what it is to be human, all expressed in dance.

Oh, guess what.  God bless the internet, because here the entire piece is on Vimeo!

http://vimeo.com/26395085

If you ever have the chance to see their work, do everything in your power to see them.

As a personal aside, the performance took place in the Waltmar Theater which used to house Shakespeare Orange County.  I spent hundreds of hours in that theater in my 20s.  Of supreme sentimental value to me, when I went upstairs to use the restroom, I saw the doorway to a room which housed props and leads to the catwalk far above the audience.  I used to live there, occasionally literally.

It was a week of epiphanies.  Boy oh boy, I miss the theater.

Day 6: At The Getty

One rainy morning in 1777, a fifty year old man walked into the parlor of a lush, opulent, and one might daresay stately home in Chesterfield.  It had been a long, rainy journey from London and the man worried about a slight tickle that was gnawing at the back of his throat, developing into a sniffle.  He began to set up his canvas.

The Count walked bruskly into the room with a train of men, functionaries of the Royal Society (the so-called "Invisible College") precariously holding stacks of papers in their arms, one or two trying to direct the Count's attention to the matter they found important.  The Count's eyes locked onto the painter and said, "Ah, so you made it through the deluge, Gainsborough.  Very good.  You're early.  Anne shall be down when she's finished with her morning prayers."

Thomas did not look up from his work.  He lifted the nine foot tall canvas and placed it between two grips which he tightened.  "I thank you, sir.  I shall be ready."

The Count cleared his throat and continued out of the room, his retinue in tow.

Thomas thought briefly about Johann Christian, the composer's son, whose portrait he'd recently completed. Such a warm and intelligent man, so earnest and devout, salt of the Earth.  He thought of Mary and dear Margaret so patiently posing for him with his gamble, his promise to them that once he was satisfied with his exhibit for the Royal Academy they would all quit the city and their life with galling deference to the vapid upper-classes.  No more of setting ruddy old tool merchant's children posing in lavish blue suits for a few week's worth of rent and pub money.  They would retire to the country, buy a modest cottage.  Thomas thought of that dip in the road, about 20 miles south on his way up, that fell into a dark, wooded valley, with mottled sunlight speckling the dark brown, moist leaves.  For the rest of his life, he would remember whenever life became difficult that that place existed somewhere.

In July of 2011, Paul Mathers walked into a room in an art gallery in Los Angeles and saw the Portrait of Anne, Countess of Chesterfield by Thomas Gainsborough.  His first thought on reading the plaque was of a verse from a Noël Coward song about the stately homes of England and their tendency to house portraits by Gainsborough.  He also thought of how this was painted when his nation was but a fledgling making it's first unsteady trip out of the nest and how Gainsborough, as a patriotic Englishman (with somewhat of an American view towards social class), probably did not have a favorable view of the colonists revolting for tax purposes.  He also thought that where he was standing was Junipero Serra country in those days, almost as far removed from all of that as Paul Mathers in 2011.

The plaque mentioned Gainsborough's frustration with his great and immediately recognized talent for portraiture and his desire for a pastoral life of painting pastoral scenes.  Paul thought of poor Franz Schubert who thought his great talent was as an operatic composer but, indeed, was actually in everything but that.  He thought of J. Paul Getty's own description of art collectors as those who have all of the eye and love of beauty of an artist, but lack the skill to create their own artwork.  And, indeed, Paul thought of Paul.

He sat in front of the grand canvas on the sort of round red ottoman provided by the museum in the middle of each of their major rooms.  He found it to be stunningly beautiful, the fast dashes of oil resolving into a gorgeous portrait of a graceful young lady when one stood a good six feet away from it.  He wondered about the young lady in the portrait, a hint of mad, instant love tugging at his heart, and resolved to see if he could find any biographical information on the subject, perhaps for a blog entry.  He thought about his life, wondered what it's going to amount to in the end.  A group of five young college students walked into the room and stood between him and the canvas, blocking his view.





Laurie and I took far too many pictures at the Getty Center to post here, but I did make a photo album of them on Facebook.  You can find it here:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150275228202340.354007.519217339&l=63f40fa096&type=1

Days 4 & 5: Bijou, Bijou!

Laurie and I spent a day shopping.  Window antiquing mainly.  Above is a photograph I surreptitiously snapped in the yard of an antique complex in the city of Orange.  I was especially interested in the castle doors.  I joked that we could replace the entire front of our house with them.

Naturally, we went used booking as well.  Picked up a copy of Collector's Choice:The Chronicle of an Artistic Odyssey through Europe by Ethel LeVane & J. Paul Getty.  It's a biographical (and, in parts, autobiographical) account of Getty's art collecting.  The section I'm reading right now reminds me quite a bit of Rudolf Bing's account of his years with the New York Metropolitan Opera House, 5,000 Nights At The Opera, especially the accounts of John Christie's Glyndebourne and how problematic the political climate around the second world war made operating in the world of the arts, especially those arts historically dominated by the Germanic and Italian.  Laurie purchased a few books on the Inquisition.

Next to the bookshop was an indoor reptilian zoological garden.

Then to Downtown Orange and the many antique stores thereabouts.  Laurie and I window shop here in the same way we did at South Coast Plaza, which is to say with an eye toward sparking creative ideas that we might create on our own budget.  Outside of George Antiques I saw that a simpatico graffito scribe had also passed those hallowed byways.

The next day I spent with my father. He took me to the LA County Fire Dispatch complex where he works and I was given a grand tour.  The building sits on shock absorbers, rather than any traditional foundation, which are able to withstand at least an 8.5 earthquake.  I was taken to the basement where I was able to see them (photography in such an environment, however, seemed like it would be frowned upon, so I refrained from asking.)  The dispatch room looks like something out of an action film and, indeed, I am told has recently undergone a $4 million renovation.  LA County is, in my estimation, in very good hands.  I was honored to find that my father has two of my paintings in his office.

We then went to the movies, which is something both of us, in our respective lives, rarely ever gets to do.  We saw a satirical film about a super-hero in World War II.  It starred Stanley Tucci and Toby Jones.  Or, at least, it did for me.  My father came out of it having seen a film about motorcycles.

That night we went out to dinner with members of Laurie's family.  A splendid time was had by all.  We tried (and failed) to get to bed early as the next day was our day at the Getty Museum.  More soon!

Day 3: Other Temples, Other Gods

Among the copious ways in which I am similar to Truman Capote is that I have both a side that has seen some of the truly horrible things that happen on this little blue rock in cold, uncaring space, and a side which is dazzled by the beautiful, the lovely, what others sometimes call the frivolous.  Having a strong inclination (if not talent) toward the visual arts, I enjoy stuffing my eyes, as it were, with things that are lovely in hopes that the lovely is what will come spilling out of me. 

Also, try as I might, I am incapable of not loving beautiful things.  It is in my hard-wiring, deep in my imprinting, woven into my fabric.

There is a place in Costa Mesa called South Coast Plaza.  It used to be structured in such a way that, while no one was physically prohibited from going anywhere in the shopping area, one half of the building was designed and occupied in such a way that people without a consistent disposable $500,000 would likely feel more comfortable avoiding that side of the plaza.  I assume it's my Quaker "don't doff your hat to any fellow human" streak that gives me the mutant ability to travel freely in that area in spite of my economic handicap.  On this visit I noticed that the high end fashion has creeped around the corner of the plaza from where it used to be relegated.  At first I chalked this up to the poor economy and conditions where the middle is erased but high discount items and high luxury items continue to thrive (just as the middle-class disappears).  But then I realized that South Coast Plaza has actually built a separate building to house the more "baseball cap" stores.  It has become a capsule for that insulated world of la belle vie.

Personally, the haute couture section of the plaza is a bit of a comfort place for me.  In times of high stress, I literally have dreams about the Chanel store.  I think it's because my times visiting that place have been much like visiting a museum. 

When I go to the Getty Museum on Thursday, I do not expect someone to give me a Toulouse-Lautrec because some curator sees how much I am able to appreciate the work.  Nor do I expect for someone buying an Armani suit to instead decide to use the money to pay off one of my mortgages.  Of course, I understand the arguments against the avaricious culture of conspicuous consumption. However, I think I also understand deep in the dark parts of my brain that thinking something shouldn't exist just because I cannot have it is another form of avarice, wrapped in envy, and painted like righteous indignation.

And so, I enjoyed an afternoon of looking at extremely beautiful objects.  I enjoyed it tremendously.  Then we went home.

We also enjoyed dinner with my grandmother at a splendid Cuban restaurant.

And that was the third day of our vacation.

The First 48: Rendering Unto Caesar, Rendering Unto God

For those who don't know, we are on vacation in Southern California. Please do not burglarize our house.

While we've seized the opportunity for extra rest and nourishment, we have also turned our eyes to a different sort of nourishment, which is to say that which comes from forming future memories and broadening one's experience.  Our first night in Orange County found us at Shakespeare Orange County.  Indeed, we actually planned our trip with seeing their production of The Tragedy of Julius Caesar in mind.  It was a marvelous production.  The cast was, without exception, superb and they breathed lightning and thunder into the words of The Bard.  I would especially note John Walcutt who played Cassius. Not usually a piece that I associate with this sort of reaction, his performance of the speeches imploring Brutus to join in the murder plot were so beautifully played that I was moved to tears.  I cannot recommend SOC enough.  If you ever have a chance to see one of their performances, let nothing stand in your way.

I also was able to see my old friend and Shakespearean mentor Tom Bradac.  Naturally, we were unable to bring back any photos of the event, but here are Laurie and I on our way to the show.

We were invited by our friend Cynthia to attend church with her on Sunday morning at Saddleback Church, which, for those of you who don't know, is the church of Rick Warren, the pastor who (among many other things) gave the prayer at President Obama's inauguration.  I think I'm being only mildly hyperbolic in saying that the church is about the size of Chico both in acreage and population.

I have something I do so often in life which I've recently come to describe as Warhol-esque tourism.  It came from a handful of Andy Warhol quotes (i.e."I think everybody should like everybody" and "I've never met a person I couldn't call a beauty") and applying them more broadly to institutions and ideas.  I also tend to take a lot of photographs.  It came from realizing my own natural propensity, and that of the world around me, to dislike things.  I do not wish to be a person marked by his capacity to dislike things (quite the opposite, in fact).  Put simply, I like to keep an open mind inclined toward liking things.  

There are a lot of people who dislike Pastor Warren's ministry (and, clearly, a large number who do like his ministry.)  They have their reasons (which I have heard at the usual nauseating protractedness that marks the speech of the hater.  Please restrain yourself from telling me why I'm wrong in how I reacted to my personal experience.) I came with an open mind and was delighted.

Here's me in front of the children's ministry building, complete with didactic playsets.

We were in the "Gospel tent."  There are apparently several sites on the campus to accommodate different worship music tastes.  Sheila E, she of The Glamorous Life fame, was a featured performer.  She looked fantastic and the music was excellent. 

 
Both Laurie and I found the sermon edifying.  Afterward, Cynthia took us on a tour of the campus.

I noticed two things about the demographic of the congregation.  I shall be blunt and state that so often I've found that the majority of church congregants, in our post-Christian age, tend to be the elderly, the infirm, the marginalized, or young couples with children seeking to raise their progeny with some religious foundation in hopes of inspiring character and what not.  The spiritual needs and wounds are immediate and at the forefront of the mind of the congregants.  Sort of a spiritual Naked Lunch atmosphere. 

At Saddleback there was a great deal of wonderful and heartening racial diversity.  The people (in general) seemed prosperous and in the prime of life.  They wore nice, well-crafted clothes and exuded an air of physical health.  I remarked to Laurie that so often these are the people who are not attending religious ceremonies because they have the illusion of safety in their lives, but that they are a group who ought to be reached spiritually because everyone is one cancer diagnosis or car accident away from needing spiritual comfort.  And, needless to say, we are all dying.  It is a church tailored perfectly for Orange County's needs.

Apparently, Pastor Warren took a large survey of non-church attenders, before organizing this church, and asked why they do not attend church.  The results lead to a great deal of the choices made in the organization of the church.  I would also hasten to add that the church is thriving, and I do not simply mean in numbers.  There seemed to me to be an abundance of earnest Christians, the outreach for a first time visitor was nothing short of astonishing, and the multitude of ministry opportunities were manifold.  They even had a youth building made with painstaking attention to environmental standards. 

 
Also, I found the entire campus to be quite beautiful.  In short, it was a lovely visit and a memory which Laurie and I shall treasure greatly. 

Also, there was an aquarium.

A Cry For Help and Another Contest!

Friends, I need your help. My next poetry writing entry is Bouts-Rimés. As you well know, this form is when the poet uses rhymes provided by someone else. Here's where you come in: give me a list of 14 rhyming words and I shall compose a poem using the rhymed words from the list I like best. 

As an added incentive, whoever provides the winning list (the list that I choose) will get a free copy of Death in Venice by Thomas Mann and a handwritten, signed copy of the poem (which will sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars if you happen to still be alive 100 years after I'm dead!)

So, friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your rhymes!

Let's All Write A Blues Poem!

We have now reached one of the forms that absolutely terrifies me. It seems like embarrassing myself is an inevitability here. It's not that I don't like "the blues." I think it's a beautiful form of music that serves as an outlet for a certain type of basic human anguish.

Our textbook offers a quote from Ralph Ellison which I think expresses the spirit of the blues.  He said that the blues "at once express the agony of life and the possibility of conquering it through sheer toughness of spirit."

I am going to sit this form out on making a video of myself reading an example poem aloud for two reasons.  The first is that the thought of me reading the blues strikes me as going beyond absurd and nearing the realm of the disrespectful.  I am that far from a credible blues man as you shall see anon (or, as you can see by how I finished that sentence out of the abundance of my heart.)  The second is that I feel that this form would be better served by giving an example in the musical form.  Here's Leadbelly:

 

 But we also want to include an example in the form of poetry.  When one looks to the form of Blues Poems, one could not find a better place than the works of Langston Hughes.  Hughes was one of the golden children of the Harlem Renaissance and wrote a great deal of blues poetry.

Morning After
by Langston Hughes

I was so sick last night I
Didn’t hardly know my mind.
So sick last night I
Didn’t know my mind.
I drunk some bad licker that
Almost made me blind.

Had a dream last night I
Thought I was in hell.
I drempt last night I
Thought I was in hell.
Woke up and looked around me—
Babe, your mouth was open like a well.

I said, Baby! Baby!
Please don’t snore so loud.
Baby! Please!
Please don’t snore so loud.
You jest a little bit o’ woman but you
Sound like a great big crowd.

Ok.  So, I'm going to take that as a permission slip from Langston Hughes to use humor in my blues poem.  I've decided that I must needs go meta with my piece.  I am also borrowing from the first stanza from a joke blues poem I posted on Facebook.

The Paul Mathers Style Blues
by Paul Mathers

Oh, I looked in my cupboard this morning
I was out of Earl Grey tea.
I made Kadota Fig Tarts
and the Pinot Grigio wasn't chilled properly.
O, that this too too solid flesh would melt,
Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew.
I'm just a nebbish who's feeling devilish,
I've got the Paul Mathers style blues.

Well, I'm a raging neurotic.
I've got my ennui down. 
My existential dread 
is known all over town.
I read the German philosophers 
and tend to agree with their views.
But my poetic cathexis compels me to employ this form,
I've got the Paul Mathers style blues.


The blues, it isn't in me.
I'd rather talk interior design.
The pedant in me recoils
from how I used too many beats in a line.
I've bumbled up this form poem.
I'll never be a Langston Hughes.
And that's why I'm a'wailin' 
"I've got them Paul Mathers style blues!"

A Few Thoughts After A Few Days of Google+

I almost had an anxiety attack while setting up my Google+ account.  I've been on Facebook for a long time and I find, to steal a line from Tom Lehrer, that Google+ is so simple that only a child can do it.  I thought I might post some of the pros and cons that I'm already feeling from Google+

Pro:

Every photo I've ever uploaded via a Google platform is immediately available on Google+.
I can actually identify my step-kids as family (major failure, Facebook!)
It seems to be moving toward a conglomerate internet experience.  I am sensing cobbled together elements of Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, and those sharey sites like Reddit or Tumblr and so forth.

Con: 

Extraordinarily baroque.  It's like getting a stereo with an intricate graphic equalizer and no clue how to use it.
Very few people are on it whereas most of human life is on Facebook.
Starting work on building my own internet conglomerate experience isn't practical for me.  I want it to be done for me, which is why I don't understand why people keep telling me that Google+ is intuitive.  If it's so blasted intuitive, why is there so much I have to do to set it up?  Those sites I listed in the pro- column which I said Google+ seems to be employing (or exploiting) elements of, I never needed a single article to explain to me how to get started on any of those sites.  I've read at least five to try to figure out Google+.  In short, I don't have time for this.

Currently, in my experience, most of what's going on on Google+ is people discussing how Google+ works.  I suppose that is as natural as my neophobia, but I would add that both point to something gang agley.

There are elements that defy pros and cons like the access to one's Picasa account.  I had a personal Picasa account once, long long ago, and I used it liberally until I filled it up to the point where I would have to start paying for more.  At which point I forgot that the thing even existed until I logged on to Google+ and found pictures of Laurie and I with vastly different haircuts than our current ones.  Then I apparently had Picasa accounts associated with my Blogger accounts (unawares) which do contain some more recent pictures of me, but mainly contain pictures of covers of books that I was writing about in a specific entry (images which I gravely doubt having a legitimate claim to any right to use.)  Facebook, on the other hand, contains many recent pictures of me that I've uploaded one by one over the past few years.  It is a Rome that I've built over time.  Now I'm being called upon to build a new one and I find the prospect unattractive.

Also, and I know I'm being difficult, but I can't tell you how much I wished when I first logged on that there was a tool by which I could find which of my Facebook friends are on Google+.

I also wish to say a few words about Circles.  The advent of Circles has taught me something that I like about what Facebook has done to me that I didn't even realize it was doing.  Facebook is a place where I have a couple hundred people watching and I write messages to them, share videos with them, and photos from my personal life.  The person I present in those messages is, I hope, the person that I am.

In life, so often I have found that I am at my worst when I say things to one group of people that I wouldn't want others to hear.  I don't want to speak behind people's back by any means.  People who know me know that I am politically to the Left and religiously towards Quakerism, and while I do have issues that I feel passionately about, I love people who I know are neither of those things.  So I seek to tailor myself to incline towards that love rather than stroking my own self-righteousness.  That love I have for those people is the reason I am there in the first place and not just off in some corner reading a book.  In a way, Facebook's limited capacity to limit one's viewers within one's peer group demands a certain amount of integrity on the part of the user.

Mainly I talk about literature and tea. 

However, I am not seeking to damn Circles (ten bucks says someone has already categorized their friends into Dante's nine infernal circles.)  As with any technology, it is not the technology, it is those who wield it who decide how it will be applied.  I remember the old accusation that Twitter is vapid, to which I always say, "Try following @stephenfry or @alaindebotton."  I could see Circles working very well in a situation like a book reading group.    

I am admittedly middle-brow as far as internet culture goes.  I have the natural interest when some shiny new gee-gaw shows up, I get an account, I see if it's going to enrich my life.  I refuse to sacrifice an ounce of my quality of life on the altar of new technology.  I have a sense that Google+ may end up only appealing to a certain type.

To borrow a gimmick from The Motley Fool: Buy, Sell, or Hold Google+?  I would say Hold at this point.  Hold until the platform is rolled out in full for the general public and watch for the first few weeks.  The moment it seems to be crashing under its own weight (like, oh say, a Wave?): Sell.  My primary concern is that I am only marginally internet savvy in a purely utilitarian way.  For anyone less internet savvy than I, Google+ seems to be totally perplexing.

My own plan is to have the account that I have, let it sit there, and see if it catches on.  If it does, I can swoop back into my account and play.  If it doesn't, I'll let it go like putting an opossum in an unsealed Tupperware storage container and letting to drift out to sea, making a lot of noise and commotion, signifying nothing.

Divers and Sundry Minutae

So, Gina returned from points far Eastern (Republic of Georgia, Ukraine, Moldova, et al) with red wine and dark chocolate, craving Mexican food.  We are delighted to have her back.  Her arrival did occasion a few changes in our lives, all, I think, for the better.

We finally closed down the used book business.  For newer readers of this blog, for the past 8 or 9 years I have run a used book business, primarily online.  For about 5 of those years (the bachelor ones) it was my sole source of income.  Like all of life, it was subject to external mutations.  Economic tides mixed with advances in technology mixed with increasingly greedy seller's fees on the part of the online selling venues mixed with our total inability to have anything to do with maintaining new inventory and repricing due to having real jobs finally came to the crossroads where the business was very nearly only managing to tread water each month.  I had a liquidation garage sale this past weekend.  While the sale did make more money in one day than the business had lately been making in a month, I still have a garage full of used books.  So, there are more blow-out sales to come with even more severely reduced prices in hopes of getting our garage back.  

Laurie had been driving Gina's car while Gina was out of the country, so we also had the issue of transportation to deal with.  We bought the Volvo pictured above two days ago.  We are a little nervous because it was far too cheap, but it seems to run fine and they didn't impound it as a stolen vehicle when we registered it, so we've decided to adopt the narrative that we stumbled upon a great deal.  Now all that remains is to get the Grizzly Reaper to mow my old truck.  I like Volvos because of their reputation as safe cars.  I can't tell you have often, while whizzing around in automobiles, I become hyper-aware of being propelled in tons of metal with other tons of metal also whizzing around.  I am such a fragile 200-some-pound sack of meat in a world where so many others walk freely while mad, high, drunk, insane, unlicensed, despairing, all able to get behind the wheel of automobiles and hurl themselves around the planet.  I like the idea of my wife being in a car known for surviving accidents well.

Other than that, I still hack away at the script I'm writing.  I've moved on to rereading Truman Capote's Music for Chameleons.  Caught with a bad case of the mean reds, I still have set St. Augustine aside on a shelf, looking on dourly.  There is a niggling voice in the back of my head that knows that I have to return to and finish his Confessions.  I will not let Augustine derail my reading project, although the reward system I've promised myself for getting through his work will even further extend that reading project.  More on that soon, but needless to say, my recent Summer Reading post is turning out to be as outrageously inaccurate as New Year's resolutions and astrological forecasts.

Also, we're going to by grandparents this December by way of my step-son Tony.

Also, we are going on vacation soon.  

Also, for those who were worried, the fuchsia is doing well.