I'm...Sensing...a...Grammarian...from...Beyond...

We all remember Captain Kirk. Some - the hot alien 'humanoid' chicks on distant planets, for example - remember, no doubt, far, far more of him than we mere human late-night dorm-room Star Trek rerun watchers ever knew. But even we can recall his slicked hair, his ripped shirts, his luck with the ladies, the high attrition rate of his red-uniformed personnel when out in the field.

Mostly, however, what endures is his diction. It was daring, unique, revolutionary, even, not merely to have an African-American woman on the bridge of the Enterprise as an officer, but to also have a main character speak...in...so...repellent a -- manner. It needn't only be repressed trauma, however, that we take from this shared heritage: knowledge of exactly what someone means when he refers to 'Captain-Kirk-Speak' can help us in our quests to make the world a better place -- or at least not make people sick when we communicate with them.

Leaving aside the overrated realm of face-to-face contact, I would like to turn to the written word and, in fact, to pay especial attention within the print world to the problem of email. Email can be a bit confusing, I realize, because we send it to people we know and people we don't know, and we use it with people with whom we share a mutual fondness, as well as with people we despise and who despise us. Still, in hopes that the last category can remain smaller than the penult, I would like to add my own rule to the standard email proscriptions of Don't Write in All Caps; Don't Eschew Standard Paragraph Standards; Don't Assume Something Will Sound Funny and Not Mean Once Written; Don't Use LOL, R U, U 2, C Ya, or suchlike, unless you have not yet graduated high school; Don't Write in Such a Way that Emoticons Seem Necessary to Convey Your Meaning; and Don't Use Emoticons.

My rule, friends, is simple: it is Do Not Abuse the Ellipsis. We all have our problems, our own crosses to bear, but years of living upon this earth have taught me that most of them derive from bad parenting, poor health, and imperfect decision-making skills. I can think of exactly none that could possibly be traced to run-ins with three...sequential...printed...dots. So take out your pain on something else.

Here is the lowdown on the skinny re the 411 about the ellipsis (plural ellipses, and coming from the Greek ἔλλειψις, meaning, unsurprisingly, 'omission').

• You can use it in quotations, to indicate you are leaving something out, as in this bit of Yeats, where I show I hacked it from the front and back and tore some guts out of the middle, as well:

1. - ...Our breasts are heaving...our lips are apart...

• You can stick it at the end of something, to indicate you could go further, that there really is more to be said (again, an omission), but you are opting not to, for reasons patent or opaque. You might also see this type of usage in fiction writing to describe the trailing off of one party's side of a conversation.
  

1. - Obviously I never planned to sleep with Jennifer...
2. - Surely you're not wearing that shirt...
3. - Ronald was doing perfectly fine until he met up with those Heideggerians...
4. - Now that you mention it, I don't remember turning the stove off...
   

• And I admit that it can be used, at least in casual situations, at times, to represent a pause longer than a comma between two parts of a sentence. Alright, fine, even between two sentences, but again, only in very casual communication, and not all the time, and not to imbue the writing with a gravitas that it lacks qua writing (which is how and where writing should get its bloody gravitas, if it even wants any to begin with. Not from dots. No dots I know of are capable of impregnating any pause).
  

1. - He told me he loved me...again.
2. - I rewrote the article...with no ellipses this time, sir.
3. - Well, yes, it seemed odd...but he is a Heideggerian.
4. - Of course I turned the stove off, pet...or was that yesterday?

What it shouldn't be used for is a crutch, as with habitual attempts to render thought processes typographically. Nor again, as per the above, to make things seem thinkier or deeper than they really are. Think of it as simple mathematics: if you look at a page of writing, what does it mostly contain? Positively tons of letters, only here and there interspersed with dots and other punctuation. The punctuation is there in the service of the letters and the words and phrases and sentences and paragraphs those letters make up. The punctuation is like the boom-mike guys on a set: necessary, but hardly the crux of the matter.

So these sorts of things frighten me:

1. - time to...think, and...reconnect, with self...
2. - wanting to...understand
3. - to think...and to feel...
4. - for me...and...for you
   

I don't know what they mean. I don't know what the ellipses mean, either. That's a bit of an exaggeration: I do, to a certain extent; the ellipses are there, in cases like those, alternately to 'soften the blow', to serve as a proactive, prophylactic defense against allegations of callousness, and to prove, through graphical representation, that each word was labored over until just the right one, or, minimally, the least wrong one, out of such an imperfect selection, was at last found. I'd say more here, but I'm...thinking...right...now, in fact. Is it not obvious? Can you still suspect I am not, despite the preceding proof?

Dear...friends (see? it's creepy, no?), the Japanese are the only ones on this planet who can use ellipses routinely without thereby increasing my chances of dying of stress-related illness. The reason is that the Japanese are the only ones on this planet with a culture that demands much be left unsaid, in order to preserve dignity and promote harmony. Because of this, there is a whole infrastructure, thousands of years of precedent, giving context and meaning to each incompletely-uttered thought. That in practice means it is far from impossible in the vast majority of cases to deduce what lies on the far side of the dots.

1. - Yes, Friday is perfect... (It's just that)...
2. - I didn't sleep with Jennifer... (But that was only because I fell down the stairs untying my shoes)...
3. - We'll certainly consider your proposal... (And by 'consider' I mean laugh about it and toss it in the trash)...
4. - I would be ever so happy to join your Heidegger study group... (I'll just make sure to be elsewhere and unreachable every Wednesday from 3 o'clock on...)

All four have implications that conflict with at least part of the stated sentence. And in spoken Japanese, or English spoken by a Japanese person, this fact would be obvious in the moment, as would be the gist of what remained unsaid. But unless you are Japanese, and dropping a few dots at the ends of things to maintain decorum and foster civility and good will, I beg you: be chary with the ellipses. Plus, if you save up enough of them, you won't have to worry about coming up with any pithy Final Words with your last breaths; you can just whisper 'Dotdotdot' and leave the world to make the necessary inferences from your life.

A Little Less Conversation

Some of you will recall my earlier jeremiads about drug ads for potions to stop brittle bones and stave off penile-implant surgery. Those of you who don't, and those of you who for your own unfathomable reasons wish to relive the horror, can click on 'Sally Field' or 'flaccidity' in my Labels list to the right and share in my pain of many months ago.

Let me begin by saying I don't watch television all that much. I have a very small set, and it is hard to see from where I usually am, which is at my computer desk, ordering antique perfume bottles off Ebay or once again struggling to come up with ideas for a seasonal dish in the cold and stormy heart of winter that does not involve turnips or kale. And since I generally turn the sound off when it is on, I seldom have any idea what anyone is saying, since I can't read the subtitles at all from thirty feet away. Still, occasionally, I have both the television and the television audio on simultaneously, and when this baleful combination of phenomena occurs, it is rare that I do not regret it subsequently.

Recently I was foolhardy enough to press 'power' without 'mute' before walking over to the vanity to select the day's fragrance, whereupon I was wrested from my tranquil toilette to stand agape and aghast at the horror that flickered before my widening eyes. For it seems that now Viagra has a new campaign, worse than all the rest, and while I hold no particular affection for any Elvis song or film from the 1960s, it does seem that using Viva Las Vegas to hawk erection pills diminishes substantively whatever charm or cachet that song can be said to have once possessed.

Not that it wasn't full of macho swagger, boastful virility, and the desire for unbridled hedonism -- if, admittedly, less than artfully put by the crack songwriting team of Messrs. Pomus and Shuman. But that's just it (well, part of it): the ad is using the universally-recognized song to evoke that libertinous 'I'm just a devil with love to spare' strut in the back of the viewer's mind, while the new lyrics, by contrast, kick the unsuspecting rogue in his pants. Not to mention his cerebellum.

Firstly, let me say that I understand Cialis is doing well, and has done well marketing itself as the flaccidity fixer for men who already have women to have sex with. It has advantages Viagra does not, including more rapid and longer-lasting effects. That's hard to battle, and simply whining, 'Heeey, remember us? We've got one, too. And it's kinda the same' is clearly insufficient. If New Coke had done well, its competitor would have had to strive to position some new product of its own as being similar, and similarly delicious. So Viagra finds itself wanting to declare that even married men who want to have sex with their wives will find it useful.

Of course, Pfizer (or their ad agency) could have said that. Explicitly, and in uncloying language. Instead, we are given the image of a group of early-middle-aged men in the widest assortment possible of casual wear (so that you, whoever you are, will surely be able to find one to 'identify' with: is it the plaid-shirt guy? the rakishly-untucked one? or are you really the bandanna'ed motorbike rider in your heart?) who got together in a bartenderless roadside tavern in the middle of the day to turn Elvis Presley songs into paeans to Erectile Dysfunction drugs and sex within the bonds of marriage.

How do I know they're married? Could I not just be leaping to conclusions for the sake of being able to hate all these ads equally (and by the way, I have never yet seen a single ad for Levitra, and for all I know they could be as bad or worse, but if we fall in love, you and me, and you find you're having a bit of a problem, and I still haven't seen any, please do the right thing and support Bayer/GlaxoSmithKline)? No, I know they are married because I was subjected to first-year-film-school clunky closeups of wedding bands on left hands playing various instruments, and because my brain was fried by having the following lines imprinted on it, forever:

• This lonesome toad is sick of the road/Can't wait, can't wait to get home
• At the end of the day/I'm not a guy who'll stray/'Cause she's my heart's desire

'Lonesome toad,' I guess, is supposed somehow to make them seem like normal men who say manly, cowboyish self-deprecating things in bars, rather than go to them to sing about drugs and impotence and monogamy and how they are inexplicably stuck in the bar, when really all they want to do is go home and have drug-enhanced sex with the wives they miss so much. And, since they have been trapped there who knows how long, and have been thinking of little besides their wives and the great married sex they are going to have with their 'hearts' desires,' I can presume that they, unlike Elvis, are not wishing that there were more than twenty-four hours in a day -- unless their Honey I'm Home package includes a Cialis tab or two.

'And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.'

Can't Celine Dion just stop? Soon? Now-ish? Can no one make it end? How can this possibly be happening, and why are we all so powerless to stop it?

Your Tuscan Holiday Awaits. In Fredericton.

And while we are on the subject of appalling taste, I would like to go to Tuscany for a moment, if you don't mind. Not the real Tuscany, of course, but the false, 'fauxed' Tuscany of interior designers and housebuilders and underpaid furniture painters in China.

I am not certain when this started, as I am a delicate soul and try not to notice things that will wound me. I still remain unaware, for example, that people use bed sheets sewn from tee-shirt material. But it has been going on at least a few years: the first 'Tuscan Square' restaurant cum 'Tuscan Lifestyle' shopping plaza went up in 1997 in Rockefeller Center. And I don't fault Americans or anyone else for wishing they had more time to sit around drinking brunello and eating good olives. It's just that they don't actually live in Tuscany, and that drywall from 1997 made to look like cracking marble or rotting lumber is still drywall from 1997. (Notice in the decorating example left that the ceiling has been painted, as well, to make you believe you are simultaneously outside in the Tuscan sun and inside a 'Tuscan' dining room with real faux masonry!)

One of the problems with attempting to copy something is that you are unlikely to get it right. Think of any number of 'period films' and you'll realize it's not just a matter of adding in a few Studebakers and bakelite phones, but being able to resist, as well, current fashions in such seeming minutiae as eyebrows, lip shape, location of hair partings, and how to line (or not line) eyes. A film made in 1984 about Joan of Arc or Marie Antoinette will always look like a film made in 1984. Likewise, you're not fooling anyone with your 'Tuscan villa' in Manitoba or Missouri.

Nor do I understand why someone would wish to try. On the one hand, if I am overtaken by the urge to stay in an Alsatian chateau, that urge is predicated on the Alsatian chateau being in Alsace. Not in Edmonton, and not in Buenos Aires. As for 'Tuscany,' no amount of 'timeworn' copper pots, 'sun-drenched accents,' hideous pre-cracked 'majolica' knockoffs, 'Old-World' murals of grapes and vineyards, dining tables that 'cleverly' incorporate wine racks, or wooden beams 'aged' by having the gardener beat them with tire chains are going to evoke anything other than sadness and dyspepsia in a reasonable person.

On the other hand, there is a persistent belief here in an inexorable correlation between price and worth. I remember someone proudly and wistfully showing me a pre-aged, pre-yellowed, 'crackle-finished,' 'French Provincial' (I think, although it is easy to get these things wrong, and, frankly, I tried not to look at it too long) formal dining set he was soon to need to replace, once his estranged spouse's boyfriend's wife was completely moved out of her residence. 'You can't imagine how expensive this was,' he whispered as his hand caressed its 'crackled' corner gently, believing (quite reasonably, under normal circumstances) that only with this knowledge would I be able fully to appreciate its 'timeworn,' 'Old World' charm, and grasp by extension the measure of the sort of man willing to lay down thousands of dollars for a Sino-Gallic gamboge monstrosity such as this, with its premature patina so skillfully achieved through the meticulous application of coats of various subtly contrasting tints overlain with caustic solvents and a gloss finish by 75-cents-an-hour artisans in Guangdong.

Clearly, his revelation had a rather different effect than that intended. Nonetheless, I cannot help hoping I am not alone in this, that someone else, wherever he may be, finds the existence of a series of tract homes (with 'old world charm' and 'individual Tuscan flavor'!) called Toscano as odious and incomprehensible as it patently is. Not to mention the 'Tuscan' salt shakers, 'Tuscan' latrines, and 'Tuscan' condo kitchenettes one cannot help but encounter no matter how assiduous or numerous the precautionary measures undertaken. I am starting to feel as though I am living inside an Escher drawing of a purgatorial pizzeria in which each step I take leads me not to a door, not to respite or sanctuary, but to another stairway up to another 'marble'-columned, plastic-grape-arbor-festooned, trompe-l'oeuil toilet-wall mural that doesn't trompe anyone.

And if anyone has the vaguest notion what the following sentence means, I'm all ears. I, for one, have never hid any gold in any of my 'furthermost crevices', and I shudder to contemplate the day when that would seem desirable or well-advised: The earth's hues in ranges from blistering yellow like the sun itself to the concentrated gold's like those she hides in her furthermost crevices are used throughout this theme.

Never Mind

Let me apologize to all cats and cat owners everywhere. My Umbrian friend informed me that the cat was suffering from the weather, just as a dog would do, and so it wasn't him, or me, but God. And now that the monsoon has stopped and the floodwaters are nearly cresting, and blocked roads will at some point be opened and electricity will conceivably be restored to some, he is once more resting blithely, and thus exceedingly cute again and not trying to eat my eyeballs. Apologies for any confusion.

Shakespeare and His Cats

And with regard to that neighbor's cat, I am at a loss. We are having a bit of very heavy rain here, which makes me less than favorably disposed to going out (and although I do have a raincoat, I have no idea what a person is supposed to do with her hair, or her shoes), and as it is Sunday (now Sunday night), any work I had is work to do at home. So I mostly, with a couple exceptions, stayed in. Which is where this cat comes in.

Cats have some crazy hold on the psyches of certain people. There is a whole Cat subculture about which I neither know nor wish to know anything. These people buy cat napkin holders, cat toothbrush holders, cat blankets, cat lamps, cat mousepads, and cat 'art', and some, I can only imagine, have probably even seen Cats, not to mention purchased and no doubt enjoyed copies of the too-ghastly-to-contemplate picture-book Shakespeare Cats, in which memorable scenes or characters are needlessly rendered as though being played by - obviously, at this point, I suppose - cats... it's far too painful to elaborate further...

-- Never mind; I can't help myself: they buy up cups with cats on them, cats to pour cream from, cat-embellished shirts, and cat-embellished tea towels. They have Whimsical Cats, and Naughty Cats, and Sensual Cats (usually, of course, panthers, and generally meant to symbolize alongside this austere and capricious sensuality the nexus of feminine-feline and the Sphinx-like opacity [don't pretend you didn't know it was coming; of course it was; it always does] of both), and cats to burn incense in and cats to hold your toilet roll while you sit and stare in amazement and transfixed disgust at the cat holding your toothbrushes...

I have no better explanation for this than you do, and it appears also to be confined largely to one sex. If you start to say, Yes, but women have always been compared to cats, or even, Yes, but women are so, well, feline, so Sphinx-like, aren't they, in either case, I'm not going to punch you or even wish to, but neither of those excuses such appallingly bad taste. Thou canst compare me to a summer's day, if you feel the need (and I sorely doubt that you do, even though I am more lovely and yes more temperate, too, but never mind), and I will be in no greater danger than before of going out and buying cheap prints of Van Gogh's Sunflowers or decorating in chintz. Maybe I am sunny as the smile of the blue firmament, but that doesn't make me incline toward hanging hummingbird feeders in the latrine!

So for me, the Inscrutable Mysteries of the Inscrutable Cat hold no appeal. I am not curious in the slightest why someone should wish to be so mercurial, so self-centred, so obstinate, and so awake at exactly the wrong times. I don't care. Dogs don't do it. Plants don't do it. Even educated clams don't do it.

Today was an endless loop replayed with, for my part, ever-diminishing enthusiasm. The not wanting to sit on his 'special place' followed by savagely attacking the Jetsons chair followed by whines for eating again followed by whines to go out immediately upon which came the sulking outside the door subsequent to which was the biting of the hand that retrieved him (from the rain outside the door, I might add) short upon the heels of which was ignoring the Things to Scratch I'd bought for him in preference to something I had bought for vastly divergent purposes after which came the return of randomly attacking things and knocking perfume bottles off things not designed to be leapt onto...

I freely admit I know nothing about cats. That is one of the reasons I don't have one. Another one is a preference for species that 'make sense' at some level inside my hominid brain. When a dog, for example, stares at his food bowl, or pushes it toward you, you are right in assuming it means, You are fifteen minutes late on the grub, chump, and I'd say I'm never going to forget it but I'm a dog and this will all be irrelevant and, just between us, irretrievable, in about twenty seconds. It never means, Go to the refrigerator and grab something for me and then walk over here because I really want to leap up and bite you in the face.

Clearly, however, there is Not Having One and 'not having one,' the latter of which I fall into now. His real parents leave him outside, whether it is 85 degrees, or snowing, or hailing, or pouring rain. He hides under cars from the sun, or lies on top trying to get some heat: it's not as though I have a choice in this, wrecked weird chair or no. I made him a bed inside the Chinese wedding cabinet, on the lower tier so it was safer, even though it meant I couldn't use it for what I had intended to, or close it. I put a box in there that I painted that said 'Baby' so he would know where to go. I bought him his own hamper to attack once he made it clear he wanted to kill my cute matching set of two, which matched everything in the house, and then relented and gave him one of those when he didn't want the nearly identical one I'd got for him. And then I bought a wrought-iron one for me, so there would be no question...

Still, though -- and this doesn't mean I want anything, ever, in the shape of him -- he is, when he is not trying to rip open my jugular, or nap on my keyboard while I'm typing, or tip over my wine cabinet, or ruin my stockings when I'm trying to put them on, he is, actually, recklessly, unashamedly, murderously cute...

Furniture Wrasslin

While in a stylistic slump I bought the above child's bed. I of course had no intention of leaving it like that, but nonetheless, looking at it now it's easy to wonder what I was thinking. I am no stranger to DIY, but there are some things that even I can't D. What you can see in the photo is that it is pine, which is by itself something, indeed, to reckon with. What you can't see is that it is for children, is upholstered in a thin, white, scratchy and semitranslucent fabric, and that the ends can handily, Allen-wrenchly, be let down as your child grows.

Well, I don't have a child, just the neighbor's cat on occasion, and I stopped growing years ago, much to my continuing dismay. Moreover, my decor scheme lies somewhere between Lebanese Maiden Aunt and Balkan Bordello, so the clean lines and light tone of Nordic pine stylings are far from congruent with the rest of my furnishings. My bed is all pillows and curtains and dark Chinese hardwoods and silky sheets; the living room is overrun with textures and brocades and highly sink-into-able things. Not to mention more pillows.

Obviously the pine had to go. That made a great difference, but it was then a darker-colored boxy child's bed in austere Northern style. So I bought a few billion dollars' worth of fabric trim with tassels on it (you don't know how pricey fabric trim is until you buy it by the mile), and some 'Turkish turban' big tassels to stick where the trim ended on the 'ends' of the bed (now the outsides of the 'sides' of the divan.) I upholstered the bed part, which was now taking shape as the seat and inside arms of the divan, and covered the tops of the 'arms' with upholstered foam. Next I took a few dozen pillows out of storage, et voila: a divan on which any self-respecting member of any Divan would have felt more than at ease (in languid recumbence!) enjoying some apple shisha with the languourous (not to mention dusky!) odalisque of his choice.

'Truth in philosophy means that concept and external reality correspond.' Just don't say that in the Ladies' Department.

Tonight I watched a very pleasing movie in which Anthony Hopkins plays what would otherwise be my deceased stepfather were the character concerned not based on another real dead person. It was The Fastest Indian, and I had wanted to see it for a long time, not least because Indians are an integral part of my Ideal Man, the bench-pressing, PhD-in-theology-holding, sartorially scrupulous polyglot with a distaste for 'comic opera' matched only by his weakness for Sephardic love songs. Although I had in mind more the kind you can sit up on, and have me ride pillion.

That fact notwithstanding, we ate raviolis in a lovely intense red sauce and drank a deep Umbrian with an extremely sweet and fancy dog. All, I suppose, that was missing was the motorbike ride, but it is approximately one degree Fahrenheit outside, and thus prohibitive of fahren in anything without a roof and sides, and anyway even though I had wanted to buy one last year I didn't. And with platform shoes having once again gone the way of the seersucker suit, I suspect my chance of reaching the ground at stop signs has come and gone.

The only downside to the whole thing was having ruined a dress I have never worn. Somewhere near the 'vanity,' which is also the clothes-steaming zone when it needs to be, a tiny bottle of carrot oil had disgorged itself all over the floor. It being a long dress, I first dragged a bit of the ends in the oil unknowingly before lifting it into proper steaming position. Following that, and still not knowing what I had already done, I dropped it, halter back, ruching, tiers, and all, straight into the viscous orange puddle.

While on the one hand I am not the sort of girl who becomes unduly attached to material things, and have in fact rid myself of nearly all of them more than once and some of those times quite wittingly, in this case I am genuinely a bit distressed. Not only had I never worn it, not only did I feel I had an occasion that suited, but the dress alone was something. Firstly, it was satin, and secondly, it was olive drab. To me, that is akin to having an Amarone in one hand and six canelés in the other with a vat of almond cream on hand just in case, while one nice someone massages my feet and another pets my (silky when in its rare natural state) hair.

However, the most egregiously grievous wrong of this entire bout of hideous misfortune is that the bloody thing fit! Normally I am reduced to tears in dressing rooms, save for those rare occasions when there is an exhusband around to ferry ever-smaller sizes back and forth so that I don't have to skulk to the rack in longjohns and choler, and to remind me soothingly that I'd be just fine in Laos.

But this dress wasn't like that. It wasn't one of the sort that make one feel guilty for never having topped 92 and usually hovering around 89. No poor tailor was ever going to be begged and bribed with chocolates to tear it apart and take five sizes off it. It fit, and as well succeeded in making me look nearly lady-shaped. The ruching around the hips even gave the clear suggestion that I had some.

It didn't use to be this way, you know. When I was in high school and college I could buy clothes and not have to donate blood plasma to pay my tailoring bills. Then, the weight of the average American increased, and kept increasing. And as clothes companies do not exist primarily to keep me looking nice, but rather to turn a profit, clothing sizes have increased to accommodate demand. US sizes are about six sizes larger than when an attempt at standardization began in the Forties and Fifties.

Another factor is 'vanity sizing,' and this area is problematic for me. I have empathy for someone not wanting to buy something labeled size 20, assuredly, but when a renamed 10 becomes a 5, and an 8 or 9 becomes a 3 (which used commonly to be the smallest size), what becomes of the 'real' 5s and 3s? Well, some, it seems, become Zeros, and others become Double Aughts in a fit of blazing, indecent numerical fatuity, while others just slide off the grid. There isn't a woman's line that offers pants to fit me, and while I've taken to wearing children's jeans, because I've taken to wearing jeans in the first place out of despair and necessity, there are times they won't do, and one can't very well pair a gabardine jacket and silk shirt with pink corduroy Winnie-the-Pooh pants. The alternative is no less unthinkable: I don't aspire to be a World-Historical Figure, surely, and I doubt Hegel would have even liked the dress, but as Mark Twain admitted, Naked people have little or no influence on society. They also get burned a lot while cooking.

Doe-eyed, Po-faced, and Half Dotty Already

Earlier, while duskily languishing and hanging upon the cheek of night like a French Hook in an ecdysiast's ear, it occurred to me how pleased I am that I am no more in need of recourse to clip-on hair. In fact, I have so much of my own now that it frequently gets in my way, and I have alternately to Put It Up, Pull It Back, Smoosh It Down, and continue to work on my own tragic version of the French-Twist-with-a-Pouf, wherein all the extra bits that would otherwise make me look like a daughter of Akhenaten were they stuffed in with the rest are instead pitched topside, in a studied simulation of the sort of Devil-may-care posture I'll never quite pull off. At least not until I'm convinced that the Devil doesn't care very, very much and is not standing to my left at all times and pulling little pieces of it out and around and straight up, to illustrate that the only way in which I'll ever resemble Brigitte Bardot will be in my looming dotage when I'm so potty over animals I have no idea what I'm saying about anything else.

Certainly it won't be for supporting Le Pen. Nor, I suspect, for having an affair with Serge Gainsbourg or encouraging massacres in Algeria. Still, it would be nice to be able smolder abandonedly every so often, presuming there were no German playboy astrologers around to render it all cosmically de trop.

This is the only happiness; and is a rare instance of advantage in the body overpowering the Mind.

Said Keats regarding indolence, and while I to this day hate that Ode, I still love Keats and admire as always his respect for indolence. We devalue it tremendously, of course, the sitting, being, the taking in, and allowing...

We are no doubt fearful that passivity or unalloyed receptivity in one area will leech out and become some overarching guiding principle in our psyche, or life. That we'll wake up one day and find we've unwittingly morphed into swarthy, layabout Mediterraneans who say 'five' when they mean 'six-thirty' or worse. This is one reason, amidst poor taste, uninventiveness, ignorance, xenophobia, and fear of solitude, that we spend our vacations righteously doing things, ticking off Chartres and Epidavros on our lists, snapping the requisite few hurried shots of St. Basil's and St. Peter's before making our way to consuming the Great Wall and Kyoto's daibutsu.

I have no such fears, myself, but certainly if you are the sort of person who needs to, you can check my resume and see that I have worked hard enough, and worked long enough, to have 'earned' the right to spend the day doing nothing but making melon balls I never intend to eat or sitting around Montmartre doing nothing other than doing nothing and calling it a holiday all the same. And that's what I did. That was my vacation. I ate quite a bit of pastry, drank a lot of both coffee and wine, talked to my friend and my friend's friends, and bought a book hoping it would help me reproach one of them in German. It didn't, and anyway I expect his French and English were better than mine, so I stuck with those and reproached away and got a foot massage out of it so all was fine.

We did make it to Champagne, which is where the reproaching, the Teuton, and the feet come in, but it wasn't a 'goal' of mine, or even my idea. And we almost didn't make it (European gas mileage is a thing of beauty, but only when there is gas in one's tank to get mileage from), but we did, and we sat around there, too. This litttle sojourn to France was very nearly the only short trip I've ever taken except for ones close to where I happen to live right then, and I was very tempted to stay there, too, except that that would mean the loss of both my bed and a truly fabulous coat.

Maybe I'll move there next year. It couldn't possibly cost more to ship my bed than what I paid in overweight charges for books and shoes when I left Greece. And by then I could have conceivably winnowed my current supply of both to a manageable level, so that it would only be the 100-piece Chinese bed and the 50-pound coat with which I'd need concern myself. And since it will no doubt remain true in a year that the only German I know consists in a few cabaret songs and the occasional singspiel stanza, I won't have worn out my welcome with anyone.

Happy Birthday, Ferdinand

Who, indeed, knew that your given name was Mongin, or that you were English at base?

Geneva, 1857. Dead, 1913. Atherosclerosis and pneumonia.

Mongin-Ferdinand de Saussure. French. Calvinist. Synaesthetic. Seminal. The Without-Which-Not for all the social sciences and liberal arts that have come after his quiet existence.

--But it is language itself, not merely pronunciation, that is always teratological, darling, as your descendents have amply shown. And as you along with Freud and Marx stripped the human- out of humanism, we have only a desiccated -ism to cleave to now, without a handy (PIE!) root to grab onto. Still, if you hadn't lived, I should never have been able to have read Zizek, and for that I thank you, if not now or at any other time for haute Structuralism at its hautist...


My life flows on in endless song;
Above earth’s lamentation
I hear the sweet though far off hymn
That hails a new creation:
Through all the tumult and the strife
I hear the music ringing;
It finds an echo in my soul—
How can I keep from singing?

Wo ist der Schnee vom vergangenen Jahr?

I don't know. I tried to write an entry about how senior citizens aren't what they used to be anymore, and I thought I did the math wrong, so I scrapped the whole bit, only to try it one more time after deleting everything, upon which I discovered I had it right all along, up until the point I redid it. I didn't have to 'borrow' from the zero at all, since I was subtracting a 0 from a 7 before that... Which means, to those of you who don't know math as well as I do, that 2,007-70=, as I previously and rightly believed, 1,937.

So, nothing about Chuck Taylors versus Novachords, or Gene Krupa or Bing Crosby before the 'Road Pictures.' It's sad, too, because it had funny bits. Moreover, it explained things much better than 1927 did, an equation I found inscrutable in many ways, most of all the heads tilted sideways when I mentioned things like Lyonnaise Potatoes and Pork Chops, or Holländer, or the shock of the New Look.

And then I read a story about a seminal philologist that moved me so strongly I actually attempted to 'contribute' a 'comment.' At which I also failed, apparently, because I don't know what I pushed instead of 'Yes, show me, I'm trying to do something here!!' when Firefox let me know it had shut down a popup and did I want to see it. Nothing happened, so I reloaded and recocked, and whether it's the firing pin or the trigger assembly or the action is too light, something went awry and I went straight to the Technical Issues page, and by this point I was all in (seminal philologists can do that to me, even Calvinist ones), so I had to set up my Outlook, as that's the address the Technical Issues office wanted, even though they could reach me far more handily elsewhere.

But I seem to have achieved greater success with the manly Hand Balm I started, which makes sense because you can blunt some of the technical issues of scent and still have good results. It seems quite likable now, but we'll see as it cures. So far it is strong on oregano and saffron, as I wanted, with vetiver, cedar, and oakmoss in the bottom, and very little bergamot for a tiny bounce and to coax out the citrus notes in the vetiver. Who knows, but it smells great on me right now, and the oregano is settling in so beautifully.

Happy St. Calvin's Day!

Today we celebrate Thanksgiving here in the US, and along with The Harvest, the fruits of This Great Land, squashes of all sorts and can-shaped cranberry puree, the changing of the seasons, colonialism, imperialism, Manifest Destiny, the Noble Savage and the White Man's Burden, we also pay homage to the undying legacy of John Calvin. He gave us hard work and Blackberrys and fax machines, to be sure, and quite possibly timeshares and cruiseboat holidays, as well, but the full measure of his influence cannot be appreciated without taking into account the Puritans' sumptuary strictures and their enduring significance.

'Original sin, therefore, appears to be an hereditary depravity and corruption of our nature, diffused through all the parts of the soul, rendering us obnoxious to the divine wrath and producing in us those works which the scripture calls "works of the flesh."' - J.C.

I do not mean to imply that I think the whole Reformation was a bad idea initially, or sprang from bad impulses. I would not like to have lived in Burgundy, for example, during a certain period, if I did not happen to be recognized as exactly and precisely orthodox by the Benedictines. I would have preferred not to live in Spain, either, from about 1500 to 1800, regardless of my affiliations or lack thereof. And I am grateful not to have been in the position of attempting to lead a devout life in some of the less-than-devout monasteries that reform and renewal put to right. However, if the end result would have been that no one, ever, centuries later, when I wouldn't even know, except in Heaven, where I could no longer feel pain, would have had to wear polyester masquerading as 'gabardine,' or drink 'white Zinfandel,' or stuff themselves into hideous little rooms on boats the size of cities with thousands of other holiday-makers, only to spend their days gorging on cafeteria food, playing shuffleboard, swimming in chlorinated pools in the midst of the Aegean, and debarking in growling hordes to buy up gilded replicas of Attic treasures and machine-made lace, I would gladly have submitted to whatever tonsure, penitence -- or cloistered aristocratic licentiousness -- were the case in my region.

'You must submit to supreme suffering in order to discover the completion of joy.' -J.C.

But because I didn't, we live in a society that continues to view pleasure as dangerous and the senses as Satan's inbuilt handmaidens. We oscillate between wordless orgiastic feedings of Grande Meals at the Big Hombre and the next day's punishing asceticism. Neither tastes like anything, but one causes self-loathing while the other promises redemption -- and flatter abs. We eat salmon-colored tomatoes in February and think nothing of it; we pump 'cheese' out of an aerosol; we have diabetes and hemorrhoids, cancer of the colon and hypertension, and our only consolation is At least we didn't enjoy ourselves getting to this point...

'Though Satan instills his poison, and fans the flames of our corrupt desires within us, we are yet not carried by any external force to the commission of sin, but our own flesh entices us, and we willingly yield to its allurements.' -J.C.

A handily reductivist version of Calvinism is that Adam screwed it up for all of us, and we're never going to get back to anything close to a prelapsarian state, in spirit or conditions or behavior, but it is our duty nonetheless to try to - even if we're some of the ones God has already decided He's not that keen on letting back into Heaven - with every waking breath, in each act and thought of our lives, and thus anything that distracts us from this is proof of our fallenness, our 'total depravity' (a phrase which came after Calvin himself but is not an unrepresentative distillation of his point of view), our hideous natures which draw us away from, rather than toward, the Good.

'Man's mind is like a store of idolatry and superstition; so much so that if a man believes his own mind it is certain that he will forsake God and forge some idol in his own brain.' -J.C.

This is an exceedingly long leap from the Roman Catholic position of 'don't get so drunk that your judgment will be clouded and you risk making bad choices and ending up in an opium den in Chinatown.' In Calvinism, we've already tied off our arm, flicked the needle, and had sex with the dealer. We are meretricious, deceitful, murderous, lazy, avaricious, gluttonous crackwhores from the start who would sooner kill you than wish you a good day. No wonder, then, that we can't stand the idea of enjoying a good meal in pleasant surroundings: one bite of the medium-rare filet with a delicate shallot beurre blanc and we have paved the way for lechery, idolatry, pederasty, income tax fraud, bestiality, and unbridled killing sprees. Enjoy anything too heartily, and it's only a matter of time before the stakes have to be raised, before the beurre blanc just won't do, it will have to be pounds of some ponderous Norman cream sauce, poured all over the steak and dripping down your chin, and the med-rare will mutate into saignant and before you know it you will be starring in a Bosch painting, eating babies, buggering lobsters, and never combing your hair.

So it arises that we take pains not to have too good a time. When that doesn't work, we endeavor to convince ourselves we are not really enjoying things but doing what we must, such as rampant overspending cloaked as necessary Christmas shopping or renovating yet again what we just discovered to be a hugely outdated living room. Or, we deny our urges so habitually, and in such illogical ways, that they perforce irrupt disguised - that they might for once be satisfied - and we rather than buy one pair of fancy shoes, or get a bit giddy on two glasses of port, or quietly watch the setting sun from the shore of a lake, instead order sixteen shots of whatever, stuff down some onion rings slathered in synthetic 'mayonnaise,' and try to convince the drunk girl next to us to go back to the apartment for anonymous, detached, barely conscious casual sex.

'So indulgent is man towards himself, that, while doing evil, he always endeavours as much as he can to suppress the idea of sin.' - J.C.

And that isn't what the Catholics warned us about, either. It's not the alcohol's fault. The alcohol is there in order that the rest can take place, in order deliberately to renounce judgment sufficiently that we can be as mindless of sin as of either genuine pleasure or redemption, and thus get on with our half-hearted quest for the bad food, the unsatisfying company, the superficial conversation, and the mindless, soulless, fumbling sex. We're no longer worrying about God, or Calvin, or Burgundian excesses. We don't even know where or what Burgundy is, for that matter, since we don't drink nice wines, or read books that aren't assigned, or travel to places where they don't speak American. And we no longer believe we're damned, nor care; we're chained to the ramified legacy of Calvin, without any recollection of how we got here or what the original argument was. We just know we're not supposed to enjoy ourselves. We should be multitasking on our Blackberrys while chasing the four-minute mile and listening to management seminars on our iPods, not idly reading the TLS on a Saturday morning and sipping mimosas in deck chairs amidst birdsong and evergreens.

'Every one of us is, even from his mother's womb, a master craftsman of idols.' -J.C.

So, when the dam breaks and the need for genuine pleasure mutates yet again into a virulent need to consume, we are stuck. It's too late to decide to keep fresh flowers in the house. Gone is our chance to enjoy the walking tour of the Piedmont, or to start wearing clothing that doesn't punish all the senses. And no longer will poetry or color or silky sheets or taking up ikebana or cheesemaking sate our deranged, repressed need for something, anything, that can stimulate a sense of even the most distant, third-order simulacrum of the commodity called 'enjoyment.'

But we've become by that point the crackwhore Calvin warned us about. Now it can no longer be about nuance or joy. We have ground ourselves down to nearly insensate lumps from alternating between compulsive and overarching gravitas surrounding work/'success' and puerile outbursts of mindless grasping that we can no longer just be. We have annihilated our receptivity so thoroughly that our whole outlook reduces not merely things but people, as well, to instruments. I see you for what you can give me, just like the obscenely large truck or the Patek Philippe or the ten numbing, dumbing vodka-and-Red-Bulls. But don't worry; as soon as I've eaten you and the four-pound McNasty and the 'craftsman style' high-end bathroom renovation, I'll spend two hours on the electronic bicycle and commit myself to at least three more memos a week and do a colon cleanse and take a Men's Retreat and swear off booze and find my inner child again and give him the kick in the teeth he so roundly deserves.

'I consider looseness with words no less of a defect than looseness of the bowels.' -J.C.

La Plus Haute Tour

I went on a good date tonight.

And shut up you for thinking what you just thought: if I hold out no hope I am in no danger of being misled or misconstrued. My approach is neutral; therefore my reading should rightly be presumed accurate. In fewer words, it was a good date, and I should be trusted on this. I had rather seal my lips, than, to my peril,/ Speak that which is not.

But yes it is true in the end: I am as shocked as you to discover that people other than me should be simultaneously nice, thinky, and as engaged as they are engaging. And I think I was mostly fine, too, which is something. Except for the beginning, when I had to call and ask was that him the guy I just squinted at and walked away from or was he not here yet which would be preferable as if he was that guy and it looked like he might be because they looked the same it might be better if we tried this another time because I could leave now and not walk up to the guy who just looked at me weirdly and then again at the end when I didn't know what to do and so barged ahead the better to get the ending ended and opened the door on my own which I hate doing and anyway am no good at either because physics gets in the way but didn't see much of an alternative at that point.

But the middle bit was fine. I hate pickles but I ate about sixteen, and there were no real knives so that was challenging because I do think they are an integral part of the eating part of a meal, but apart from that I'm sure it was fine. Well, there was the part where my hair hit the limit of its (purported) 'style' and I discovered far too late that it was not merely listing leftwards as I had only recently come to suspect but was instead fixed entirely on the left rear of my head, undoubtedly with all the end bits exploding in an unprepossessing fountain-like structure above my left ear, but I'm used to that since my lack of cosmetological expertise lends itself daily to hairstyle tragedies. Perhaps I shouldn't, but I do take it in stride and always assume my companion(s) understand it is a failure not of conception but merely of execution and, my being bereft of an engineering degree, such things are likely to happen and should be excused without prejudice.

Anyway, it was far from hell. By-and-by is easily said, but we both avowed something or other with appropriate levels of genuicity and advienne que pourra. I don't mean to sound as though I'm thinking anything other than What (overdressed) couch is the neighbor's cat hiding under, and why isn't he in the armoire where he belongs, but, as Fats Waller said, One never knows, do one?

Life Is Short, and So Is Money.

That's what Brecht says, and I believe both and accordingly despise 'shopping.' It is not a grand political stand, and I don't live in a treehouse: I freely acknowledge that sometimes there are things that one needs, and that some of those things must be bought, with money, rather than fashioned from twigs and pre-chewed gum saved up for the occasion. And the things I buy I want and/or need, so once I have them I am pleased that I do. For example, the car without a puddle on the rear floor was a much-appreciated replacement for the one with the puddle.


But I don't like the process of it, certainly, nor do I enjoy the near-Las-Vegas levels of visual and auditory stimulation I have to go through just to get the thing I need. I also am not usually thrilled that there are so many other people there doing the same thing I am attempting to, except doing it more loudly, more assertively, and far, far more happily, with an unmistakable air of being where they belong and where, indeed, they wish to be. Many, in fact, are patently there to savor precisely the process, rather than even obliquely striving to pursue, and succeed at, a goal-directed mission. Myself, I have a list (and yes, fine, sometimes it is one item, but I am likely to forget even that when confronted with Shrek on thirty different widescreens while still trying agitatedly to figure out if plant lightbulbs are by lamps or potting soil), and I want to use that list, find the things, pay for the things, and get home.

But today it didn't work like that. The goal of the mission was a new computer. This had been coming a long time, and the last couple of days had made it urgent. I had done all I could with the old one, but tweaks and external crutches can only get one so far when it is the machine inside the machine that is dying. There are many cars on the road with 300,000 miles on them, but few have the original engine or transmission, and none have the original tires. And if the car spent most of its lifespan being driven in Labrador, at some point it is reasonable to step back and rationally consider whether putting a new engine in that old shell is the best course of action. In this case, it was not.

So, having looked for weeks and months at various offers, and becoming slightly conversant with where it is people for the most part go to buy computers, I decided I felt safer buying a new one than a used, and that a cheap one was fine as long as it had ample memory. I also decided against buying one online, as the wait would be longer, it could arrive damaged, and there was no way of telling at what precise moment the old one would completely stop working. It is not easy using it as it is now, but it is handier than not having it at all, especially if a lot of what I am doing with it is researching my options for replacing it...

The story didn't start off terribly. I had heard on NPR that the Great Satan of discount shopping, Wal-Mart, offered (cheap, obviously) computers now. I drove to a Super Wal-Mart at about 3 AM after having looked at the Wal-Mart website and seeing that there were many options. The drive itself was very pleasant, about an hour each way in the calm dark of the early-morning freeway. And inside the store, although it was admittedly hideously bright, it was as deserted as the roads. Nice. Very nice. But what is on the website isn't what is in the stores, and there were only a couple laptops, and they were ghastly. Even by my standards. I did, however, locate some Diet Coke and Fiddle Faddle, even a bottle of the rare Wild Cherry Diet Pepsi, but I got confused trying to find nutrition bars, and gave up. Still, the Fiddle Faddle added immeasurably to the pleasantness of the ride home, and the BBC had a very idiosyncratic long reportage on Kazakhstan's burgeoning oil-fed Wild West.

It didn't solve the problem of the moribund Pavilion, though. The next morning I got serious about used ones. That stern resolution crumbled upon itself after the first (interminable) conversation with the first seller, who didn't really have what he said he had but who would be getting other ones soon, tomorrow, even, from his 'purveyors,' if I wanted to wait, although he could never be sure, of course, what exactly those 'purveyors' would purvey to him, nor how long it would take him to get the computers into working order, but he would be happy to et cetera and I could rest assured that.

Thus.

I went to the Best Buy. At that point, it was for me like shutting up and shutting down the GPS and taking the circuitous but well-known route, as I had looked at their website the most, once I heard of the Best Buy about a month ago. I even had a piece of paper I had written their specials on, but that was at home, next to the computer.

I found the Best Buy easy to navigate. They had large signs with large letters hanging from the ceiling, and I was relieved that I didn't have to walk through cramped aisles of fishing tackle and foundation garments to get to COMPUTERS. Likewise I enjoyed the approach of the salesmen, whose low-pressure tactics could easily be taken for apathy and boredom. I didn't have many questions, either, since most relevant facts were on cards below the display versions of the laptops. When I did ask one guy why this one with so much memory was the same price as a nastynasty Acer with a processor from 1972, he said it was on sale and a very good buy and I said I think I had that one written down and I'd take it. I figured I had the cat in the bag by that time. Certainly at least a very large bird in the hand. In this I was mistaken.

I have never had anyone 'set up' my computer for me before, but he said it was standard and free and quick. I figured it must be quick, if it is quick for me and I don't do it all day. Then, he said that for only $29.99 they would configure? orient? what was it? --oh, yes, Optimize and Personalize -- it for me and that that would be quick, too. I am an idiot, and I said yes.

I had no idea what was to be 'personalized' about it, since they didn't ask me any questions or, as it turned out, input any information about me into it, but at that point I just wanted him to stop talking. I did want to be home soon, but at that exact moment what I wanted more was for him to cease speaking. I felt that $29.99 was a reasonable price for that service.

However, it wasn't quite over, as he had to ask various people if they could call Bill so that Bill could count the money a second time. Once Bill arrived and counted the money again, it took a few minutes for the two to figure out my change ($9.21), as the change drawer had already opened on its own and thus not displayed the correct change to give back. My salesclerk confirmed with the technical people that my Optimization and Personalization would be done within forty-five minutes. Of course, had I opted out, within that time I would have already been home and online...

Nonetheless.

I had it, at least in a sense, and that was closer than I had been at 3 AM in the Wal-Mart by the Indian casino lost among the Little Debbies. While I was leaving the store, though, to begin my waiting, my phone rang. The noise from the parking structure was so loud that I said I would go to my car and call from inside. Except that I couldn't find my car. I was pretty sure that I was on Level Four, which is, except for the highest and as-yet uncompleted level, the top one. Thus, easy to remember, so I figured that if Level Four was sticking in my head, there was probably a pretty good reason.

I knew the area I had parked in. I was pretty sure, too, that I didn't just know the aisle but the space. But my car wasn't there, in either aisle or space, not on Level Four or Level Three. I called my friend back, and could barely hear, but said I had lost my car and was really going to call her back, just not quite yet. I went all the way down to the bottom level, figuring that perhaps 'extreme end' was what I was remembering, and just mistaking which extreme, but I was wrong about that, too. And the configuration of the floor was totally different, which was at least helpful, so that I knew I didn't have to walk the whole floor.

I did find it eventually, and detoxed a while inside, next to the vandalized BMW that had angered someone by taking up two spaces in a crowded parking lot. Once I felt a bit composed again, I decided against my better judgment to restore my blood glucose at the food part at the Target, the only source for food in the little mall. It really didn't help much, because, despite the presence of baby-changing stations inside the restrooms just a few paces from where we were sitting, a young Chinese couple saw fit to change their baby's soiled diapers in the cafe area as two teenagers ran around the tables chasing each other and yelling. When I had eaten as much cheese off my pizza as I could stomach, I left the food area, bought some nutrition bars, and went to spend the rest of my wait at Ross.

No one was changing diapers at Ross, which gladdened my heart. But now, I was officially shopping. Aimlessly wandering the aisles of a store I didn't want to be in, looking for nothing in particular and with no goal other than passing time. I picked up a brassiere that may or may not fit, found they did not have towels like mine or shoes in a 5 1/2 or little girls' pants size 10 with straight-cut legs, and did not like the shape of the Turkish wine glasses which I wanted to buy just because they were from Turkey and no one drinks wine out of stemware there except at American hotel bars. But I put the bra in one hand and some candlesticks for the bedroom in the other and waited behind the other twenty masochists for the lonely cashier to set me free.

After that I returned, diminished, enervated, soulless, to the Best Buy, to be reunited with my Optimized and Personalized laptop. I waited in the Service line for a long time. Ahead at the counter was a schizophrenic lady in earthy clothes gesticulating madly at every word. Also much of the time when there weren't words accompanying her gestures. I asked the two guys in front of me if they thought this was the right line to wait in if I was just picking up a computer I'd already paid for, and one just stared at me and the other very annoyedly said 'I DON'T KNOW.'

I didn't actually need Service. On the other hand, I also didn't need an Online Order Pickup or whatever the other line by that one was. So, I thought it prudent to ask an employee in Computers where I would stand to pick up a computer I had bought an hour and a half ago that had just been Optimized. He said, That line there - you'll be first.

And I was. For a very long time. And many employees went by me, around me, in front of me, behind me, and almost through me, but whatever duties they were assigned to did not include helping the person in the vanguard of my imaginary line. I waited a very, very, very long time. After a while there weren't so many people coming in and out by me, which intuitively felt as though my hitherto slim chances of being served were now circling Nil or NaN. Finally, I, the person who never sends back a scorched sauce Mornay, who lets every pedestrian cross and every car cut in front of me that cares to, said, rather loudly, Is there anyone anywhere who could possibly help me just pick up a computer I bought today?

The guy who had been standing in front of me on the other side of the counter for the last twenty minutes came up and told me I wasn't waiting in a line, that that's the line there, and I said I was told to wait here and that's the only reason I was waiting here and could I just please get my computer and go home, it should be done by now could I just please get it so I can leave now please thank you.

And he did get it, and it took about 4.5 seconds, and I made it to my car on Level 2A, and the banged-up Beemer was still unmoved, still unseen by its uptight owner, and by now the parking lot wasn't so crowded and I made it out quickly and easily and took the counterintuitive route home and found the neighbor's cat waiting for me and my monkey candlesticks at the door. Next time, I swear I will buy anything, everything I need online. Even if it requires replacing things before they are absolutely 100 per cent completely no question about it dead dead dead, even if it means I don't get to break out the baling wire, kebab skewers, and yards of Velcro tape, I will do it, because I can put on some Ella Fitzgerald and silk pants, I can eat sushi or a bowl of chili or Little Debbies or Fiddle Faddle if I feel like it, I can burn sandalwood or Livani or both at the same time, or I could be dyeing my hair or setting my fingernail polish -- and all this without screaming fluorescent lights, poopy diapers in the wrong place, pushing, shoving, stripped brakes echoing off concrete, lines that aren't lines, 'Personalization' that is anything but, and the wretched sense that I've been had in some vague yet disturbing way at the end of all of it.

Who is a hero? He who conquers his urges. -The Talmud.

The Bed

I got my new bed. If you knew me, or knew of my bed, that sentence by itself would suffice. It would convey all the glory that is the bed, the deep and abiding joy I expect it to render eternally, and the nerves, fever, chills, and fear attending its acquisition and assembly.

But we did it. It took hours, but at some point late at night the bed was a bed. It is more difficult to put together than Ikea models because it is an antique Chinese Wedding Bed, and instead of screws and bolts and nails, and instructions in non-idiomatic English, everything is tongue and groove or maybe mortise and tenon and there is no instruction manual, only a picture from far away with a vaguely melancholic man looking up into the distance. And because it is wood and also old, even when 'identical' pieces exist, each one can only go one place. In many cases, though, the pieces are clearly not identical, and the assembler must figure out through physics and geometry where they are supposed to go. I was very pleased that my friend helping me had some of those at his disposal, because I do not.

A nice thing about coming across this bed (I could have looked for one, as there are many online and storefront places that sell them either regularly or intermittently, but that would have been dull, and it would have felt like cheating, too, just like when you Google your Internet date before you date him) is that I already had the Chinese Wedding Cabinet. The finish isn't the same, but I have restained nearly everything else I own, so if at any time I miss the mix of woodstain and incense aromas I can tackle the huge armoire and make them match more closely.

At this point, however, I am still scarred from the process. Getting the pieces out of the first place was long; wrapping them and stacking them in the huge, sour-milk-pong-reeking truck was tedious, and wedging them through my narrow stairs, back into the bathroom, and then forward into the bedroom was exhausting. Then there was the throwing old futons 'out of the way' and the laborious assembly itself. There is perhaps a two-inch clearance at best above the top rail, and two inches is higher than the bottom of the light fixture. Before, it had a shade. Now it is just an ugly metal thing hanging down with two spaces for lightbulbs glaring angrily from above. Nobody likes a crybaby, and furthermore I don't think anyone is going to spend much time staring at the ceiling when in that bed (not least because there is little light inside the bed), but it does look crap, sorry to say.

Also, however, as the second photo shows, there is a great deal else to capture the attention: curtains all around, reeds and willow at the entrance, a candle lantern hanging from the cross beams, and more pillows than there seem in the picture. It is assuredly de trop, but sublimely so, particularly on these long winter nights when it seems perfectly appropriate to spend hours reading by candlelight inside what amounts to an elevated indoor tent. Plus, there are a few inches of space on the platform between the mattress and the frame to store the books and pens or laptop, and in certain parts the wood goes up high enough to prevent them from falling off in the manner of cats and pillows in other regions of the bed.

Thus it is convenient as well as a visual and tactile feast. And not unsightly like other beds, where my books were visible either on the bed or fallen off to the side, or could hurt one if lurking unnoticed under the covers. This way nobody needs to know whom I sleep with. Although, I suppose, if they were close enough to see what books were around in the bedroom they would probably have a fairly good idea of at least part of that answer. And so far it is only the vagrant cat who has any notion at all of my bedtime reading.

Dollar Days at the Goodwill

I don't deny, as per my earlier comments, that the poor have appalling taste, regularly eat appalling food, and can be heard unrestrainedly and unrepentantly screaming at children in markets and alleyways from Bangor to Bangalore. They wear track suits and wife-beaters, raise and lower their vehicles in accord with the year's and their region's working-class trend, are known by diminutive versions of their names in adulthood, and track 'celebrity news' with the passion and vigor other groups reserve for changes in stock values or political causes. But as unconcerned as they may seem with the weighty matters of the day (with the exception of the latest celebrity diet), if an Armageddon of whatever sort comes tomorrow, I want to face it alongside the half-time hustlers, the tenement-dwelling single mothers and guys whose pants, if inflated, could confer safe trans-Pacific passage to an unpapered family of seven.

Why? Because what we have that the rich don't is Reality. Sometimes, when one is without money or pleasant options, there is, admittedly, an embarras de richesse, a too-lush assortment of Personal Growth Opportunities, in this arena for anyone's taste. It can be downright confusing at times, the Opportunity, yet again, to decide which bill(s) are most pleasingly left unpaid and which, in their pink or blue insistence visible beneath their undisturbed little white jackets (we don't open them until we have the money in our hand and need to figure out how many or few money orders we can get) are a better bargain to pay NOW, and thus avoid the recurring Fifty-Dollar Reconnection Fee. Or worse yet, the next step: the Fifty-Dollar Reconnection Fee coupled with the You're-Clearly-a-Bad-Risk-and-We-Don't-See-It-Getting-Any-Better four hundred-dollar deposit.

(As a sidenote, however, the Bad-Risk Deposit has its benefits that no rich person would consider. To the poor, however, once they manage to take it from the food and telephone budget and send it in, that deposit serves as a functioning savings account which, the next time the electricity bill is the one needing ignoring since the food and telephone now have to be paid, they can use against itself. At least until they have to pay it back up.)

Clearly, all this Reality results in outpourings of creativity. Not merely the shell game of 'Which bill shall we pay this month? - Ah, looks like the penny's under the T-Mobile this time, honey!' It's much broader, although the common denominator is, of course, money and its lack. Rich people have no idea how many times over how many months you can reinflate a punctured tire daily and still get to work and school. The wealthy would have no idea how to make a ten-dollar thrift-store child's bed into a brilliant settee. They don't know all the short cuts, long cuts, and beautiful side roads that I do, from having cars that wouldn't go over 45 MPH. Or that foam and fabric and a glue gun are all you need for a beautiful headboard.

Some definition is in order, though. I'm not talking about either the idle rich or the idle poor. The wealthy who do Put Their Pants on One Leg at a Time, Same's Us, yar, and the poor who go to their two or three jobs and try against exhaustion not to have everything completely suck when they are at home. Who don't want to use the food bank, and know which dollar store is better for plates and spatulas and which for socks and frozen food. The ones who make do with the smallish hole in the car roof and just adapt and at some point stop noticing it. Who have earned a deep and invaluable sense of perspective and an instinctive knack for prioritizing, in every area. The classic hymn declares that it's a gift to be simple. I think likewise it is a blessing to have been poor.