Friday night I went to dinner at the zen center. They have a regular thing on the 4th Friday and it was also an opportunity to meet the new practice leader, Y. I was very unimpressed with him. He came across as passive-aggressive, diffident, falsely humble; he started an argument about how much of a commitment he was being asked to make as practice leader, and kept whining "What do you want?" I got disgusted and left after a while, not even knowing if he would go through with this practice leader thing at all. Goodness knows they’ve managed to alienate potential practice leaders in the past at the last minute, but in this case I would blame him. He did show up this morning to lead zazen, though -- more about which in a moment.
Saturday was supposed to be my day of working on my book, but with Cris out of town for the weekend, I completely took advantage of slack atmosphere and wasted almost the entire day. I worked on my website, talked on the phone with Dina, watched the ballgame on TV, and exercised on the treadmill. The mouse on our new big ($$$$) Macintosh stopped working, to my disgust. Finally, in the evening, I went to my office and managed to crank out 800 words.
Sunday I went to church, to the ballgame, to the park (where every Sunday evening, tango students take over the Golden Gate Park Bandshell, a quietly bizarre sight in the fog that’s usually pouring in over the treetops) and to Sara’s to watch “The Sopranos” with a dozen others.
This morning I got up at 5:15, drove over to Hartford Street, went into the zendo and sat down. Just before starting time, a new guy named Lucky, who has come five or six times, came in and sat down too. No sign of Y. But just as Lucky got settled, Y. made a grand entrance. Then he confused everyone by going straight to the altar instead of sitting down. So we didn’t do the Robe Chant (the one that starts with the funny phrase, "Now we open Buddha's robe"). After that, everything proceeded pretty much as normal. But when it was all over, Y. made a grand exit to match his grand entrance and never came back to say hello or anything. We did soji on our own. So far, the guy has shown himself to be a complete pill.
This is just a few things I did over the weekend. A truly interesting account would say not only that Sunday afternoon was a gorgeous day to be at the ballpark, but explain what was gorgeous about it, the texture of the sopping nachos I ate, the way Marvin Benard went back to the dugout in anger after hitting a first-pitch tapper that must have been his first at-bat in three weeks, the sight of the dark red fireboat that floated past. It would explain how and why I take such pleasure and comfort in the warm friendliness at Sara's house, the usual amused expression on the face of Jeanne, who was briefly my editor last year, the way all the boys were sunburned after going to the Folsom St. Fair. It would say how much pleasure I took in the presence of the cats this weekend when I was around the house, it would say how messy I left the house this morning hoping that Cris is actually coming back tomorrow and not today, it would describe the quality of the light today and how the slightly hazy pearl-colored light this morning was actually more beautiful than yesterday's brilliant sun.
Instead, I report that I took two naps today: one in the morning, and a longer one in the afternoon.
Wednesday, September 25, 2002
Enter the delicate princess
So, about that living in San Francisco... Last night I went to the SF Opera with some co-workers (one of whom used to be their website guru, and who had scored some great tickets) to see Turandot. I was familiar with the piece, having seen it not only in person at the SF Opera a few years ago when this production premiered (with the David Hockney sets -- a sort of Chinese Dr. Seuss world in red and pale green), but from the repeated showings on PBS of the
Ferrrr-esh Aaairrrr!
For fans of Terry Gross and her ubiquitous NPR program, here's an interview in today's Minneapolis Star-Tribune.
I'm not among those who adore Gross. Her show plays too many greatest hits and repeats ("Here's our interview with so-and-so from 1989"), and she can get flummoxed just like any other interviewer. I heard her interview Ice T. as the L.A. riots were raging, back in 1992, and she basically asked him whether he and his fellow hip-hop artists were more or less responsible for the riots. To his credit, Ice T. managed not to laugh in her face or get really angry.
Speaking of the L.A. riots -- they took place just under ten and a half years ago -- here's an eyewitness account from a television helicopter cameraman, and here's Time writer Richard Schickel on How TV Failed to Get the Real Picture ($). That Schickel article costs money to read, but that page has many links to other sites with substantial post-mortems of the riots.
And speaking of the Time Warner/AOL/CNN empire, a story in today's Wall Street Journal said that CNN and ABC (owned by Disney, another huge media conglomerate) might merge their news operations. (No link -- the WSJ site is all pay.) I could get depressed about stories like that, but... It's all just Big Business. When Disney buys the New York Times, that's when I'll get worried.
Tuesday, September 24, 2002
She should have more faith in guys
If anyone in the future wants to understand how we used the slang expression "hook up," look no further. Here's a major blurt by some guy in New Jersey with these deathless words: "But yah, after me, her Prince Charming image just seemed to go out the window, like even the nicest guys would end up being assholes in the end, so she "dated" lots of guys, but it was mostly physical. She just kinda hooked up with a lot of guys, mostly older guys, she met on the internet and basically got to the point where anyone who was willing and able to perform oral sex on her, she'd hook up with a few times. If it wasn't for me, maybe she'd still have more faith in guys, because from what I can tell and what I've been told, it seems she's sorta afraid of a real relationship."
Yeah, seems sorta like that.
Like most of the blogs I look at, that one turned up at random on Blogger.com. That's how I found Uberchick, a young Korean-American Manhattanite who just got an exciting job as an intern working on a feature film. I read Uberchick almost every day, mostly for the vicarious experience of being young in New York. Also she is gorgeous, in a boring straight girl way -- that is, if that's her in those pictures (there's only one Asian woman, so I assume that's her).
Monday, September 23, 2002
Predestination
I got no writing done last weekend. Too busy having fun and spending money like -- and here's a phrase that creeps in from my quaint midwestern upbringing -- "like it was goin' out of style."
I guess it's all right for me to have slacked for a weekend, especially since Cris is supposed to be out of town next weekend and I should get a lot of writing done. If I know where I'm going with it, that is.
There are several approaches I could take to the problem I have with my novel -- the problem being that I don't know how to resolve certain character development issues with one of my main characters. One approach would be to make notes up the wazoo until I finally figure it out -- or exhaust myself in the process, as I did on Sep 7. Another approach is to completely change the ending I have planned. (My problem is that I have the ending planned, but I can't figure out how this character develops in such a way as to get to that ending. And I'm afraid that if I just write it the way it is, the decision the character makes at the end -- a decision I have pre-ordained -- will seem both unjustified and contradictory.)
But the approach I think I will try to take is to just write through the difficulty, trusting that by the time I get to that part of the story, I will be able to make things fit.
They're really very shy
Interesting intellectual property case:
British composer Mike Batt found himself the subject of a plagiarism action for including the song, "A One Minute Silence," on an album for his classical rock band The Planets. He was accused of copying it from a work by the late American composer John Cage, whose 1952 composition "4'33"" was totally silent.On Monday, Batt settled the matter out of court by paying an undisclosed six-figure sum to the John Cage Trust.
More at CNN.
In other news, a representative of Iceland Air is firing back at a perceived slur in last week's Sopranos' season opener, which depicted (not much of) a sex-and-drug orgy with Tony Soprano's crew and "the girls from Icelandic Airlines." Informed of this attack on America's Favorite Show, a friend countered, "They should be fucking grateful for the publicity."
Sunday, September 22, 2002
Credit cowabunga
Rather exhausted after two days of playing, first with D. -- we went to the Airport Doubletree and ate at Benihana's, sharing our table with some sorority girls who were celebrating one's birthday -- then with Cris and Nancy, with whom I managed to spend several thousand dollars for a complete new Mac G4 system. We got the works -- flatscreen monitor, printer-fax-scanner-copier, and a wireless network. All of it went on plastic, needless to say -- which just goes on the house line of credit. Now I'm working on the new computer. Quite an experience. We actually bought and paid for a copy of Microsoft Office. I never thought I'd find myself doing that. I rationalize it by supposing, I've been stealing software from Bill Gates for the last 13 years, the least I could do is pay for it once.
We've really been spending the money lately. First the new truck, now this. We're also getting new office furniture. If we were opening a new business or something, I could understand, but...
The only thing I can't figure out about this new system is the way IE 5.2 is behaving on Mac OS 10.2. It's wrapping text on web pages in a very unpredictable manner -- for example the word "girls" in the first paragrah, on my screen, the "girl" part is at the end of one line and the "s" is on the next. But not every word or line behaves this way. It's a mystery.
Now I'm going to need to concentrate on work for about two years and not get laid off -- maybe I'll have a chance of actually paying off these credit bills.
Friday, September 20, 2002
A really bad sign
Bush has announced a new American policy of pre-emptive strikes, whenever we feel like it, whether or not we have support from the U.N. or anybody else. So let me depart from my usual self-obsessed natterings to complain about it. Cris gave me the news as soon as I walked into the kitchen this morning. Before I'd had my coffee, she pointed out that this puts us in the league with military empires of the past, from Rome to the U.S.S.R., whose similar policies led to their eventual downfall.
Of course, they didn't have the internet and Starbucks.
I read once that the people who handle mail and messages in the White House count support and opposition like this: If a handwritten letter counts as 1, then a letter off a laser printer counts as .1, unless it's a form letter, in which case it counts as .01. This is because they figure that if you took the time to actually sit down and write a letter by hand, you feel pretty strongly about an issue. By this reasoning, an email message counts as about .0001.
So sit down and write a letter, by hand, today. The address, and the new policy, are both at the White House website. If you're not ready to write a letter now, you will be by the time you see that website.
Thursday, September 19, 2002
Tissue-san arrived!
Japanese consumer culture, which is utterly perverse, is always good for a laugh. I don't know how or why, but something about the modern Japanese mentality insists on fetishizing the strangest things. Consider Tissue-san. (NB: if it asks you to install the Japanese language pack, just hit cancel. You can still enjoy the resulting page.) Evidently someone has made a line of products based on several comix characters that are.... boxes, packs, or other containers of tissue paper. The products include a tissue paper box hanger, a little post-its holder that looks like a box of tissues, and the inevitable notebooks and pens.
If you click home, you will see similar product lines based on comix characters that are: cheese; bunny angels; beer-drinking ducks; chestnuts; jelly; and "mixed cats."
I wish I were better versed in whatever discipline or knowledge -- anthropology, psychology, or whatever -- that would allow me to understand the origins of this insanely strong Japanese drive for the cute. I guess it's just infantilism, commercialized ad infinitum. In any case, it makes American popular culture look positively adult in comparison.
Wednesday, September 18, 2002
Abyss
As I mentioned in the last entry, Cris loaded up the pickup truck full of junk we'd been meaning to cast out for years. (In fact, this is one of the main reasons we bought a pickup truck this summer: there was no other way to ever get all this junk to the dump. The other reason is that the truck was red and a really good deal.) But she was frustrated in her attempts to actually go to the dump because I had the truck key and I was in New York.
So today I came home after lunch and got in the truck and went over to Cesar Chavez St. to get a helper. Cesar Chavez St. is where all the undocumented workers hang out hoping to get day work. At 1:30 there were still a few hopeful souls, and I snagged one of them. Off we went.
The San Francisco dump is located at the very south end of the city. I exited the freeway just before the causeway that crosses a corner of the bay near Brisbane, on an ominously named exit called Tunnel Avenue (the name refers to a railway tunnel used by the Caltrain commuter line) and follow the signs to a vast collection of buildings, crushers, ramps and scales. Following the frantic hand signals of several dump workers, who had to divert me from going on the scale reserved for newspaper recycling and from using the ramp reserved for garbage trucks, I finally managed to get weighed. Then it was up a curving road to a huge hangar built into the side of a hill. Inside was a hellish scene, with trucks and vans backing up and casting their refuse into a pit about fifty yards long. Inside the pit, a large bulldozer moved things around. Overhead, mist descended from a dozen nozzles, I suppose to keep the dust down, but it created a fetid atmosphere that made the whole place look smoky.
We dumped our refuse and escaped from the building and got the empty truck weighed again. It cost $44 for all that junk, including a lot of dirt from the garden we didn't have any place for. Then I dropped my helper back off on Cesar Chavez.
Tonight: Berkeley Symphony concert, just one in a whole series of classic music events this month celebrating composer Olivier Messiaen.
Monday, September 16, 2002
From the plane yesterday
Saturday I promised myself that I could do some sightseeing in New York if I got a few thousand words under my belt, and so after eating breakfast, I sat down at 9:30 and indeed wrote the first part of chapter 20. Despite my cavils last week, I did know what I wanted to start with the in the chapter, and so I wrote that: 20a and 20b, and I got a good start on 20c. That came out to 2500 words -- a fair day, though I did not manage to advance the plot much. Now that I'm in the second-to-last lap, comparatively, I'm conscious that every word should be advancing the plot, and I fell somewhat short of that. But the important thing is to finish the first draft by hook or by crook.
So I wrapped that up around 1:00 and went out. I did something that was perhaps a little foolish: I went to something in the far north of Manhattan -- the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, and then Riverside Church -- followed by something in the far south -- the Staten Island Ferry. By the time the latter departed, the sun was setting, and as it was a hazy day, the view left something to be desired. But you could still see the sights, it just wasn't crystal clear the way it was in May when Cris and I came in.
I had always been a little curious about Staten Island, supposing that it couldn't possibly be so close to Manhattan and be completely boring. And yet it was. And the air was warm and very sticky. The most interesting thing was a brand-new class A minor league stadium of the Yankees. I went back to the ferry terminal and had to wait quite a long time in an airless concrete hall for the return. But the return ride was wonderful, of course. I don't know that it's ever not wonderful. It was night and tourists were taking flash pictures of the skyline from miles away.
When I got back to shore I decided it would be just too uncomfortably hot down on the subway platform, and looking at my pocket-sized laminated map I saw that the M6 bus would take me up 6th Avenue, which is also where the PATH train runs. So I got on that. What I didn't realize is that on the way to 6th Ave. it would also take me up Church St. directly past the WTC site, which I had been avoiding.
Apparently there are no more forbidden areas; you can go right up to the fence and look in; in fact, they have built a special fence in places to allow this. Earlier I overheard someone saying that the only benefit of looking at the site, now that it has become entirely a construction site, is to get a sense of the vastness of the area that had been destroyed, that you couldn't get that from TV. But I had gotten it from TV.
What was impressive, however, was the high iron fence around St. Paul's; every inch was covered, and I'm not exaggerating, with tributes, messages, flowers, banners, and pictures and so forth --for example, I saw a t-shirt hung at the top of the fence, reading LACKAWANNA FIRE DEPT. The sheer amount of the tributes and so forth, along with the knowledge that this had been happening for months, really was rather impressive.
At the airport the next day, I bought a New York Times; it's one of the first Sunday Times I've gone through since the beginning of the summer, when I changed our subscription to no-Sunday. There were a bunch of memorable pieces.
In the Arts & Leisure section there was an interesting article on Jerry Seinfeld, a standup comedian who became incredibly successful and wealthy through a television show during the 1990s. I've never liked him or his show, and the article offers a clue why. The piece is about how Seinfeld decided, after the TV show ended in 1998, to completely reconstruct his act after going on the road and being devastated when he launched into a familiar bit and a cutting voice came from the audience; "Heard it!" The article went on to describe a day in which Seinfeld, more or less on a dare, offered to spend a few hours with the journalist gathering "impressions" of his own neighborhood -- the Upper West Side -- and from them construct a "bit" that he would then try out at a comedy showcase that night. That part was interesting, especially the comedian's shop-talk, which I may readily mine for my novel.
But the article also contained a strong clue as to why I've never liked Seinfeld's persona (regardless of whether or not he is reconstructing his "act" from the ground up, as the article said, his persona clearly remains the same). At the beginning of the piece, he pulls up in front of the designated meeting spot in a limo; at the end of the piece he departs the same way. This suggestion of a god descending via a chariot to spend a few hours with mortals, and then reascending at the end of the day -- it must have been intentional on the part of the writer -- exposes the subject's basic arrogance. That's why I've never liked the guy; he gives off an air that he's doing you a favor by showing up.
On the plane, I ate the miserable and tiny "dinner," which consisted of about three ounces of roast beef with a puffy dike of mashed potatoes separating the meat from a few bits of vegetables. I felt so contemptuous of this collection, and of the generally crabby attitude of the flight crew, that I considered teasing them by saying "Look! Look! A vegetable! Did you know it was in there?" But I didn't. One doesn't joke on planes these days, especially on flights from Newark to San Francisco departing just a few days after the anniversary of you-know-what.
Instead, I purchased one of their little bottles of wine, which affected me strongly enough that it reminded me of an incident a few days ago that I had forgotten about. One of the writers brought into the office a container of soggy spanikopita that must have been left over from the weekend -- this was Wednesday. Just before I thrust a large piece into my mouth, I noticed a spot of purple mold on the bottom of it; but it was too late. Down the hatch. For the next three hours I felt slightly high, as if I'd taken a very small amount of acid.
A man in the seat across the aisle and up a little was watching a movie, or a portion of a movie, on his laptop. I'd never actually seen anyone do this before, and the fact that he was a classic nerd -- an overweight Asian man in a polo shirt -- made it seem more ridiculous. The movie -- that helicopter Vietnam movie starring Mel Gibson, who is ubiquitous these days -- actually had large English subtitles easily visible from my seat. They blew up a California ravine that was supposed to be Vietnam, although the line of hills in the background was so obviously an oak-covered California hillside that it seemed even more ludicrous.
Mel Gibson looks very manly in a steel helmet.. A guy gets shot and says calmly "I'm glad I could die for my country." What shit! The motherfucking Hollywood war-mongers.
Friday, September 13, 2002
Valley of the Shadow of Death
When I visit New York, I always swing by the International Center for Photography to see what's on. In addition to a big Garry Winogrand exhibition [NYT review] that includes his famous photo taken at the 1964 World's Fair, they have some WTC photos taken by the only working photojournalist who was killed there on Sep. 11, Bill Biggart. Biggart was covering the WTC disaster when he was killed in the second tower collapse. All his film was destroyed, but the chip in his digital camera escaped unharmed. The ICP displayed the resulting stunning images.
There are two utterly remarkable pictures. In one, the collapsing south tower is seen in juxtaposition to the north tower (which was the first to be attacked, but the last to fall); an unscathed portion of the latter fills the left half of the frame while the right half is utter chaos -- it's like a Before and After shot all in one image. The other unbelievable photo is the last one he ever made; the time stamp on the digital image indicates he was killed literally seconds after he took it. It shows the smashed Marriott hotel after it was hit by the south tower and before it was utterly destroyed moments later by the north tower.
I didn't argue with myself very long about whether Biggart showed courage or just stupidity by getting so close to the devastation after one tower had fallen and it should have been clear that the second one could also go. There was a quotation on the wall from Robert Capa that Biggart is said to have used as his guideline -- something like "If your pictures aren't good enough, you're not close enough." To the extent he was obeying that maxim, Biggart obviously showed true courage in venturing into danger to get the best pictures.
Thursday, September 12, 2002
Hug a fireman
It would seem everyone has had it up to here with the coverage of the Sep. 11 anniversary. But this morning NPR was still going at it, not just with coverage of Bush's speeches and the other events yesterday, but still with the stories of firefighters and so forth. So in that spirit...
I went into New York again yesterday afternoon. I tried to get cute and take a ferry instead of PATH, but the ferries were disrupted just then by the visit of Shrub to the WTC site. When I finally did get on a ferry, it took me to the 38th St. terminal near the Javits Convention Center. Despite the delay and the detour, the ferry ride was glorious -- it was a beautiful sunny day, the humidity of the previous two days was gone, and it was very windy, but in the late afternoon, the view of the Manhattan skyline lit up by the setting sun was out of this world.
I got downtown and went to the 9/11 service at St. Luke's in the Fields. So I've now heard three 9/11 sermons and I finally realize what is so dissatisfying about them. They're all directly addressed to congregations that have actually lost people, congregations with people who barely made it out alive or who otherwise directly experienced the events of That Day. And sitting in the pew listening to this extremely low-energy, dry sermon -- it wasn't just that they were Episcopalian, I mean this woman was speaking as if she were still in shock -- I realized what was going on. New Yorkers think the attacks of Sep. 11 happened to them. They feel a sense of ownership. Similarly, but even more strongly, the well-organized and vocal Family Members also feel a sense of victimhood. They think they totally own this event. It not only happened to them -- it is still happening to them.
I'm not going to start a rant about victimhood, but as a Californian, I have to tell New Yorkers: that attack was not directed at you. It was directed at the whole country; the WTC and the Pentagon were just symbols. And I say that not because I feel a sense of ownership of the event or a need to control how it is remembered (as the Family Members seem determined to do) -- I say that because the conflict between fanatical religious fundamentalism and capitalist democracy is not a goegraphical conflict. It's not like the World Series where everyone pretends the competition is two cities actually duking it out like Athens and Sparta. It's a conflict of religious fundamentalism against liberal tolerance and feminism, of which New York is a worldwide symbol.
And there's something else that is completely ignored in the sermons I've heard: any notion that the listeners bear some responsibility for what happened. After a year, I would expect the ministers of these liberal New York congregations to reflect, at least a little, on the whole symbolism of the World Trade Center and what it might mean to desperately impoverished third world people. Yes, for some it might have been a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow: come to New York and get rich too. That is surely what's meant by Shrub's decision to give his big speech on Ellis Island -- he's trying to distinguish the good brown people (they want to become just like us and get rich) from the bad ones (they hate us for being rich and want to punish us for it). But for the terrorists who executed the hijackings and crashes of jets into the WTC, it was a symbol of U.S. greed and decadence. Nobody talks about this, at least not the ministers who are speaking directly to people who worked there.
I would say: "We have to get beyond our view of ourselves as innocent victims and think about what American greed and decadence means to the Third World. There's a reason they attacked -- not once but twice (in 1993 as well as 2001) -- the World Trade Center. It's because the Third World is enraged by American arrogance and by the fact that we use up more than our share of the world's resources, as much as by our famously tolerant society. Yes, it was an attack on our values, but at least as much upon our negative values -- greed, selfishness, arrogance -- as upon the positive values we cherish -- tolerance, liberalism, equality."
Afterwards, I went for a little walk and found myself passing a firehouse on Sixth Avenue. A crowd that was standing outside with candles erupted in applause as the fire engine came streaming out, siren blaring. It turned out to be a dry run: the fire engine simply circled the block, then parked in the street, and the crowd came into the truck bay and there were a few prayers by a Catholic priest. I overheard a woman say, "I just want to hug a fireman!" That seemed to sum up the day for me, and I headed back to my hotel.
Wednesday, September 11, 2002
And speaking of sick families
This AP photograph of a touching family scene in Michigan is mind-boggling. It appeared on sfgate.com's "Day in Pictures" feature. The kid is not afraid of the horse -- he just prefers watching TV from inside the coffee table while the horse, or pony, whatever it is, falls asleep with its head nuzzled between the kid's mother's tits. What the fuck is up with that?
This just proves how wrong people are when they say all the weirdos are in California. For every California weirdo, there are ten people like this in flyover country who outdo anything we can.
A lot of life to live
On this day when everyone is being asked to pause in memory of last year's events, I received a piece of email from a cousin. She wrote another relative about her father -- my uncle -- saying:
He really hasn't fully recovered from his surgery in May. He's been depressed, very fatigued and really out of it. Doesn't want to do anything (computer, weekly letters, crosswords). All he does is go for meals and sleep. He really needs some prayers. He's got a lot of life to live.
Now, does that sound to you like someone who "has a lot of life to live"? Not to me -- it sounds like somebody's who's given up and is ready to die. The man is in his late 80s or early 90s. Give him a break.
This is relevant today not just because I received it today, but because it illustrates how the attitudes of family members -- to use that phrase we are hearing a lot this week -- so strongly determine what then becomes the reality for those who have died -- or, in this case, are about to die. The "family members" of those who died one year ago are constantly heard from or seen on TV, doing everything from weeping to strenuously arguing some scruple having to do with "honoring the memory" of the dead. For example, a recent article in the most recent Time magazine mentioned that "family members" were upset that New York was already rebuilding the subway through the WTC site, that doing so somehow dishonored their dead. Can we wake the fuck up? What do these people want -- for the entire city to stop in its tracks (no pun intended) until every single person has emotionally processed the events of a year ago?
As for my uncle, what gives his daughter the right to decide he has a lot of life to live? If it were up to me, if the guy doesn't show any signs that he wants to go on clipping coupons and doing crosswords for the next ten or twenty years, then put him in hospice care. He's ready to go.
Clearly I'm more upset by this than I really need to be. I think it's because, at age 46, I view time as so precious. Every moment I have, I'm writing, or seeing a close friend, or exercising, or doing nothing intentionally.
Now, I can't claim any moral superiority over my uncle, whose time before his surgery was cheerfully writing "weekly letters" to every relative he could think of, the contents of which were a sort of mix between a Paul Harvey rehash of news and sports and a treacly religious tract. I can't claim my own work and leisure is any more important in the scheme of things (although I must personally feel it is).
But if I ever completely stop doing anything, and just shuffle between the table and the bathroom and the bed, I'm done, okay?
Tuesday, September 10, 2002
Dinner with Marilyn
Yesterday I changed hotels, moving into a Days Inn very near the Hilton I was staying at. "Very near" here means a mile down an access road past a mixture of car parks and weed-strewn toxic former industrial sites. Still right across a six-lane highway from the airport, and the cheaper Days Inn has much worse sound insulation and a noisier air conditioner. So it's earplugs at night.
After work yesterday I checked in and took a shower, then drove (I have a rental car now) into Manhattan via the Holland Tunnel to have dinner with my friend Marilyn. We've known each other for more than ten years, since she first submitted her work to Frighten the Horses. Since then she's gone on to publish a terrific book of erotic novellas, Neptune and Surf, and to have stories published in a multitude of anthologies. We had dinner at an Italian place and had a *wonderful* fun conversation about writing, and about various deals and writing jobs she's up for, and gossip about other writers and publishers and so forth. The usual enjoyable shop talk of pornographers. It was a good deal of driving back and forth -- about 40 minutes each way, though the traffic was light -- but totally worth it. And we're going to have dinner again, maybe on Friday.
Tonight I'm going into town again to see another film -- Kurosawa's samurai version of "Macbeth," called Throne of Blood, starring of course Toshiro Mifune.
I came back too late and too tired to check email or blog last night. Also the Days Inn has a much more restrictive policy on phone calls. The Hilton starts charging you a high rate on local calls only after an hour; the Days Inn starts after ten minutes, so it's hardly worth trying to dial in.
Tomorrow is the Sep. 11 anniversary, and I was surprised that there was no big recognition scheduled for my company's New Jersey office, which lost somebody on one of the planes that day. (It was the plane they crashed in Pennsylvania. At first everyone was claiming that our co-worker must have been one of the brave passengers who rushed the hijackers. Then it came out months later that actually he was in a toilet the whole time talking on a cell phone to his wife.) In fact, people seem determined to come to work that day. When I heard this, I remarked tactfully, "Oh, and here I thought everyone would be home lying down with a cool cloth over their eyes."
Driving into the office this morning I listened to AM radio. I heard a long account of Sep. 11 from a firefighter -- articulate and moving (and obviously polished somewhat, if only from having been told so many times). Finally after the long monologue, the host said something like, "Thank you so much for that, Jerry -- and may I say if I could kill them all, I would." That kind of broke the solemn mood. It turned out to be Don Imus.
Sunday, September 08, 2002
Holy &@^&@# $%!*
I spent Sunday in New York, sightseeing as it were, but since this is the week of the first anniversary of "9/11" -- as it's now being referred to in shorthand by almost everyone -- many of the sights and activities have to do with that day. I did three things today, and all of them referred directly to Sept. 11.
First I rode the train into Manhattan and walked a few blocks to St. Bart's Episcopal Church, a big ritzy edifice hard by the Waldorf-Astoria hotel. As part of their remembrance, they had a children's choir singing Britten's Missa Brevis, and the rector preached on St. Paul's exhortation to love your enemies.
Then it was off to Queens to the American Museum of the Moving Image, where they were showing a series of documentaries about, what else, Sept. 11. I saw part of a film called Circling Zero: We See Absence and then the entire HBO documentary In Memoriam: New York City 9/11/01.Despite its over-reliance on the perspective of then-Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, it not only tells the story of the day very well but has an extraordinary collection of footage from every perspective. It doesn't shy away from anything; you hear every utterance of "Holy shit!!" and see bodies falling from the towers.
But the most heartbreaking images, curiously, were still photographs of people holding up MISSING fliers, their faces contorted in anguish, still trying to deal with the obvious fact that nobody was coming back from that hellhole. The film will air again this week on HBO. I found it very good.
Then it was back to Manhattan and Lexington Ave., where I attended a church service that was expressly a memorial for Sept. 11. held in St. Peter's Lutheran, a hyper-modern space in the basement of the Citicorp Center. I must say that the Episcopalians beat the Lutherans today; Midwestern-tinged earnestness was less appropriate than a bit of distance, a tiny smidgen of irony, and Benjamin Britten.
But at the (literal) end of the day, I have to say that I found the experience of going to a museum and watching a documentary about Sept. 11 a more effective way of dealing with my memories of that day than going to church. Of course, I experienced the fateful day itself entirely on television from San Francisco. If I'd been here in NYC, maybe I'd prefer to be in church. And I will be in church again, on the day itself, when I'll go to a Greenwich Village church near the Zone.
That's my exciting day of sightseeing. One thing about yesterday -- I spent the whole day in my hotel room trying to work on my novel, and I have to say I had a lousy day of writing. I wrote 2000 words of notes but only 400 words of fiction, and in the latter made no progress at all, but merely added on to an existing chapter. I'm forced to face the fact that I'm at a turning point in the writing of this novel, where I really have to work out some issues with one of the main characters. I won't be making much progress til I do.
Saturday, September 07, 2002
Another east coast trip
I'm in Newark, N.J., halfway between my company's office in central New Jersey and Manhattan, at the Airport Hilton. Airport Hiltons are great -- they're cheap and extremely well kept up. The L.A. Airport Hilton is *very* ritzy; the fact that it's right next to a sleazy strip joint and a Carl's Jr. doesn't matter. In fact, those are positive amenities compared to the Newark Airport Hilton, which is next to a huge cemetery and a Budweiser brewery. (You've seen the latter if you've ever flown into Newark; it's right across the highway from the airport, a huge brick edifice.)
The hotel does have a free shuttle bus to Newark Penn Station, and last night after eating dinner in my room, I took a PATH train to Greenwich Village. I walked east along Houston St. and Prince St. and went to see the new Godard film, Eloge d’Amour (“In Praise of Love” is the American title), at the Angelika Film Center. For me, going to New York means going to see films that haven't come to San Francisco yet -- I feel so cultured doing it.
There was a moment of levity in the lobby, where they make you line up for each film that is going to be shown. While we were standing in line, another film was starting, and they announced over the loudspeaker, "This line is only for 'In Praise of Love.' If you have tickets for 'Amy's Orgasm,' please come right to the door. Again, 'Amy's Orgasm,' come right up. 'Amy's Orgasm!!'" the guy added unnecessarily, apparantly just because he liked saying it. Chuckles in the lobby. Then when we were seated and before the film started, a young man engaged me in conversation, which I thought was very odd and unusual for New York. He asked me if I were French and started talking to me about Godard movies. He wasn’t hitting on me because his girlfriend had just gone to the restroom -- maybe he just wanted to practice his French. Anyway, I’m so anti-social that we stopped talking as soon as his girlfriend came back from the restroom. If I were more outgoing, I might have turned it into a real conversation with them.
When the film ended, I jumped into a taxi and was taken back to a PATH station, and the train came within five minutes and soon I was back in Newark. Even though it was 12:45 when I got to my room, ESPN was showing the Giants game from San Francisco, so I watched the end of that -- a scoreless tie won in the bottom of the 9th after a double and a single -- with pleasure.
Thursday, September 05, 2002
Meanwhile, in California
In this bizarre L.A. Times story about a forest fire, a delusional woman who says she "protected the forest" for many years is prevented by cops from shooting herself as the flames advance. Investigators say that "candles associated with a ritual involving the use of fire and animal sacrifices started the fire."
Wednesday, September 04, 2002
I'd rather be in San Francisco
The annual event known as Burning Man has just ended. I have never been seriously tempted to go, seeing as how I generally dislike camping even in the most sylvan environments and cannot comprehend doing it in the middle of a dust cloud for a week with no running water. And every year that goes by, I get farther and farther away from being the type of person who goes to such things or ever would.
But in fact, I was never the type of person to go. I've always been bad at parties, hated costumes, and especially bad at fitting in to scenes where everyone was ever-so-cool. I have no technical knowledge to contribute to such an event, and no artistic flair. I'm just a writer.
That's not to say I don't love going to the desert, taking drugs in the desert, or hanging out with weirdo pierced alterno-gender people. But not tens of thousands of them all at once -- a situation Cris loves to characterize as a "cluster fuck." (Hyphenation optional.) Too much stimulation. For me, the whole point of going to the desert is to remove all the stimulation that assails me every day. (Bloink! Another IM just arrived.)
Not that the desert is empty or desolate (although the "playa" where Burning Man takes place reportedly is) -- it's full of life. But it's also full of silence and absent any high-speed internet connections. At least for the time being, thank God.
Tuesday, September 03, 2002
An interesting stand taken by a small-town editor
The editor of a small town newspaper -- The State College (Penn.) Centre Daily Times -- has decided to drop the weekly syndicated column of arch-conservative columnist Ann Coulter. She's the columnist who is famous for being blond and for writing a piece in the aftermath of Sept. 11 that the U.S. "should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity."
After a huge negative backlash against that original blatt, Coulter was dropped by the conservative National Review, which published it. But that only seemed to encourage her and to strengthen her base with the far right.
The most flaming conservatives need someone like her -- young, blond, attractive, and female -- to confound liberals and act as a lightning rod. But with the Sep. 11 anniversary approaching, the stand taken by the small-town editor might be more significant. It could be -- I hope it is -- a sign of a real backlash against Coulter that will leave her high and dry.
Of course, the internet, not to mention right-wing talk radio, means that no one ever really goes away; Alan Keyes and Oliver North are as popular as ever with the far right, and I'm sure the stations that carry their b.s. would love to stick Coulter on their rotation as well, if they haven't already. But it's a small sign of hope that the flyover-country mainstream is willing to draw the line someplace.
Sunday, September 01, 2002
I said watch it!
After spraining my ankle on Wednesday evening, I was back up and about on Saturday, carefully stepping around and going so far as to walk almost a mile on city streets. I felt that as long as I was really careful where and how I stepped, I'd be okay. So this afternoon (Sunday) I forgot about being careful for a minute and ka-ping! I turned it a little. So it was back on the couch with ice for another 90 minutes.
I sat on the couch, during a hot afternoon, watching the Albert Brooks - Sharon Stone movie The Muse. It's about a screenwriter, his wife, and his colleagues -- cameo appearances from everyone from Rob Reiner to Martin Scorcese -- who believe that a mysterious blond woman actually has supernatural powers to break their creative blocks. She is supposedly one of the genuine muses of classical mythology, updated to modern-day Hollywood. It was amusing enough, no pun intended, but as soon as the upshot started, I turned it off. Two psychologists show up to say the woman is actually an escaped lunatic. I had no desire to watch that sentimental, dumbass ending.
Speaking of writer's block, I haven't got it. In the last five weeks, I've written two whole chapters of my novel, finishing one yesterday. I'm still on pace to finish the first draft by the end of the year, which would be such a relief. I've been working on this thing since summer 1998, and I want to get it over with and get on to all the other ideas I have. Of course I realize I probably still have at least a solid year of rewriting to go on this thing before it's anywhere near publishable. For one thing, it's twice too long -- already over 115,000 words and at least six chapters to go, the first draft will come in at around 150,000 words. Seventy-five thousand would be much more like it.
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