hopescrolling on Weds Nov 4

David sent that word, as excited as everyone else in the country by today's news of the blue tsunami  

that lemon bubble soda I enjoyed at PeekABowl yesterday of course was loaded with caffeine, maybe green tea or black at the base.  realized this about 3 am after a sleepless night of sorts

we actually got up at 6 this morning, we were both awake with the light

Fagan chiro later this morning;  not going to go back to yesterday's guy; will compare notes today and then write up my little DFW piece on what chiro is all about now that they've even added acupuncture needles!!  I guess that is a step in a good direction?  

Visit with Tom Fagan as interesting and strange as yesterday's with Jim.  I thought yesterday he was probably a wrestler in high school or college, given his manner and body type.  Sure enough today it came out in the autobiographical chat that followed the session that Tom had been a college wrestler.  "Flipped over onto my head and had to stop but found my career.  Coach sent him to a chiropractor.  He healed him and became his mentor and told him he would make a great chiropractor and from there on it was the career path he followed.  College in Georgia for it, then a practice in the South End of Boston for about twenty years.  Moved up to Meredith ten? years ago.  His son is looking most willingly into a military college prep school because he agrees with his parents that such a structure would be the best help he could find for his severe adhd.  Tom grew up in the Bronx, Irish family, as he looks, sandy hair, bright red-white features.  College at Manhattan College.  Isn't that a Christian Brothers college?  And there we were talking about St LaSalle's educational philosophy, classroom memories, the few old brothers who were around campus when he was there.  Both guys had similar routines, both used the two electric gizmos:  the tapper and the pounder to work on those wonky joints between bone and flesh which need to be corrected back into alignment for the whole body to get back into standing and moving as well as it can.  The similarity with a car that needs oil and tuning.  Robb Report big magazine celebrating luxorious living and magazine about specialty cars too.  

tele visit with Gilani most disappointing.  No real news or development.  Rick Chavez from TLC did a good visit to 3601.  Heat set at 66.  No need to change the filter.  

Tues Nov 3

big day

taking back my skepticism about Disappearers.  Of course he did it all himself, James.  Just like Joyce and Faulkner and Lowry and Proust and Musil and Handke and Garcia Marquez.  Of course it has no neat finale old style other than the rediscovery, the recognition of one survivor for another survivor.  Not unlike me and Jim thirty years later and me and Greg thirty years later.  What was that that we went through from our high school four years and then three and more years after that, after those?  It may have looked like X from the outside, from the audience looking at the scrim and stage on which we played, but for the actors themselves trying to embody and bring alive the script under the mad direction of the whole company it was an entirely different experience, overwhelming tornado of experiences.   Isn't this what art is always trying to show us, demonstrate for us, over and over and over, we are so dense and dull of impossibility to learn.  We never really get it.  Hive defense keeps us as shielded as possible.  Only a few arrows can hit the center of the arrow slits and penetrate into the tower, the black space where we don't even know if anyone in there will be hit or not.  

Have been wired and tense this morning, as though a huge cup of coffee or something.  Must be the tension in the whole nation today.  300 million of us saying WTF will tomorrow be like.

Fake ad of genius showing Jeffrey Epstein endorsing the whole republican ticket.  on X  

how much of Mieville to tear off and take with me today?  maybe none, just the rest of Stasiuk will be enough.  And wear to eat, oops, see, where to eat today?  Poke bowl or Yamas or somewhere further away from everything. Where is a truck stop with sandwiches I have not stepped into for a while?  

paid the bernalillo county taxes via apple card   no new deposits  phone call from New Delhi last night about the Allianz insurance claim, second such call, real or quasi-real?  

now I see what the argument about seed oils is about---back cover of the book by James 
Allen Beckett---"Spain didn't get healthy on purpose.

In 1981, industrial oil sold as food killed more than 300 Spaniards and hospitalized 20,000. A nation recoiled — and kept olive oil at the center of its kitchen while the rest of the developed world switched to soybean, corn, and sunflower.

Forty years later, the results are impossible to ignore. The lowest coronary bypass rate in the EU. The lowest breast cancer incidence in the Western world. Women who outlive their American counterparts by five years.

It was never just the Mediterranean diet. It was what Spain mostly avoided eating. But the protection is eroding in real time, as sunflower oil becomes more widely adopted."

surely it is just that yesterday's meal was too salty!!  F'ing chef's pot pie at 680 calories high butter and higher salt, plus I added in the paneer from Amy.  a morning salt headache.  touch of jam to counter plus a wee aspirin  

ok here it is on page 203  the book telling us exactly what's at stake and what to keep looking for  "Again he rued every word he wrote ruined what he wrote."  and " What happened at the hidden camp in the Johor forest?  Of which he could not write.  Repeat, repeat this question."

and is The Rainbow and the Rose a real book?  or a book only in this book?  pretty easy to guess at this point, the latter.  

visit to Lakes Region Chiropracty went well.  Fascinating, actually.  My neck actually feels better.  They use acupuncture needles now too.  Back still has some tensions.  What will be even more fascinating will be to visit the younger guy tomorrow and see what he is like and what he will do.  Then on Thursday get the imaging done at midstate and compare that with all of this too.  Great distractions from the elections today.  

235  "He abjured such stuff here though it did rouse something in him.  What would you call this feeling? "  "secret sharer in  his room"  ha, sure enough, Conrad all over again--Malaysia

 

Sunday 1.2 clocks go back tonight

after that comparisons I'm even more sure I'm maybe not in the mood just now for Lippens.  

Stay with the tome by Miéville after I swore last month no more tomes.  Maybe they are after all quite comforting and secure.  Some posting as such about diving into Vollmann's work.  If the work is worth it, slighting the lesser voices feels less a problem.  

Soon as I say Lippens not for me I can hear someone else saying, uh huh, you think not?  he was born in the 1970s.  

Might be more in my line of ways of telling.  Marlon James's great book still to me has the whiff of committee work; a bit of hokeyness due to publishing nobs telling him to do this, do that, pump up this, got with that, as in Joe's final book guided carefully from concept to screen by the creative team that launched it; hired him as a hired gun; controlled the whole product as the great creators---i.e. market lasers---they knew they were.  Target?  Booker?  ok, do this, not that, screw this up more.  Maybe I'm too suspicious, too cynical.  The D book is just so strong and violent you wonder if a real person is remembering it or even trying to imagine it.  

Long chat yesterday with the driver we met on the airport shuttle.  He in his signature fedora, not a fedora exactly, but what to call it?  brown felt with brim, like an alpine guide's hat?  His name---Arden Powers.  I had to ask, told him mine.  We recognized our faces and the context.  He quite working for the shuttle.  Did not like the new young (40s) owner who made the drivers wash and clean the cars immediately when bringing them into the garage after a trip.  He's started at private consultanship on weight training for oldsters (he's 76?) at the gymn near him in Bristol---Kilter. Right there at the light.  Has skied since he was two.  Weight trained all his life too.  More fit always than his brothers.  Not a keto diet but a high protein one, especially now as we age.  And here is the puzzle for me---as we age the human body gets less and less successful and absorbing, utilizing, protein.  And so we must give it lots more!  Why?Why not follow the body's wishes and give it what it wants?

Did not ask him that.  He wanted to say hello to Va.  She was at the customer office bench.  She walked to pharmacy and back.  A blister on her right foot this morning at a new location.

Those new Tate's holiday shortbreads have a suspicious margariney aftertaste!  

One chiropractor's appointment on Tuesday.  Maybe another on Wednesday.  Speare sign-up papers ready to drop off.  Is this a good idea?  At this age, . . . . 

Back to Miéville.  Big novels give you slow reading by definition.  

"Japanese street fashion gets low-crotch pants (sarueru or harem pants) from a mix of avant-garde designer houses, traditional and workwear influences, and specialized streetwear brands."

page 97 A Story of a Life  has ended in The Rouse.  So what is a Rouse?  have not looked that up yet!!

the rest are codas--it says--for the next five hundred + pages   "a short, bright military bugle call"  

so Mawr's son Ewe has died after some service in the Balkans  --- gee goes with our Balkan readings, doesn't it --- from Handke, through to Stasiuk  (forget who was in the middle there)

our energy rises and falls, ebbs and flows.  Yesterday Bela very glad to go to walmart and walk.  Today after a strong morning start she has rested, read, slept most of the day.  So have I in my ways---typing here, laundry and this and that and lots of reading

just finished the opening novel of the big Rouse novel.  It says on the page, 98, The End.  

Now what?  Epilogue   The rest are epilogues  and the pages of the book's edge show much variation between darker gray and white, so lots of short sections divided by color or shade of page ---  in other words---more of the novel on operatic epic scale --- rival to The Disapearers and many other huge book contenders --  Vollmann, Gass, etc  the other guy who's name won't come up 

two chiropractors in two days:  is that a wise thing to do?  is "chiro" spine in Greek?  no Greek cheir meaning hand  

what an origin story and then the war between chiropractic and osteopathy   

1895 Danile David Palmer  vitalism, naturalism, magnetisum, spiritualism  

Richard Sanderson in our English department spoke often about going to chiropractors  

am I going over into a dark side?  or an enlightened side?  will it all make my symptoms worse?  

Monday afternoon getting darker  now out of daylight savings and back into daylight until dark

on page 164 now. Ok we're back into Heart of Darkness one hundred years on.  Brits in Malaysia, special ops, killing, dark and confusing battle stuff.  And what else?  some special powers that were activated in the spiral of air when the helicopter landed and rose up again.

Then some testing while naked in a dark room.  Electrodes on the body.  strange woman, strange pale man, the commander, what's going on

but fascinating and mystifying in delightful ways.  Ten years after Maura's son has died she gets a message from a military guy, a phone call.  

Quiet day.  Dropped forms over at Speare.  Deja vu feelings there; memories of other hospitals over the years.  Is it a good idea to switch pcp service now?  just for the fun of it; whatever that means?  appointment with orthopaedics at mid-state for next week.  So much attention.  Making medical appointments is the way forward to have a social life?  Is the back hurting that much?  Enough to warrant all of this?  After the elections, after we talk with Gilani, maybe it will all calm down and I'll forget all about it.  In three months I'll say, oh, yeah, remember when I was all worried about that back-neck thing.  

anaplasmosis  is what Ted Wolf got from a tick bite   anaplasmosis  "Sudden fever, severe chills, headache, muscle aches, fatigue, malaise, and sometimes nausea, vomiting, or confusion."   maybe the small stroke damaged him more than the bacterium infection itself?

"The bacterium Anaplasma phagocytophilum targets white blood cells (neutrophils) in the body" 

we're ready for the evening bowl but it is only 4:42 pm and not 5:42  will take a week to adjust -- as always  

so this novel is quite good;  interesting language and styles; interesting ways of telling it; lots of mystery---is it The Magus revisited in some way?  Rachel started reading that last week.  Justine thinks she, especially, will like it.  

Maur  not Mawr  Maur meets journalist Jock who investigates mysterious military suicides at a base with a bad reputation and secrecy, The Shack   So we're in a big, twisty thriller mystery movie but it is a book and as bookish, story-ish, as possible.  Great voice styles, 

were these suicides?  did Ewe turn a gun on himself?  goes with our earlier look into our Swiss author's tractatus on suicide and that motif in his other writings, including Diabelli and magicians  ----  thrillers, mysteries, deaths, murder mysteries the biggest genre on tv 

5:03  we have completed all ingesting for the day; not until 7 am next!  virtue, honor, purity, sanctity and cosmic love and serenity 

1 November Sunday

beautiful bright morning and warmer   My back feels better.  Was it Advil in morning and night?  Or was it atmospheric conditions, weather fronts, cosmic alignments?  Still curious now, of course, to try chiropracter.  There is one named Fagan in Meredith!  

Dennis has come forth with a response about the Disappearers.  A welcome and good one too.

"Well, I've basically had a month of sleeping and not being able to focus very well. I've gotten back to the Disappearers. What a strong book. The Murder of the man in the green jacket and the blinding of Rainer, my word, what a powerful section. What follows is so blunt and so easily understood. So many of the feelings I had going through the process of acceptance. What a strong book. Thank you for sending it. I'm only half way through, but, my word...

Why do you think, in terms of presentation, did the text of the theatre section have ragged right margins while the rest of the book conforms to standard even right and left margins being clean and straight. I'm thinking, it's the raggedness of the theatre participants, their ragged lives and the constantly changing lines. Change is ragged. I did like that visual aspect."

He's twenty years younger, from western PA, so interesting to hear that he identifies fully with the feelings of the process of being gay in a hostile world.  Did Buttigeig's generation have it that much easier?  If yes, it was class helping out much more than street demos.  

----

Nate Lippens and Marlon James are two of the most prominent contemporary voices in queer literature, though they approach their themes with wildly different scales and styles. Both authors have captured major literary attention with their respective works exploring the dark, heavy, and resilient realities of gay life. 

A direct comparison of their writing styles, themes, and major books highlights how they differ:

Attribute	Nate Lippens	Marlon James
Scale & Scope	Minimalist and micro-focused. Brief, fragmented vignettes that feel like intimate, poetic journal entries.	Maximalist and epic. Massive, multi-layered, and sweepingly historical narratives with vast casts of characters.
Setting	The working-class American Midwest (primarily Milwaukee and America's rust belt).	Jamaica and the broader Caribbean diaspora spanning multiple eras.
Core Themes	Aging as an illegitimate queer artist, surviving the AIDS epidemic, recovering from addiction, and navigating misanthropic midlife depression.	Violent homophobia, historical trauma, collective memory, political corruption, and the cathartic need for revenge.
Tone	Elegiac, bleakly witty, cranky, and quietly resilient.	Intense, "in-your-face," operatic, passionate, and fiercely kinetic.
Latest Major Work	Bastards (2026), the final installment of his critically acclaimed, semi-autobiographical Wisconsin Trilogy.	The Disappearers (2026), a Booker Prize-shortlisted novel tracking eight gay men putting on a play in 1980s Kingston. -----------

Gypsies on the 31st

One paragraph in Stasiuk and I can hear some critic saying that he misunderstands the Gypsies.  That he is poorly informed about the other segments of Roma who have indeed settled for over six hundred years and made a settled life in Eastern Europe and other parts of Europe.  The Travelers get all the press, press always so prone to othering others if not just to sell papers then to create bogeys and enemies of every sort to tease out the everpresent anxieties and weaknesses of those who live within the comforts of established Order.  

Took two advil to see what they might do for my shoulder-spine-back.  Will call MidState on Monday about seeing someone.  Pinched nerve, bone cancer, muscle pulls from hefting the wheelchairs, etc.  Arthritis, osteoporiasis?  Mimi did have that I think for sure.  Can see the curvature of her spine.  

there standing at the piano now.  is it worth it to type a few lines to further curve my back by using a laptop on my lap?  is standing here any better?

30th Friday

 Daved texted about holiday plans.  They will be here Dec 27 to Jan 3.  Didn't say how they are handling the coming two weeks vacay.  

Visit to Refresh.  Tracy told Bela about the death as a teenager of her brother.  Not clear if he was younger---guessing so. Guessing she is the oldest.  Sister died some years ago---had lots of problems, alcohol, drugs, etc.  Now we know or suspect why (perhaps); their brother died as a teenager, fell off his skateboard and was run over by his friend in his car.  

Bela wanted a fruit tart at Gusto's but the phone call was not successful so we ditched that plan.  

Just saw a guy at Hannaford, decided he's Spanish and works on the windmills.  Tall, skinny, dark hair and eyes, windburned cheeks/suntanned.  Skier from the slopes or engineer out on the crest working on the turbines.  

28 the rouse

 that huge paperback arrived two days ago and I said hmmm   but today jon repetti posts his review of it on jacobin and it sounds wonderful so I will dive in.  he even says read it through and then read it again!!  he knows, doesn't he?  new phd from princeton so he's on it  

day off  ate at taco bell  older kids who work in heavy boots  one carful from new york state license  wonder if they follow work via their cell phone apps?  not much else, no luck finding lambs wool in market basket.  Nice long chat at artistic roots with Bob Heiner.  He told four surgeons in a row at  concord hospital last summer no, don't remove part of my intestine.  Blockage cleared by itself and he's been fine.  Had a bout of colon cancer some years ago; has been free of it since.  He and Sheryl enjoying their artistic careers now, I liked her big lake painting; he does photography.  

Kirsten is getting Pat a rebuilt mac to replace her old and wonky dell.  

Bela and Rachel had a great day swimming and dining at La Familia.  Tomorrow teeth care in Meredith.  

I read some more of Stasiuk's short and clear travel pieces.  Albania!  what to do with it.  Stasiuk not afraid to say there are parts of the world that should be forgotten about, life goes on without modernity just fine.  Romania is where he lives these days (I think---or travels there lots).  

Stasiuk: "To put it another way, there will be so many freedoms that no one will be capable of consuming them in their entirety without risking death through overeating."  63  

"the West's provincialism, which leads it to perceive the rest of the continent as a failed copy of itself." 

it seems that the Tylenol has brought some relief to my aching shoulders---moreso than advil

or is it imagination suggesting this?  

"a terrifying journey into infinite mystery."  blurb on the inside cover of The Rouse, a Picador paperback from UK   I suppose since Repetti wrote about it his publisher will bring it out here.  Already I am bending the spine and cutting the book into pieces.  It is simply too heavy to hold as one volume and it is printed on almost newspaper like paper; ready for tearing off and throwing away as has been my practice so often before.  

27th

 zoom visit with Rick.  Accounts explained well.  In-person again next week.  Call from George about his plans for thanksgiving with Eric and family---classy island off shore from St Augustine.  He found contact info for Philip Hoffman in St Petersburg, called him and recognized his voice on the message.  Took more snaps of the incredible red tree.  Emailed Dave and Emma and asked for photos of their halloween costumes this weekend.  Bela wants us to give to the Obama foundation---huge glossy mailer arrived today.  Now I want to give to Talarico's campaign and bit more to Pappas.  John sent this passage about our times---

"Best bit of prose I've read this week is the conclusion of AO Scott's piece in the NYT Magazine on the art critic John Berger, "The Man Who Taught us to Pay Attention."

"The knowledge that provides answers to those [traditional] questions is acquired by paying attention, in a way that is not qualitatively different from what a painter brings to a landscape or a critic to a painting.

That is what we are at risk of losing. Or what, Berger might say, is being stolen from us, not least by the technologies that offer us endless novelty and seem to fulfill desires we never even knew we had. The loss is a foreclosure of memory, of the knowledge that we exist in history. It’s not abstract: The rage that defines so much modern politics, in the developed world and the global South, on the right as well as the left, can be understood as a reaction to the feeling that something we once had is gone. Grief manifests itself as grievance.

Art — and art criticism, for that matter — suggest a fragile, conditional alternative. As Berger put it: “We live in a world of suffering in which evil is rampant, a world whose events do not confirm our Being, a world that has to be resisted. It is in this situation that the aesthetic moment offers hope.”

  John

---  oh and the new brooks shoe does not fit---size 6.5---looks like a baby shoe!!!

the highlight of the day occurred in CVS.  They didn't have the lambs wool I went for.  The app yesterday said they had it and I have an image of the bag of balls hanging on the end of one of the aisles a week or so ago because I saw it and remarked.  So today I settled for buying some medical tape and a few more bandaids and while in that aisle I saw in the next aisle over a young man in his early twenties who looked just like Friedrich Nietzsche.  I kid you not.  Short, huge head of waving black hair and black stubble beard with a huge, thick black (black-brown, bear-like) moustache.  Look at that famous photo of Nietzsche that Hans Susskind had on the bookshelf over his divan in the New Hampton house.  This young man looked exactly like that.  I paused but then after the older man before him went up to the counter I walked up to him and nodded, pointed to my upper lip and said "wonderful moustache."  He smiled appreciatively and said Thank you!  "Do you realize who you look like?"  "No, who?" "Friedrich Nietzsche."  "Do you know who that is?"  "No, I've heard the name." "Well, look him up, you look just like him!"  He laughed and thanked me again, blushing maybe a little and very pleased.  As I walked out I regretted that I had not just gotten the photo up on my iphone so I could have shown him at once.  And now, of course, I wish I had asked to take his picture.  He was very handsome and the moustache clearly his pride of person at the moment.  

so interesting that George was remembering Hans today and even calling Philip.  

I was wondering this the other day, Hans had studied Monterlant---his sorbonne essay is published in the Gallimard edition of M's works---I think--something close to that.  'Henry de Montherlant held a highly critical, dismissive, and distant view of Marcel Proust’s works. Driven by his own aristocratic, Spartan aesthetic that prized virility, action, and stoicism, Montherlant openly rejected the major movements and canonical figures of his time—including Proust, the Surrealists, and Louis-Ferdinand Céline.  Hans expressed no interest once when I mentioned my attempt to read Proust.  

Finished the long Burger story on Diabelli.  As clever as possible, and death is in there as a major player.  Fabrication, invention, lying, illusion, wanting to be conned.  The whole Saddam Huseein Cheesecake Factory bag of tricks.  

26 October Monday

Oil delivered.  Hooray  

An Affair to Remember, 1957, yesterday.  So this morning I had Siri play The Everly Brothers.

Wallowing in mid-50s vibes.  In 1954 I was ten; by 1958 I was 14.  That movie and that music, that era, that gestalt.  Adolescence for me was emotion first, feelings and music; feelings about everything incomprehensible.  1960 birth control pill.  1965 more available. 1972 legal everywhere, anyone.  Sex at first carried heavy folk wisdom about not getting a girl pregnant, that was the big fear in the air of a boys' school, of catholic schools.  

Yesterday in Stasiuk's Fado I thought, wow, he must love Handke, given how he is writing about the Balkans in this collection of short travel vignettes.  Sure enough google search yields these comments:  "The relationship between the Polish writer Andrzej Stasiuk and the Austrian Nobel laureate Peter Handke is one of profound literary admiration, contrasting sharply with the severe political backlash Handke has faced from other Central and Eastern European intellectuals.  

"Stasiuk has long been fascinated by Handke’s stylistic approaches to geography, memory, and landscape. In 2016, Stasiuk published a collection of essays and commentaries titled Der Osten — Begleitschreiben zum Werk von Peter Handke (The East: Accompanying Writings on the Work of Peter Handke).  The New Yorker 

Both authors share a deep focus on the "periphery" of human experience and physical geography. While Handke explores the margins through linguistic experimentation and microgeography, Stasiuk acts as a "literary cartographer" of the Eastern European provinces, backwaters, and forgotten landscapes.

 Stasiuk considers Handke to be an essential traveler and observer of the Slavic world and the Balkans. He values Handke’s ability to treat the landscape not just as a geopolitical space, but as an emotional and mythic landscape. 

When Handke was awarded the 2019 Nobel Prize in Literature, it triggered an immense wave of controversy due to his historical defense of Slobodan Milošević and his downplaying of Serbian war crimes during the Balkan wars. While many regional writers fiercely condemned the Swedish Academy's choice, Stasiuk maintained a supportive stance toward Handke's literary legacy.

Stasiuk's view isolates Handke's masterful command of language and narrative memory from the hyper-politicized media discourse. Rather than viewing Handke's deep immersion in the former Yugoslavia as mere political propaganda, Stasiuk treats it as a complex, poetic engagement with a landscape and its people. For Stasiuk, Handke remains one of the most influential German-language authors of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, whose literary value transcends his controversial public statements. "

-----------

Bela's right foot little toes still blistering and flaring.  Going to take her to Same Day again later this morning.

Long wait and we saw a different person but then Savanna popped in too.  Keep the toe dry.  see a podiatrist about shoes.  Have an appt but not until Dec 4.  

Notice that Dr Fagan is retiring.  Have to send him a note saying he has been the best doctor I have ever had in my 82 years.  Now wondering if I should stay at MidState or switch to Speare?  For what reason?  If any or none?  His replacement is an osteopath, DO, and my old prejudices against that are kicking in.  Given this text you would think my reaction would be just the opposite.  "An MD (Doctor of Medicine) practices allopathic medicine focusing on disease and targeted treatment, whereas a DO (Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine) practices osteopathic medicine with a whole-person, holistic approach and extra musculoskeletal training."

Speare has a doctor from India on staff!!