11 January 2022
passage by Martin Asiner from amazon—-gentlest of bear hugs—notable.
By the time that Northrop Frye published Anatomy of Criticism in 1957, the New Criticism was clearly creaking to an end. There was a general feeling in the air that something new was about to supplant it. Frye's book was not the only one to appear that year to perhaps be that something but his spoke the loudest. Even in his Fearful Symmetry published ten years earlier, Frye had outlined the basic thrust of his belief that criticism would be derelict in its duty if it ignored the totalizing function of myth and archetype as both sought to expand the critical vision of writer and reader to widen such that literature might then be seen as a self-contained literary universe with all parts of one element linked mythically and archetypically to all the rest. With a growing disenchantment of the restrictions imposed by the New Critics, university professors of literature were eager to accept Frye's novel contention that all of literature, and hence all of humanity were interlocked in a genetic, psychological, social, and cultural bear hug of the gentlest sort. Frye seemed to symbolize a literary Theory of Everything. Yet, not all professors, critics, readers, and reviewers agreed. Opposition to Frye built slowly at first, and with the advent of newer and competing theories like post-structuralism, deconstruction, and feminism, vocal and strident opposition reached a crescendo.
One of the people in the house says she has caught a cold. Jeff from Jersey Plumbing is putting a new disposal under the sink. With these other people in the house since we got here, five days ago now, we have not had a chance to really get used to the house, to really take it in and let it take us in, let us give us its unique, gentle bear hug. But that will happen. We did manage to drive around the block and get a photo of the house from the back, across neighbors' walls.
"nor does having an exact forecast matter all that much in a world where things always turn out differently from what one had expected, anyway, and the thing is to be shrewd and tough in adapting oneself to their waywardness." Musil 591
covid test negative. gorgeous pink sunset over the back wall. No one willing to pay $600. for a good office chair, zody mesh. We'll see if some cheapy at staples will do.
tomorrow. I feel bad being irritated too much by petty things like someone's voice echoing through the house on loud phone calls. The house has no fabrics. Not much. Very echoey. Sweetly quiet when no one else is here.
Dear Bob,
Two years ago McGann also suggested I read Pessoa. I did, and that
disquietude helped me deal with my own in the face of Trump and the
pandemic. I found the translations of Zenith and Jull Costa so
different that I felt compelled to turn to the original. I ended up
using that in "Anything you say...," which Tamas Panitz published
online in Blazing Stadium last year. I'm also attaching "Lith," which
I worked on all last year. I don't think it's publishable anywhere
except online, because the color images would be too expensive on
paper.
Geoge Quasha at Station Hill is supposed to bring out "Almost Thence
Sum" on paper sometime this year. McGann has contributed an
afterword.
Best regards,
Jeffrey
today the rush to get home covid tests and masks. Gov distributing them in the headlines. the new Apple home pod plays fIP but so far FIP has played lousy. Opened box 12 and found the Grainger diaries Willow wants and the adapter I need to get the new HP printer functioning. We are at home waiting for the desk chair to be delivered some time today. The printer works. wowza!
I was re-reading your section of SPEAKING INTO SILENCE, and it occurred to me that your journeys into the Lax archives (and elsewhere) is exactly why I write: to probe, to search for...? Getting published (and occasional praise) are only pleasant by-products.
I'm working on a series of "letters", and your writing inspired one:
Dear Louis,
1.
Why
does
one
even...?
2.
Everything
leads to...?
3.Your face...?
—Ed Schwartz
———
23 Jan Sunday
Two visits to Placitas in two days.
25 January Tuesday
11:02 Joe Carrasco finished putting the HomeStation charger onto the garage wall. After a few false starts which found the mount too far away from the plug. we found a piece of plywood and he cut that down to use as a mount under the unit, put it up in a few places until he got it where the plug (big DC plug) would fit into the outlet which he had installed yesterday. Ramon his younger brother had hip surgery two weeks ago. He's the one I met first. About 57, had the hip pain for five years. Pain gone first day after the surgery but painkillers are making his thinking a bit wobbly still, according to Joe. Their dad has a small farm down in Las Cruces, is 92.
We go to dinner tonight a Pappadeaux's with Eloy and Danessa. Lots of questions to ask about the details in the house.
Sent tax docs and such to Juanita. Feels like school assignment for math course which I know I will be lucky to get a C in. In for a cold week of weather here, no higher than 50s in the day time. Va wants to be sure to see West Side Story tomorrow. Two French style chairs to assemble before Kim comes to visit on Tuesday. Covid news everyday vies now for headlines with war rumblings in Ukraine. All we need.
An influencer named Scott Barry Kaufman posted a short piece in Scientific American dividing us into those who believe in Oneness and those who do not. "People who believe that everything is fundamentally one differ in crucial ways from those who do not. In general, those who hold a belief in oneness have a more inclusive identity that reflects their sense of connection with other people, nonhuman animals, and aspects of nature that are all thought to be part of the same "one thing." This has some rather broad implications."
late afternoon. We canceled the dinner with Eloy and Danesa because Willow feels as if she has a cold. Worried about covid but looking up differences in symptoms it seems as if it is a cold.
Especially since PT had one a week ago when she was here.
Paid a deposit to have another electrical contractor come out and look over the installation of the home charger. Wanting a second opinion. The Optum doctor's (Nhyase) assistant called and canceled the appointment the phone assistant had made for us.
4
Nap felt good. Slight sense of chill. Took an aspirin so it could be that. Va doing a long sleep, over an hour now. Heating up beans and rice and separate can of soup. Chills from the red chile pepper on the ersatz pizza last night? Could fix egg scramble if that would appeal to anyone.
"Ulrich's words about locking her in his arms had touched her like a secret promise." Musil 613
I'm just as relieved not to go out to Pappadeaux's tonight. Wait until the days are a wee longer and warmer. Message from Ken earlier. 54 and rainy there. One friend and wife have visited, guy who was college counselor at U of C high school. I suppose we said hello to the group at a restaurant a few years ago when the four friends visited Ken. English majors all.
Whether to wake Willow or not. Has been an intense twenty days, from leaving on black ice on Jan 5th until today. I'm so nervous about this home station installation I want a second electrician to check it over. Paid the $149.00 deposit with Qmerit Electrification, will now see if anyone calls.
Got a box of 3M N95 masks today. Also the orange candles. Bit of wax in one of the candle holder tubes, so it had been used even though it is so shiny. We walked at the mini Walmart neighborhood market today. Grocery store, somehow big but too crowded and somehow kind of strange. Cramped parking lot. Also drove to Target to walk but did just a little. Va's energy was fading then and her back hurting her. I had her seat adjusted very badly, fixed that I hope.
winds howling outside, may be snow on the ground in the morning. snow day most likely. I'll take a stab at putting together one of the French dining chairs. Even though strictly warned by the instructions that I need two people.
Will I get this cold too? Perhaps.
26 Weds
Going to see West Side Story this morning at 11:40. Cold and gray! Light gray but gray cloud cover. Warmer by Saturday. Unwrapped the arms of the first chair. Entered the s/n of the HomeStation into the app and definitely want the electrician here again to do all that the app wants done to connect everything. No word back yet from Qmerit about deposit paid and who they might send out. Glad I contacted them after all.
This morning I tried to use my Wahl clipper, to cut my hair, which is much thinner than the bristles of my former mustache. I thought it was just the thick bristles the clipper would tug but not cut. Wrong. It only tugged my hair, too. So I ordered an identical Wahl clipper for $18 from Walmart while wondering if the term "Yankee Clipper" applies.
Have decided to sell my 2009 Toyota Camry to my nephew for $5 in February. He lives with his wife and their three kids in the basement of her father's house. She suffers from "apprehensiveness" and is on welfare. Nephew does odd jobs and makes about $300 a month and relies on Medicaid. Wife owns a beat up old Mazda minivan, which her father bought for her since she has never had a job. She's 28 and he's 50. Kids are 8, 6, and 5. A real West Virginia couple! When my brother died in 1972 he left my nephew a million dollars in 1972. My brother's wife and the nephew's drug habit back then spent all that money on god only knows what. He's clean now, but goes to a drug counselor in Hagerstown once a week. He's a nice guy, but just lives in a different world from mine. I hope the car will help him get better jobs.
New clipper due to arrive Jan 27. P
——
Antonio from 5 Star Electrical came at 1:30 today to look over the home charger station. Finally got clear in my mind how batteries work and how to prolong their life. Will experiment now with not charging the car every day. Nor the cell phone. Letting the battery go low before fully charging gives you a long usage on the battery!! Duh. Never understood that. He even seemed to think I could leave it in the garage for months without having it charge at all. Can I have it plugged in but not charging? He was big on solar panels too.
30 January 12:50 Ambulance taking Va to Rust Medical to see what is causing the pain in her left leg. Russian nurse at CVS Minute Care this morning helped remind me that a blood clot might be the real problem.
emt driver just now says preliminary signs are there is no clot but they will be able to do the imaging necessary to determine more clearly what is causing the pain in her leg. She said this morning that she was feeling it all day yesterday when she was with Beckie but didn't want to say anything and wanted to get her high pedometer count. Cold morning and gray here today. I first went to PresbyCare but they wouldn't talk with us, not even on the nurse helpline, unless we were in the system. Not the same as Urgent Care suggested the pharmacist at CVS. Just ordered a wheel chair from Amazon. One night at the hospital? Two? Speaking selfishly now, I am happy that I/we have asked for help from professionals. We might have managed by ourselves for a day or more but the blood clot possibility was enough to make me want to call for help. Few years ago when Va fell off the bed I did not hesitate to call 911. I hesitated more here. In Plymouth the small town effect made it easy. Here the larger city effect and not knowing anyone made it more difficult. And yet when the firemen showed they made us completely comfortable. 2:45 Armando just called. I'll go pick her up now. !
Contusion of the ankle. walking boot. ice and elevation. Voltaren gel three times a day for thirty days. have the brace looked at and adjusted at Samuel Weisberg Prosthetics 1018 Coal SE "A contusion is a deep bruise. Contusions are the result of a blunt injury to tissues and muscle fibers under the skin. The injury causes bleeding under the skin."
Monday bright morning. Willow in bed, comfy. Smoothie. Ointment on the ankle. Reading second volume of Henna artist. Now sitting at the table for lunch.
Day at home. Watched a lot of tv. Felt good. Va rested her foot most of the time. On one walk from bedroom to living room she complained of some pain. Tomorrow Kim comes for lunch.
Super quiet Feb 1 morning at 11 am. Reading. Thai ordered online. Waiting for Kim to come for lunch at 1. Willow reclining with the salve on her foot. Reading. Colder weather even snow coming tomorrow night.
Nice chat with Dave on the video last night as he was locking up RockU. They will go to Austria to ski and take some friends and kids along. In mid-February. Straightened the house. Portable toilet seat works very well in the guest bathroom. For Lou and Barbara to use tomorrow when they come to visit and teach Willow Mah Jong.
2 Feb
from Phil
Your into course sounds somewhat like the one I had to take at Brown my freshman year. At Brown it was all about getting the punctuation and grammar right. One semester, although real dummies had to take it for two semesters. Other than that, you're relating a story about grad school, but that Brown dean was talking about undergrads. And you were talking about years after US universities were worried about Vietnam. In 1964 that storm hadn't quite arrived yet.
This morning I attended a mass for Peg said by a Jesuit priest tht had been arranged by an old friend from my Peace Corps days. The chapel, across the street from Georgetown U, was built in 1794 and was quite simple but nice, lit by candles because this was "candlemas." The priest was a young Jesuit, seemingly a nice guy in his early 30s who announced in the service that it was for Margaret A. Ofstead, which choked me up a bit even though I'm not religious at all. However listening to the readings and service in English (the last mass I attended was in 1962 and was in Latin) struck me as mash-up of nearly barbaric sentiments about the need to sacrifice for a ruler/god and some very nice admonitions to help others. I see the Judaic-Christian tradition as the remnant of Egyptian pharaoh worship, which was adopted and adapted by the Jews and rather mindlessly adopted in toto from the Jews by Christians. Gotta thank the pharaoh-god for everything, beg his forgiveness, sacrifice to him. No thanks!
Afterwards, as I was walking back to my car in Georgetown I was admiring some of the vert nice homes nearby, when I saw a rat run across the street. Then I drove home via Wisconsin Avenue and barely recognized it. So much has changed. New buildings while old restaurants and shops are no longer in business. The words of the readings in the service, that drive up Wisconsve and the rat were kind of depressing P
Sounds very upsetting emotionally in all, but understandable. No idea you had not graced a church threshold since 1962! A good record to note. We started
watching a movie on prime last night called Luxor---some sort of slow Egypto-Brit artsy romance but the images of Luxor have given me the best
views of Egypt I've ever had. Have no desire to ever go. Can see how the magnitude of the ruins have haunted the west for from forever. Napoleon's
troops dug them out of the sand. You're right about Christianity but you forget that to the pharaoh they added the roman emperor so in all as a "great world
religion" (along with Hinduism and Buddhism) the real triumph is syncretism, the blending and merging of all sorts of stuff into some vaguely reassuring and
useful facade and stage backdrop against which ordinary boring life can take some aspirational grandeur and solace. I.e. imagine whatever it wants and
then say later oh, oh, yeah that's in the sacred books and guaranteed by the gods' revelations.
Snow called for today---five inches. barely flurrying now, Va's friends coming for lunch. Seems the forecasts have to cover the whole state and locals know
what to expect. If there is a real ground cover later tonight it will be a disaster short term because idiots insist on driving with no snow removal and no
snow tires and no knowledge of driving on slick roads. So as faux new englanders we do know how to hunker down and wait out a storm. Liking the gas
heat even though the concrete house on a slab feels so different from a wooden house with stories below and above.
Oh I forgot to tell you. We called 911 on Sunday. Or did I? Va laid up with a bruised ankle, could not walk on it, the left foot that uses the AFO device, brace.
Something in the brace rubbed her ankle. Staying off it for a week or so with ointment.
Hit the jackpot yesterday. Found a doctor new to the recommended health system here who will take us on as new patients, appointments next week. Seems
amazing. We just want to get into the systems and have a pcp contact. When I asked on Sunday at two urgent care places on Sunday what to do about Va's
problem, I got turned away as not being in their system or having only Medicare plus private and not authentic Medicare Advantage. Which I had never
heard of. Digging around about that on google and you find it seems a new way for insurance co's to quibble and wrangle as they will on top of medicare
basics.
Meanwhile the real excitement has been spending days trying to get the new HP printer and the macbookpro to happily communicate with one another---i.e.
print a simple document.
B
11:00 Snowing now. Moreso. Looks like the lunch trio won't show. I wouldn't go out in this. Starting to stick.
make use of Nancy's Interview questions: from five days ago.
I am curious to know how you like living in the new house?
Must feel nice to call it your own since last year you were renters.
Has it been warm in ABQ?
Isn't that where on N Y's eve the workers got stuck in the Gondola coming down?
What are your days like?
Where do you go for daily walking?
Do you have someone who comes so you still get your day to yourself?
Are you going to remodel your master (oops, now we say MAIN) bath? I think you mentioned it.
How is your life different from life in Plymouth?
Any plans for the kids to come to ABQ?
Are you happy there (or in general?)
—-
"A circle encompassing all ways of feeling," De Campos 204 Pessoa A Little Larger here in the house two semi-circular windows Placing great store by those. In those. United east to west one circle.
no call from Lou or Barb, so plans might go forward . . . we allow the locals to call the shots . . .
Pattie sent us the photo of the red camelia. Just called her number again. She is in the waiting room at Dartmouth H, seems her cataract procedure might go sooner than she had thought. We have to research the panoptic lens, based on what Kim told us yesterday.
"Now he experienced a moment of that special lucidity that lights up everything going on behind the scenes of oneself, though one may be far from being able to express it." Musil 634
"A metaphor holds a truth and an untruth, felt as inextricably bound up with each other." Dream and what it expresses.
"Like certain kinds of bacteria that split an organic substance into two parts, mankind splits the original living body of the metaphor into the firm substance of reality and truth, and the glassy unreality of intuition, faith, and artifact. There seems to be nothing in between; and yet how often a vaguely conceived undertaking does succeed, if only one goes ahead without worrying it too much!" 635
We could say, would say, that this is precisely what happened last year around March when we began exploring the notion of buying Casa Alegre and here we are sitting in it. It all succeeded because we went ahead with it and did not worrying it too much. We worried it, for sure, but not too much.
3 Feb Thursday 2 inches of snow everywhere here. Bernallillo got 4 says KOB. Looks lovely of course but no going out onto the roads. Sunshine full force this morning. Still going to be cold tonight. 6 degrees, warmer by Saturday. Willow still booting her ankle and it still looks darkly bruised, well, not dark yet but can see how it will get darker. Contusion. Good word. The bleeding is deep inside and not easily seen until later.
Ed and I went to lunch yesterday while Lou tried to teach Barb and Voo how to play mahjong. Developed in 19th C China. Looks incredibly complicated and full of more gizmos than would have thought. Racks to hold the tiles, a mat, etc. Lou says she will take Va swimming. Already worrying about that. Their stability on wet tile floors, Lou's strength and stability, etc. See how it plays out. She is already a member of Defined.
Ed took us to a Thai place a block away from Flying Star Corrales. Very good. He thought it was the one we had found near here. No matter. We talked about all of our thises and thats. He's still fascinated by Lax, by how free of narrative, story, Lax's work is. That is his theme these days, how small and big stories suck us into their power whether we like it or not. Not
an unsimilar tale as Phil talks about. Have to send Phil a message about it.
Lunched with a friend here yesterday while his wife and another friend took care of Va for lunch and tried to play mahjong. (started in 19th C China). Ed has been a writer all of his life, grew up in Brooklyn, Jewish, family ran a resort hotel in the Catskills. He hasn't published that much and has never tried that hard to "have a career" as a poet. First lunch talk I've had with anyone for about two years. He got onto how much he's tired of stories in his readings, both small and large stories, have little or no interest to him anymore, wants to read poetry perhaps and other kinds of writing but not
stories. Sounded so much like what you've been saying. In fact at one point he even said "they are just one guy's take or view on things and why should his story about anything be of interest to me?" So . . . is this falling off of interest in others' stories what seems to happen to us when he get into our mid-70s?? Does it happen mostly of educated elites, or smart guys who figure things out and then settle into their ready-steady views on most topics? Generational distancing that is inevitable and irrefutable. I hate to go here—but it even gives us a way to understand how someone like McConnell could just say from the outset once Obama was elected (new generation, McC in his 70s) well, my goal is to obstruct him as much as possible. Nothing else! Anyway, that was one topic at lunch. Another was a friend, poet, in Cambridge who had gone really bonkers some years back, old Quaker family, had a trust fund, so didn't have to work, started carrying around big stuffed animals and having lunch with them. And other such lunching topics.
Ed has a friend named Polly who really likes Musil so he wanted to know much more about him. He and a reading group had just finished a big book by a historian, Charles Taylor, who reveals in the last chapter that he is a Catholic. Probably the book The Secular Age—896 pages. He's a big thinker, prize winner, at McGill. Glad they found it interesting, he's got huge press coverage, but I ain't gonna glance at it.
Betsy worked at Amazon early on, have to find out if she crossed paths with Jon Philips.
Wish I had written down that Musil passage about how we break up through the floor of things only to find ourselves in the basement of a previous generations' buildings. Or something like that. Can google find me that? nope.
Here's another: Charles Taylor in one sentence? "And while faith based on theological reasoning is today universally engaged in a bitter struggle with doubt and resistance from the prevailing brand of rationalism, it does seem that the naked fundamental experience itself, that primal seizure of mystic insight, stripped of all the traditional, terminological husks of faith, freed from ancient religious concepts, perhaps no longer to be regarded as a religious experience at all, has undergone an immense expansion and now forms the soul of that complex irrationalism that haunts our era like a night bird lost in the dawn." MWQ 603
Whole morning and no reading. Caffeine make that impossible? Distractive laptop habits? Those good old days of curl up with a good book?
Ed talked about, asked about Lax. How did he write in the moment, free of story, need for story, no narrative frames? Guess the Circus cycle of poems, early career, does succumb to story, but the later work—-pure act—-writes the moment—in some sort of zen fashion. But Ed wondered all the usual things—-how did he make a living, didn't he work for the new yorker, in new york, was he homosexual, did he have any love affairs, any life partners, series of loves, friends, how did he hang out in Greece for all those years? etc McGregor's biography manages to tell us his life without really answering these questions very well. He does make the money question clear enough. Sort of. Still, when you read Zenith, you say, oh, if only a Zenith had written about Lax and not a McGregor!
spent forty-five minutes getting auto-pay set up for Va's Cigna/ExpressScripts account. Betsy doesn't recall Jon Phillips. And Phil
weighs in —-
You are so lucky to be able to have a lunch with someone, and after two years of no lunches you know how lucky you are.
Thank you so much for letting me know that I am not the only old guy who has lost patience with fiction. In fact, if I knew how to do the research and was ten years younger, I'd try to write a book on the subject. In fact, I might write a short article on the subject and see if anyone will publish it. The key, as you note, is trying to figure out who this is happening to - and why. My guess is that it's happening only to older males who used to read some fiction, but whose careers didn't involve teaching about fiction. So, another question emerges: why males and not females? My guess is that males and females, in general, read for very different reasons. Males read to find out how to do something, such learn about chemistry, earn money, solve a crime or go to Mars, and women read to learn about people's emotional experiences. The latter subject interests young men a little, especially, when they are told by parents and teachers that reading certain fictional works, makes them cultured. But as time goes on, men, I think, care less and less about being considered cultured or hearing about others' emotions, thoughts, and experiences. They, including me, will still read non-fiction to learn how things work or, with history, how things used to work, but, in fictions, their only interest is perhaps some comedy. Men still want a good laugh now and then. And they will still read nonfiction about politics, history, technology, etc. But 99.999% of fiction just becomes "someone else's opinion and I could care less about it."
However, there is that other category of men: those who like you and Sitter had careers based on teaching about fiction. In your workiing days you had to stay up to date on fiction and opinions about fiction. But I can't predict how English/lit/language profs will react to fiction as they get older. You and John seem more willing than I am to read fiction these days. Is that true of all ex=profs? I really have no idea.
Anyway that's how I think about it now. However, Quakers having lunch with stuffed animals is a subject that might interest me, so long as the story is non-fiction.
——-
Musil—"She felt that she was herself part of a story." 635 Phil's protests are even stranger when you recall that he wrote and published five (or six?) novels. Might be part of the trauma of Peg's final years of illness and death that has spun him into these opinions. And yet Ed did voice very similar notions yesterday, and for the past few years if I remember clearly.
I guess I'm still back with Booth—-reading as a way, my principal way, of keeping company, of looking for company to keep. The writer and friendship, the writer as intimate companion on a journey we share in exploration. Pilgrimage, Burke said. Wanderings. Searchings. Pessoa's cast of characters looking for a drama, for a narrative, for connectednesses that never connect. Pretty much prefiguring social media invented after all of this. Va is just starting to read the new Polish Nobel laureate, Olga . . . the books of Jacob.
Saturday FEB 5 We drove through Old Town and then up the mountain to our old haunt Flying Star on Juan Tabo. There a chance chat with an interesting woman, Kathie Winograd, retired two years ago as president of the community college up there, CNM. Statistician from Kentucky, married to another of the same profession, no children, vacation place up in Colorado where they are heading for more skiing this week. Agrees with us about having lived in the golden age of higher ed. Her grandmother a coal miner's daughter, like mine. Well, Ella's dad maybe was a saloon owner and not a miner.
On the drive up Willow wondered allowed if we should look into going into assisted living at the new Overture place going up along Coors Boulevard.
House cleaner, Liz, helped me put a non-slip mat under the main carpet.
"of all the systems we have set up, none has the secret of staying at rest: then all these things, however different they look, are also bound up with each other like the branches of a tree, completely concealing the trunk on all sides." 645-646 Musil Ulrich's sense his life on two tracks, two different trees, surface daylight and dark below, closed to traffic.
two hour pleasant dinner last night with Ed and Barb. week ago we called 911 and got the boot for the ankle contusion 6 Feb Dave says he is at a concert for the adult RockU crew
Do you guys ever talk about "assisted living?" With sitting out her bruised ankle Va just brought it up for the first time on her own. Ken and Carole are the only couple we know who have investigated and planned for the move for a long time. We avoid the question and wait for a catastrophe---the humanists' approach!!??
Sunny and warmer here but still a bit chill. Getting used to the concrete house. Waiting for those mid 50 temps in a few days.
I am curious to know how you like living in the new house? We are liking it a lot. So simple and clean and clear. One floor, smaller, easy floor plan, love our high ceilings, sense of light, feels like a cool summer house, generic hotel/condo decor and feel but that all feels light and free of baggage in contrast to the eastern house.
Must feel nice to call it your own since last year you were renters. 2 years ago, remember, (Covid) we rented. Still not really sunk in that we own this house!!
What are your days like? Very quiet days, esp now nursing the ankle. I'm worried that the soft big boot is not giving the foot and ankle support the brace does so trying to do only necessary walking. We see a brace doc this Weds and our new PCPs on Friday.
Tuesday we have dinner with our managers to thank them. Last night we had a long dinner over at Barb and Ed's house, two blocks away. She's V's friend who had polio when she was 10, crutches ever since.
Where do you go for daily walking? I haven't forced myself into a daily walk yet! Lazy. But close by is a good trail on the edge of the golf course and another into the petroglyph lava bluffs. A small park near too, with geese in the small ponds.
Do you have someone who comes so you still get your day to yourself? Yes, same woman from before is willing to take Saturdays. She came twice so far, hope to have her start again end of this week. Already have a trail planned to explore galleries on
Canyon Road in Santa Fe since it is impossible to do that sort of meandering with Va.
You are so lucky to have the Carrot of a NYC escape to keep you going. Should make it five days, four nights!!!!
Are you going to remodel your master (oops, now we say MAIN) bath? I think you mentioned it. that did get done and works quite well. Say why and when did house builders in USA decide doorways into bathrooms should be more narrow than doorways into other rooms???? In our bath we will still shave four inches off a half wall
next to the toilet, just a little tight still for Va maneuver. Will have that done this summer after we go back.
How is your life different from life in Plymouth? No stairs!! wonder if my knees will
complain when we go back? Many many more choices to do the same old things---go
wallking in a big store, here lots of stores close by, and a big mall close by. Here everything is a 15-20 min spin in the car---all over town. There 45-60 mins to get to
just one option for retail or food.
Any plans for the kids to come to ABQ? So far they will come in Aug to Plymouth and
maybe again December, but that will change with each year they get older, we suspect.
Are you happy there (or in general?) I'm loving it, love the dry altitude and barren landscape. Amazed at how much I prefer this lava bed side of town versus the
heights right under the mountain. We had lunch up there yesterday and it confirms my sense of being lucky we zeroed in on this side of town rather than up there which is too faux snooty, gated communities, overcrowded with new verizony-tmobile grandeur storefronts.
Happy? What's that? I was going to suggest that boredom is worse for all of us these past two years but then in the novel I'm slowly inching through the narrator complains how boring life is for everyone, this in the 1930s.
Belatedly binging on You (Dave said we had to get back and get into it) and enjoying it.
You might enjoy "Love Inevitably" terrible title, but main characters are Italian and Spanish, Sevilla and Rome, flamenco and limoncello.
Va has finished reading the second volume of Henna Artist Jaipur trilogy, liked both, waiting for vol 3. Send your groups' whole reading list.
Are the Kents down in Georgia yet? Bitter winter in NE this year!
cheers to you both and all
——-
Ed's letters, a sample
Actually a series of letter (LETTERS TO A LIFE) is an ongoing project of mine. I'm up to letter (533). Sometimes they are written to my imagination of real people (I never use real names) and sometimes they are written "To Myself". I'll enclose the latest two:
To Myself:
!.
Our every
thought
"imprisons"
2.
Peg's
always
pacing.
To Myself:
1.
The prairie
flat
"hopeless".
2.
"McSwain, Texas
pop. 410"
—————-
an attempt of mine
Dear Albert
Voluptuous
never have I
written that
in a letter
understand
——-
short talk with David this morning. Nothing on tap for this Monday. Perhaps taking wheelchair to Hope church if they call back.
9 Feb
watched half of it last night after a big meal so our bellies were too full but was not impressed at all. Agree about her arm waving. Struck me that she was lucky at the start
with the vogue jackpot from stanford and from there on she was "in" the pub world and could write and do anything and keep getting published. then the events of the
age were crazy and her flat no-nonsense style sounding just "against" the grain of the wild headlines that she could seem like some LA buddhitsava without even trying.
Her husband sounds like he was an abusive jerk but they stayed together like Liz and Burton and other such couples, oh, yes, Bill and Hill, because they know that it is
only as a couple/brand that they will survive media cruelty and stay in the news one way or another. Fame and its discontents I guess. The fawning nephew moviemaker
wants to bask in his aunt's fame while he can still get her on film. Probably won't watch the rest of it. She didn't seem to have anything to say.
Dinner with our manager and his wife, whom we had met only over zoom. We never knew that Abq has a big New Orleans style restaurant, that's where we met them, their
choice, we hosted to thank them. Terrific food and genuinely NO flavor. I had Mississippi Blackened Catfish Opalousa and dirty rice. Have to look up Opalousa, must be
a place name, Va had fresh Chilean Mahi with andouille sausage grits and fresh corn. Guess we liked the break from what I usually fix everyday---black bean burger and
salad.
Donald on Jan 31 Dear Bob and Virgina,
I hope all is well.
I ordered Zenith's bio of Pessaon and a copy of The Book of Disquiet. Following instructions, I am reading the bio first. It is exceptionally well written, in fact a TOUR DE FORCE as we used to say. It is, however, exceptionally long and I am only at page 418.
Because of a complication, I receive two copies of each book and Amazon tells me not to bother to return the copies. Do you have Zenith's biography? If not, I would be happy to send one to you. If you do, I'll donate it to the Fontbonne Library? Just let me know.
Best wishes,
Donald
——
Last night we watched Power of the Dog. Jane Campion. We must watch the movies she made before this and after The Piano. Powerful movie. Beautiful scenery but not Montana. Filmed in New Zealand. Campion makes a piano central once again. Every one of her films? Had never heard of the writer before, Thomas Savage. Wonder if his biography is more interesting than his novels? His wife also a writer. Our parents' generation. They met at Colby college. Bought then canceled bio after reading an article by the bio author.
Talked with Rich and later Anne. We'll meet in Charlotte instead of Atlanta. Just booked flight on Delta. Stop over in ATL.
Zenith's biography of Pessoa is so good, a tour de force as Donald says, that I should make it be the last biography I read. Savage's story is lost forever in the novels he wrote, in which he hid what he wanted to say and what he had no idea how to describe. The particulars of any one person's life can never be captured, let alone reshaped into someone else's book, even if it be a work of art in its own right. Boswell, Zenith. Why did Jane Campion want to make a movie of this second level novel? Or third level? Especially with the hindsight of our era looking with nostalgic enlightenment on what came before? did she want an excuse to film her landscapes?
When the director says that “it was really happenstance for everyone connected to the book,” she is very much including “Power of the Dog’s” Canadian producer, the veteran Roger Frappier, who was killing time in Paris when he read an article that mentioned that the Savage volume, a book he’d never heard of, was actor Gérard Depardieu’s favorite novel.
“He went out and bought a copy,” the director relates, “lay on his bed and read it and successfully pursued the rights.”
As for Campion, she was given the book by her stepmother, Judith Campion, who is thanked in the closing credits. “She’s a great reader. We often swap books, and she sent it to me out of the blue.”
While Campion finds “most novels hard to finish — nothing comes to a real crisis, I lose confidence in them,” “Power of the Dog” was different. “It was such a tight little beast I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I was actually haunted by it. I trust my psyche — what I fall in love with is the thing for me.”
—
Dear Roger, I want you to know that I have read every word and looked at every post card in your wonderful book. I especially enjoyed learning about the old west and seeing parts of Chicago like the Art Institute that was very special to us. I didn't realize that St Louis celebrated the Louisiana Purchase which of course is very logical given its name. I wish you had included an introduction explaining how you came to have this incredible postcard album and how it is connected to your own family history.
Is there any way to access the cards online to see them in greater detail?
un abrazo a ti y otro a Isi.
Va
———-
Feb 13 Sunday Roy's birthday, he's coming tonight for a visit.
—-
didn't see this as I rarely look at yahoo mail...gmail its been for a long time, please use gmail.
I do not remember anything about the cataract surgery except that
Dr Christopher Connor (Hanover) did it - NO pain, and instant crystal clear vision. No need for glasses...for months. but as we age so do the miracle surgeries. Now (more than a year later) I need readers for most things written but still no glasses to drive or be near people. If Va thinks this will be a 100% cure-all just keep in mind that yes for a while it felt like a miracle - but time erodes and things get cloudy again. He calls it the greasy windshield and I've been back once for a clean-up. She may be a prime candidate but anyone with cataract surgery will tell you it isn't
100% all the time. The times it is it is amazing.
It is February here = STILL cold. We have had the coldest winter for years. if you can wrap your head around this -19F MINUS 19F.
most days have been minus something - -6F, -11F, -3F and then this week we had the January Thaw - late. The ice on the ground has not melted -
we had a night of freezing rain followed by snow so it looked like easy shoveling but put a shovel into it and it stuck. 4" of solid ice covered with several inches of snow. So you are far better off where you are.
$400 every 2 weeks for heat here and I wear a hat and jacket when inside until I get the stove going.
There is no mud to be seen, nothing but ice. Snow would be better.
So stay put! no end in sight yet. Had a power outage yesterday that conked some things out. Fortunately it only lasted 3 hrs and I did have the stove going, sunshine to read....but felt cut off without the laptop.
Work is crazy, people being laid off...scary in fact. I need to find a warmer place to live.
André is doing well, I keep hearing about these interesting people he not only knows but with whom he shares a friendship! Too bad his wife hates me and I am persona non grata there. At least he calls and writes.
Sister is comfortable in her retirement in Canada
Cawley blows hot and cold so currently no idea of his status.
Pets are fine, all overweight but who knew that cats are not supposed to eat kibble! Apparently they have no molars and cannot chew kibble. they need meat not the extra carbs form the crunchy stuff. Vet said.
dump the kibble, increase the meat and she will lose weight. Sukey's
problem is me. I give too many treats. So my bad, my responsibility.
Give a call when you get back but do check the temperature when you do return. No need to navigate ice if you don't have to.
Christopher Connor -great eye doc.
thanks for writing.
——-
Roy coming tonight for his birthday after a day of birding? Yesterday day off I drove a circle around town! walked on the Petroglyph trails. Ate at Chick-fil-A and walked at Rinconada Park nearby. Still only three miles but highest count in a good while. Beckie and Willow had a modest walking day, all went well.
Andrew, You are a
Researcher
Researchers prefer knowing what they’re getting into when it comes to financial decisions and tend to focus on the long-term. Their heightened sense of realism may lead them to take less risk than others.
One of life’s recurring dilemmas is the trade-off between immediate benefits and potentially greater benefits in the future. Whether it’s about our career, health, or wealth, instant gratification and future well-being often conflict. According to research, people with a more long-term perspective generally have high connectedness to their future self and generally have higher life satisfaction.
by Syntoniq 2021 via TIAA
Wonderful essay on Mann in the New Yorker that arrived today by Alex Ross. Explains and glosses quite a bit, helpful and brilliant. Sees Mann as a high bourgeois modernist. Lots of phrases I wish to copy and praise. Toíbín's novel "deft and diligent as it is, ultimately diminishes the imperial strangeness of Mann's nature." the novel is "an absorbing but unchallenging fantasia on Mann's life." Ross says he returns to Mann because he is a supremely gifted storyteller, "adept at the slow windup and the rapid turn of the screw." "a solemn trickster who is never altogether earnest about anything, especially his own grand Goethean persona." At the end, his philsophy of life is "the negation of the self, "which increases the capacity for the affirmation of the other." Jan 24, page 31.
"The real Mann never gave in to his desires, but he also never really hid them. Gay themes surfaced in his writing almost from the start, and he made clear that his stories were autobiographical. . . . Gay men saw the author as one of their own." Tonio Kröger is surely what Prof Schaumann read to me, or a significant part of it. Wish I had asked him to be sure.
Notice how sure Ross is at telling us about "the real" Mann. He attacks Toíbín's novel but gently. Ross says Mann is "The Great Ambiguator." Not clear where that is from.
I suppose Ross is giving me permission to see Mann as a great Modernist after all as well as a great storyteller. Some might see him as pathetically repressed but Ross assures us that "from another perspective—no less modern—there is something honorable in his inactivity." He thought back on his encounter with Klaus Heuser with "pride and gratitude" as the "unhoped-for fulfillment of a lifelong yearning." "All the while, Mann was ensconced in a reasonably happy marriage—-one with enough of a physical component that six children resulted from it." physical component, oh you clever new yorker writers! In Mann's behavior as Ross summarizes it I can certainly see both Prof Schaumann and Mr Reinhardt perfectly depicted.
Now I have to finally read Tonio Kröger. But I will stay with Musil as well.
Oh and look at how well Ross's Mann rhymes with Pessoa. One the storyteller, yes, and with a wide public life, the other the poet, as obscure as possible, outside the close circle, and both modernist in aesthetic sensibility.
Musil's prophetic prescience in Arnheim's speech about the clean and shiny button is amazing. 1930 page 696 5 years? before the camps? but as Arnheim says, this has been evident for centuries.
Dinner with Lisa and Robert last night. Snow blowing when we arrived, light. Everyone laughed at the snow. This morning, snow, still falling at 10:32 am. Supposed to get to 45 by mid-afternoon. Before going I said to myself don't get into discussing Ryan. Sure enough after a while that was the main conversation. They are very upset with him, about him. Don't know what to do. I/we urged Lisa to get some professional help for herself. Professionals who know teen development, especially autism/aspergers and also some counselors or such who can help her and support her. My suspicion is that Ryan misses his father. Robert and his daughter have each other, Ryan has his mother but otherwise is odd man out. Trying not to think we have any advice that would be effective.
Also deciding not to buy an air fryer!! Big day.
Have to send a kudos message on twitter to Alex Ross. He needs to hear from me! He was born in '68! "cosmic irony" is what Mann achieves.
Lo I discover he had an earlier piece in January about Mann. Better read that first before spouting?! Cutline under the photo: "Mann is a solemn trickster who is never altogether earnest about anything." whoa the online version with audio is slightly different in headlines but text seems the same!! no message on twitter possible—maybe through his blog.
algo-poetry found on twitter yesterday
I can't bear conversations with men. They drive me crazy. Men always talk about the same things. You can't expect anything from men. A lot of men in one place is terrible. I never learned anything from men. I learned everything from women. Men have always gotten on my nerves.— Thomas Bernhard
Every man says that too. a tweeter in reply
"Voluntary loneliness, isolation from others, is the readiest safeguard against the unhappiness that may arise out of human relations."
—Sigmund Freud
such good companions Freud and Bernhard would make for one another!!!
If only they had been forced to share a train compartment.
from Steve Taylor's site —
on the one hand, sure . . . .
The Simple Truth
Life is easier than you think.
You don’t have to prove that you’re worthy of love.
You don’t have to suffer to show that you’re strong.
You don’t need strategies to find happiness
as if you’re fighting a major battle.
Life is simpler than you think.
You don’t need an incisive intellect
to decipher hidden patterns of meaning
to cut through layers of complexity
and arrive at the core of truth.
There are fewer problems than you think.
You don’t need to anxiously await the future
or return to the pain of the past.
You don’t have to work through your issues, one by one,
to clear some space for contentment.
There is less urgency than you think.
There’s no need to justify your birth
by filling every day with accomplishments
by setting goals and rushing to reach them
like a footballer who has to justify his selection
So why think at all?
Why let your mind stand between you and reality
like a bad interpreter, who distorts every meaning?
Happiness is your birthright, not a hard-won prize.
Truth lies in experience, not in thoughts and concepts.
Time isn’t running away from you –
it stretches all around you, wide open like space.
So bypass your mind – go straight to the source.
Open your awareness to the simple truth
of the isness and nowness of life.
on the other hand he places this at the end of his long message about all the things he's been doing and publishing, . . .
"It now came to Ulrich that he had lost this elementary, narrative mode of thought to which private life still clings, even though everything in public life has already ceased to be narrative and no longer follows a thread, but instead spreads out as an infinitely interwoven surface."
—-Musil, 1930
page 709
Va's hip has been bothering her, discomfort. Look for PT and a massage.
New transport chair arrived. Too narrow in the seat. Second mistaken purchase!!
In his intro to the Diaries Mark Mirsky says Musil is "above all a master of irony, of distance." So he shares that trait with Mann. The Diaries "bring you into proximity with an imagination that often has a hypnotic effect on those who study to know it better." What a great claim! Kermode says the experience of Musil causes "a permanent change of consciousness in the reader." "Musil's 'sensibility' has been characterized as 'even beyond Proust's . . . hermaphroditic."
Mirsky also makes clear Musil is a religious writer.
24 Feb Yesterday's Swim a great success. We are now members of Defined Fitness. Lou seems to have enjoyed the whole new adventure. I walked outside and then slowly turned one of the bike things with my legs. Called Phil and he was grateful to talk about the crash of his computers and hope that the Geek Squad will get everything new set up properly and restore the world to his desktop. We both sympathized with the sense of overwhelming disruption. I googled St Johns Wort once again and decided it gives me negative reactions I don't need, more anxiety rather than less. Stopped taking it. Am sure it aggravated my worrying about the whole swim venture and the signing up a the front desk for the Defined Fitness membership. Felt like the old fool geezer trying to understand a fast-talking scam artist, used car salesman. Those references lost on the young men working the desk, probably not over twenty-two. Early afternoon today we go see the nuerology nurse at Optum.
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