same Friday morning. Called Richard and placed order for four cobalt mugs to be sent to PT. Washer has just quieted. Misty, foggy morning, raining. Headache, two advils.
helpful post from Poetry Chaikhana
Issa Buddha's body
accepts it . . .
winter rain
paid the Water Authority Bill. $1.21 Now to pre-info the car rental at enterprise. Late lunch party at Walters has us doubled over in sleepiness after tasting some morsels of George's fruit cake under the pretex-pretense of tiding us over.
Nice meal, fun get-together, relentless rain entering and leaving. George and Darlene (and Keith) helped us get in and out of the place. Had stir-fry duck! pretty good, just my sort of glop and rice.
Sat morning
Gained about four pounds between the meal and George's delicious fruit cake. Geo says Hal, his AI friend, assures him that being an atheist Catholic you find the miracle in walking together--three emoji faces with teeth bared.
Am I ready to like weird literature, classics of the weird tale says the intro. Just because it is Nicholas's newest interest? Perhaps and then again perhaps not. I never succeeded in being as enthused about the novels of Claude Houghton as he has been. But give it a chance. Not now though. Now I'm still in love with the novel by Peter Handke and maybe all of his works. One love affair at a time. "Possible Misattribution: It sounds like a witty, modern saying, maybe from a TV show or a contemporary book, rather than a classic literary figure." Puts me in my place it does this AI genius.
"It gave him real pain to expel his breath after looking for so long." 114 Did Handke read Modiano before or during writing his book about walking and wandering around Paris and using all the street names and place names to decorate the book, sustain the narrative, create the inner life of Gregory from the landscape of the city? Or even after? Or never. Does Paris make writers use its map to construct their books, it being the literary city qua non? ". . . and in any event was totally free from envy." "the poor peasants among whom he had grown up."
Still sleepy from a nap when I read the last pages of Feeling so I will read it again. Will also go on to start Repetition and two others.
Yesterday or was it this morning I threw away a book from its place on the shelf here in the den. Blood of the Lamb by Peter DeVries. My name in pencil on the first page with the date 1962. Hardback with a plastic cover taped on it. 1962 was senior year, graduation from high school. I had bought the book and read it because Brother Richard had mentioned it as one he had enjoyed, his laughter about it suggesting how much fun it contained, provoked, invited. A satirical novel, maybe a bit like Evelyn Waugh? A New Yorker writer. Brother Richard brought old new yorker to the classroom, put them on the large wide windowsills of the classroom. Anyone who got their work done early and had spare time could pick them up and leaf through them, read anything in them. Did I laugh when I read the novel? Did I understand it as easily and deeply as Brother Richard had done? Or did I read it so I could drop casually at some point that yes I had bought it and read it and he could see how much his opinion meant to me. No memory of whether any of that took place, no memory either of whether I did indeed enjoy the book. It was the trophy value of it. I had no idea of that at the time. Why did I want to throw it away now, after carrying it around the country since 1962 and making sure it had a place on honor among many other sorts of trophy books gathered for many sorts of reasons? Not sure. Some sadness or reproach or loss it carried on its spine, some memory of high school confusions, longings, aspirations I no longer wished to see on a daily basis, out of the corner of my eye every time I entered and left the room.
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