For over a week, I tried to finish reading a book that I didn't like very much. I always feel compelled to finish a book that I start, even when I don't like it; and it takes me forever to read a book that I don't like. I thought about giving up on it, but then I decided to just alternate between it and a different book--there are so many in my Kindle backlog that I want to read.
The book in question is Alison Lurie's Imaginary Friends. It takes place in upstate New York in (I think) the late 1970s or early 1980s, as a pair of social science professors attempt to infiltrate a very small religious sect that believes (sincerely, I think, though I'm only about halfway through) that a higher order of beings from a planet named Varna have achieved true enlightenment, and that a small group of chosen people on Earth can achieve similar enlightenment if they adhere to a series of ever-weirder made-up teachings. A review that I read characterized the novel as a satire of academia, particularly social science, and I guess that's true enough. It's better as a commentary on people who are willing to believe a lie, no matter how obvious. Particularly relevant now, of course, but I can't seem to stay engaged in the story.
It's Sunday now; a rainy Sunday after a very rainy Saturday. So instead of swimming, I'm at home, watching "The Queen," which was free on demand. I love this movie. This is the third or so time that I've seen it. I love the part at the beginning, when the Queen is sitting for her portrait, and chatting with the artist about how fortunate he is to be allowed to vote. She envies him "the joy of being partial." That's the attraction of politics, I suppose. It's the tribal instinct, the joy of being partial, of picking a side.
I love Queen Elizabeth, too. On her twenty-first birthday in 1947, she gave the speech that included the famous passage "I declare before you all that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service." She meant it, and she has kept her promise throughout her whole, long life. I'm a small-r republican by conviction, but a royalist at heart.
*****
Later, the sun came out for just about an hour. I ran to the pool, and swam laps for 45 minutes, stopping only when a thunderclap prompted a long whistle from the lifeguard's chair. The water, after two days of rain, was no longer warm, but not quite cold--a perfect contrast with the still-warm, humid air. I fell asleep later, feeling as if I was still moving through cool water.
*****
And now it's Tuesday, 10:15 PM, and I just finished work. I worked until 10 PM last night, too; and also worked for a few hours on Saturday. So I'm tired. Tired and out of sorts. It's been raining for two days, and I haven't been swimming, and my eyes are tired, and my head is aching; and so obviously, what would I do except sit in front of the computer and write even more?
*****
I finally gave up (temporarily) on Imaginary Friends, but ironically, I'm sort of itching to know how it turns out. So I'll revisit it again, a chapter at a time, until I finally finish. I'm reading a memoir now, Lynn Freed's Leaving Home: Reading, Writing, and Life on the Page. It's quite good, two-part, colon-separated title aside. Tiresome. The title, that is.
And I'm leaving home next week; on vacation, I mean. We're going to Montreal, a place I've never visited, but for some reason, seemed the only reasonable place to go. I reserved our hotel rooms early in the month, and then called last night to confirm. I can stumble along in something that resembles French, but I can't conduct business in any language except English, so when the desk agent answered the phone in English, I immediately said "Bonsoir--parlez-vous Anglais?" And she said, as I expected she would, "Mais oui! Bien sur!" Maybe a week in Montreal will improve my French. I'm sure that it will improve my attitude. Au revoir, until next week.
Saturday, July 28, 2018
Friday, July 20, 2018
Equinox
Monday: Last week, a coworker and friend was suffering some eye discomfort, and I suggested that she look at her eye makeup and eye cream ingredients. She did, and found that a simple product change made all the difference. Maybe I should do the same thing, because it's almost 9 PM and my eyes are burned out like an old string of Christmas lights. So maybe it's just eye cream. It probably has nothing to do with age-related macular degeneration or cataracts or glaucoma or any other of the many blindness-causing ailments that I imagine that I have every time my eyes are tired.
I mean, I don't see any reason why it would.
*****
Tuesday: The Washington Capitals' Stanley Cup win is fast becoming the greatest financial catastrophe ever to befall my family. Do you know how many Capitals Stanley Cup shirts we own? No, I don't either. I lost count. And here's what arrived in the mail today:
That's exactly what it looks like: A custom-engraved, limited edition, Washington Capitals 2018 Stanley Cup Champions wine bottle; filled with wine of some sort, I presume. It showed up in a box the size of a dumpster, and I'm sure that shipping alone cost $50. We kept the box. We might end up living in it.
*****
Friday: Every summer, there's a turning point. Darkness falls a tiny bit earlier, and the air, even though it's warm, starts to develop a barely perceptible but real edge of coolness. The haze lifts and the sky becomes azure-clear blue in mid-afternoon, warmed with a red-pink glow at sunset, which comes just a tiny bit earlier each day. Of course, the hazy warmth will return and linger throughout August, but by the third week of July, it's impossible to ignore the signs of the coming end of summer and the beginning of fall. The pool was noticeably cooler tonight, and even though I know that summer isn't over, I can feel it slipping away. It's always later than you think. I should make that a tag.
I used to think that the President was a lazy, arrogant, mean-spirited, greedy, dishonest, self-interested ignoramus who was exploiting his office to enrich himself and his family. Now, I think he's an actual agent of a hostile foreign power. I hope that I'm wrong about the second part. If not, then more than summer might come to an end.
I mean, I don't see any reason why it would.
*****
Tuesday: The Washington Capitals' Stanley Cup win is fast becoming the greatest financial catastrophe ever to befall my family. Do you know how many Capitals Stanley Cup shirts we own? No, I don't either. I lost count. And here's what arrived in the mail today:
 |
| Yes, that's a bottle of wine that I can't drink. |
That's exactly what it looks like: A custom-engraved, limited edition, Washington Capitals 2018 Stanley Cup Champions wine bottle; filled with wine of some sort, I presume. It showed up in a box the size of a dumpster, and I'm sure that shipping alone cost $50. We kept the box. We might end up living in it.
*****
Friday: Every summer, there's a turning point. Darkness falls a tiny bit earlier, and the air, even though it's warm, starts to develop a barely perceptible but real edge of coolness. The haze lifts and the sky becomes azure-clear blue in mid-afternoon, warmed with a red-pink glow at sunset, which comes just a tiny bit earlier each day. Of course, the hazy warmth will return and linger throughout August, but by the third week of July, it's impossible to ignore the signs of the coming end of summer and the beginning of fall. The pool was noticeably cooler tonight, and even though I know that summer isn't over, I can feel it slipping away. It's always later than you think. I should make that a tag.
I used to think that the President was a lazy, arrogant, mean-spirited, greedy, dishonest, self-interested ignoramus who was exploiting his office to enrich himself and his family. Now, I think he's an actual agent of a hostile foreign power. I hope that I'm wrong about the second part. If not, then more than summer might come to an end.
Sunday, July 15, 2018
Fiction and non-fiction
Monday: It's 6:50 AM, and I'm the only person in the house who's awake, but that will change in 20 minutes or so. Meanwhile, it's time to get started on a post for the week.
In "Stranger Than Fiction," Will Ferrell plays an accountant who is also the lead character in a work-in progress novel written by a neurotic novelist played by Emma Thompson. He discovers (I forget how) that he is not only a fictional character, but a doomed one; and he spends the rest of the movie trying to change his fate and convince the author not to kill him off. It's a good movie.
I'm not a novelist, but I write. Some days, I do little else. Sometimes I write about how or why to do things that must be done--a procedure, or a policy, or a weekly email that lets swim team families know what meets and events are happening this week, and what everyone has to do to make sure that those things happen. Sometimes, I write about things that have already happened--a past performance narrative for a proposal, or a blog post about a new product release, or another email newsletter with highlights of the last month's events and accomplishments.
I realized yesterday, as I wrote a weekly newsletter, that writing about events and plans is almost the same for me as actually making them happen. In fact, it's the only way that I can make something real and concrete.
*****
And now it's Wednesday, and who even knows what I was thinking when I wrote that. It was a bad day.
But Tuesday was a much better day. At 12:30 or so, I was in a meeting at the government site where I work, when a senior Fed interrupted the meeting to announce that the Thai soccer players and their coach had all gotten safely out of the flooded cave where they'd been trapped
That night, my sons were watching "The Martian," a pretty good movie, on TV. I wondered aloud if the movie had already been scheduled to air, or if the network's programmers had made a last-minute decision to show it after the miraculous rescue. My older son asked me what one thing had to do with the other. What does a high-budget movie about an improbable space mission have to do with 12 little boys and one man trapped in a dank, cold, pitch-black underground pit, that could so easily have been their tomb?
A world waiting with bated breath, watching a race against life and death. A no-expenses spared all-hands-on-deck rescue mission. Volunteers willing to endure great physical hardship, even extreme danger, just for the possibility of saving one life, or 13. The heartbreaking sacrifice of a hero who gives up his own life to save others'. And a cinematic happy ending. No matter how awful humanity can be (and we suck sometimes), we will still bear any burden and pay any price (JFK, I think) to save another person's life, whether he's lost in space or trapped in an underground pit. You couldn't write a happier ending.
Saman Kunan, rest in peace.
In "Stranger Than Fiction," Will Ferrell plays an accountant who is also the lead character in a work-in progress novel written by a neurotic novelist played by Emma Thompson. He discovers (I forget how) that he is not only a fictional character, but a doomed one; and he spends the rest of the movie trying to change his fate and convince the author not to kill him off. It's a good movie.
I'm not a novelist, but I write. Some days, I do little else. Sometimes I write about how or why to do things that must be done--a procedure, or a policy, or a weekly email that lets swim team families know what meets and events are happening this week, and what everyone has to do to make sure that those things happen. Sometimes, I write about things that have already happened--a past performance narrative for a proposal, or a blog post about a new product release, or another email newsletter with highlights of the last month's events and accomplishments.
I realized yesterday, as I wrote a weekly newsletter, that writing about events and plans is almost the same for me as actually making them happen. In fact, it's the only way that I can make something real and concrete.
*****
And now it's Wednesday, and who even knows what I was thinking when I wrote that. It was a bad day.
But Tuesday was a much better day. At 12:30 or so, I was in a meeting at the government site where I work, when a senior Fed interrupted the meeting to announce that the Thai soccer players and their coach had all gotten safely out of the flooded cave where they'd been trapped
That night, my sons were watching "The Martian," a pretty good movie, on TV. I wondered aloud if the movie had already been scheduled to air, or if the network's programmers had made a last-minute decision to show it after the miraculous rescue. My older son asked me what one thing had to do with the other. What does a high-budget movie about an improbable space mission have to do with 12 little boys and one man trapped in a dank, cold, pitch-black underground pit, that could so easily have been their tomb?
A world waiting with bated breath, watching a race against life and death. A no-expenses spared all-hands-on-deck rescue mission. Volunteers willing to endure great physical hardship, even extreme danger, just for the possibility of saving one life, or 13. The heartbreaking sacrifice of a hero who gives up his own life to save others'. And a cinematic happy ending. No matter how awful humanity can be (and we suck sometimes), we will still bear any burden and pay any price (JFK, I think) to save another person's life, whether he's lost in space or trapped in an underground pit. You couldn't write a happier ending.
Saman Kunan, rest in peace.
Thursday, July 5, 2018
Red, white, blue
As a veteran government contractor, I am highly fluent in Beltway acronym. But every time I think I've heard them all, a new one comes along. Three different times last week, I heard people describe a plan or a project as "OBE" (technically an initialism and not an acronym, because it's pronounced "O B E" and not "obe" as in rhyming with "lobe"). It didn't really register the first two times, but when I heard it a third time, I had to investigate.
"OBE" does not mean "Order of the British Empire," at least not in this context. It means "overcome by events," which is now my favorite-ever government insider slang term. I'm going to find at least 10 reasons a week to describe something (or someone, even) as "OBE."
And now, you might be thinking to yourself, as you contemplate the minute of your life that you spent reading this, a minute that you will never regain, that this blog is or should be OBE. You would not be the first person to think this. The author beat you to it.
*****
It's the 4th of July. Normally, I'd write "fourth" rather than "4th," but the ordinal number is acceptable in references to Independence Day. My sons are looking forward to their favorite 4th of July dessert: Yellow sponge cake dessert shells filled with strawberries, blueberries, and Cool Whip. Not whipped cream, but Cool Whip. My Korean mother-in-law introduced them to this mid-century Americana treat, and now, they consider the holiday incomplete without it. Apparently, my mother-in-law's friend, also Korean-born, told her that this red, white, and blue dessert is an American tradition, and she or my sister-in-law have made it for every 4th of July gathering since.
Having married into an immigrant family, I've learned that most immigrants are eager to understand what is uniquely American, and to adopt it as their own. For some immigrants, this means observing and imitating American ways of dress and speech. For others, like my neighbor from Vietnam, it means growing and cultivating the greenest and most American of front lawns, complete with garden gnomes and American flags and barn-shaped mailboxes. For my mother-in-law, it's food. She cooks, and eats, mostly Korean food, but she always insists on traditional American fare for American holidays. Turkey for Thanksgiving and ham for Christmas; and of course, strawberries, blueberries, and Cool Whip in a little cake shell for 4th of July. Sons and grandsons of immigrants, my children have the most American of families.
*****
So between one thing and another, my week has gone off the rails. Last week at this time, I was ahead of or at least on top of every task and chore on my list. This week, a combination of a midweek holiday and other unexpected occurrences has thrown the whole operation into chaos. Overcome by events, I will end here. Until next week...
"OBE" does not mean "Order of the British Empire," at least not in this context. It means "overcome by events," which is now my favorite-ever government insider slang term. I'm going to find at least 10 reasons a week to describe something (or someone, even) as "OBE."
And now, you might be thinking to yourself, as you contemplate the minute of your life that you spent reading this, a minute that you will never regain, that this blog is or should be OBE. You would not be the first person to think this. The author beat you to it.
*****
It's the 4th of July. Normally, I'd write "fourth" rather than "4th," but the ordinal number is acceptable in references to Independence Day. My sons are looking forward to their favorite 4th of July dessert: Yellow sponge cake dessert shells filled with strawberries, blueberries, and Cool Whip. Not whipped cream, but Cool Whip. My Korean mother-in-law introduced them to this mid-century Americana treat, and now, they consider the holiday incomplete without it. Apparently, my mother-in-law's friend, also Korean-born, told her that this red, white, and blue dessert is an American tradition, and she or my sister-in-law have made it for every 4th of July gathering since.
Having married into an immigrant family, I've learned that most immigrants are eager to understand what is uniquely American, and to adopt it as their own. For some immigrants, this means observing and imitating American ways of dress and speech. For others, like my neighbor from Vietnam, it means growing and cultivating the greenest and most American of front lawns, complete with garden gnomes and American flags and barn-shaped mailboxes. For my mother-in-law, it's food. She cooks, and eats, mostly Korean food, but she always insists on traditional American fare for American holidays. Turkey for Thanksgiving and ham for Christmas; and of course, strawberries, blueberries, and Cool Whip in a little cake shell for 4th of July. Sons and grandsons of immigrants, my children have the most American of families.
*****
So between one thing and another, my week has gone off the rails. Last week at this time, I was ahead of or at least on top of every task and chore on my list. This week, a combination of a midweek holiday and other unexpected occurrences has thrown the whole operation into chaos. Overcome by events, I will end here. Until next week...
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