November 2009

November 14, 2009    Messy Desk Defense from Kafka

“. . . I must carefully preserve the disorder of my desk. . . .  In reality I only manage to live because of the disorder, from which I steal the last remnant of personal freedom.”    Gustave Janouch, Conversations with Kafka: 101

November 15, 2009        Northern Light

cinematographer gordon willis interviewed on Fresh Air a few nights back gave me a reason for continuing to live here that I loved hearing:  the light.  He said he hates LA because the light there is so flat and boring, one dimensional.  In the north you’ve got wonderful light, he loves the cold, northern lights in winter up here.  Hooray I thought.  There it is, a good reason.  Few days last week have been as November-esque as possible--dark and damp and drear.  Days that sent Ishmael wandering on the high seas.  Why do we keep living here  ? you hear voices in your head wondering aloud for you.  Many sane people move to Florida and other points south and if not south then west and south.  But then the light in the skies grabs you and does fantastic things you had not noticed since about this time last year.  Clouds, contrasts, deep grays, fast moving dark slices and white bursts, always something.  So to heck with those snowbirds, for a few months longer.  Maybe someday we’ll join the caravans to eternal sunshine but not yet, not for now.  Can’t wait to see how short the day will be tomorrow.  Today sunset hit just around 4:30.  Damnation, makes you want to move to Copenhagen and savor even longer pitch black nights.

November 17, 2009   Pynchon

I'm about two-thirds through Thomas Pynchon's new novel, Inherent Vice.  I haven't looked at any of his work for years but this is short and tongue-in-cheek LA noir set in the 70s hippy novel and it is laid-back and nothing much is going on but larded with so much LA and California nuance that it just slides along like a genuine low rider.  And it is very funny, in that same droll, dry, sly way.  On page 232 our hero, the private detective Doc has some coffee and Ding Dongs for breakfast.

When he got back, he flipped on the TV and watched Monkees reruns till the local news came on.  The guest today was a visiting Marxist economist from one of the Warsaw Pact nations, who appeared to be in the middle of a nervous breakdown, "Las Vegas," he tried to explain, "it sits out here in middle of desert, produces no tangible goods, money flows in, money flows out, nothing is produced.  This place should not, according to theory, even exist, let alone prosper as it does.  I feel my whole life has been based on illusory premises.  I have lost reality.  Can you tell me, please, where is reality?"  The interviewer looked uncomfortable and tried to change the subject to Elvis Presley.

November 18, 2009   prize-winning classic email of the day

OR:  ah to be 40 and grounded again

Hey B,

I got back from New Orleans night before last.  Great music, drunkenness, food, drunk, weather, alligators, oysters, drunk.  Very expensive.  I traveled with lawyers and bankers and money managers and other richie folk, so cash was no object (for them).  We ate at NOLA (wicked fancy restaurant opened by some fancy one-namer, Emeril).  We consoled Katrina survivors with tips and condescending advice ("You'll tough it out, my man.  Here's a fiver.").  We drank at breakfast and thereafterwards.  As a result, I'm not to leave the town limits until Thanksgiving (if I intend to remain married).  I could meet you in ______, but I really have used up all my Man Points for a month or two.  Sorry dude,

Bad Friend XX

November 22, 2009    Kennedy-Mansfield Complex

Anniversary of Kennedy’s death.  36th? no 46th !

Just read about it in Javier Marîas’s new novel which arrived this week--3rd volume in his Trilogy “Your Face Tomorrow” and as soon as it arrived I dropped everything to read it---such a fan of his I’ve become over the past ten years.

If she hadn’t died in that way, [Jayne Mansfield] with the possibly invented details that so fire the rabble’s imagination, she would have been almost completely forgotten.  Kennedy wouldn’t, obviously, if he’d simply suffered a heart attack in Dallas, but you can be quite sure that he would be remembered infinitely less and with only slight emotion if his name were not immediately associated with being gunned down and with various convoluted, unresolved conspiracy theories. That, in essence, is the Kennedy-Mansfield complex, the fear of having one’s life forever marked and distorted by the manner of one’s death, the fear that one’s whole life will come to be viewed as merely an intermediary stage, a pretext, on the way to the lurid end that will eternally identify us.  Mind you, we all run the same risk, even if we’re not public figures, but obscure, anonymous secondary individuals.  We are all witnesses to our own story, Jack.  You to yours and I to mine.’  (29)

November 29, 2009   About Patricia Pérez Nuiz

"And she's funny and physical and she laughs easily, which is so often the most attractive thing about women."  (59)

--Javier Marîas, Your Face Tomorrow: Vol 3 Poison, Shadow and Farewell