April 2014
Yesterday Fool’s day indeed. Got really lost coming home. Anne and Meme here, had a fine day in Valencia after picking them up.
4 April night Friday
Took Mimi and Anne to the airport this morning. Mimi Carlson from Chicago and Sarasota. Roomate friend of Anne’s from Loyola New Orleans. Really delightful person, enjoyed their visit tremendously. Then we looked up Calle Neptuno and our old haunt La Barraca. Lunched at La Marcelina. Later looked up the house of Blasco Ibañez. After that I had a super strong sense of dejav vu, that we had done all of this before---was it in 2005 or 2006? Va thinks we have not been there since our three week stay in 1998. But I would swear we have. Maybe I’m just tired.
Got lost the other night. Day later we had a swell drive up to the mills and the look out over Javea. Also a dinner at the Mirador and another at La Mesena. Ready to try the one meal a day plan--Anne said their friend Marty up in Lake Champlain has found that to work well for him. But of course I had a truffle this evening after some cereal and cheese. Short weekend and then we head to Ibiza on Monday. This time we will be the visitors. See how that works.
Caught a look at the complex of new buildings in Valencia. That was after we stopped at the Corte Ingles right across from it so I could run in and buy a new hair cutter. Expert assistance from a beautiful woman in her 40s.
Great sunshine all day. Knausgård interview on Eurozine but too long to read closely right now.
Saturday night
This poem from Jim today.
A Touchstone Time
Sometimes grace
breaks loose in our feet,
shoots laser-like up shins,
through knees and thighs,
into nuts and wondrous woman parts
and guts, and on, up past thrilled organs,
past lungs pumping refreshed blood,
and on and into our--no, not brain,
that house of circuits and sparking synapses,
and also home to the fragile laptop
that taps out messages
to others and ourselves.
No. Not into brain. but our heart.
And heart, ablaze with joy, signals
Brain: Stop! Stop all keyboard messages.
Type only, Hosanna!
Jim Atwell, copyright 2014
Gorgeous sunset this evening. Valencia yesterday, lunch on the beach at Neptuno. Blasco Ibañez house. I swear we were there once before.
Drive this evening up into the urbanization called Mount Olimpos, behind the golf course.
Off to Ibiza Monday April 7
Got back today Friday April 11 9:20 pm now waiting for the Madrileñas to arrive. Marga called when they were about to set off from Valencia.
Like the new car Avis gave us. A VW Tuareg, sort of a small suv style like our Subaru but much better. Drives beautifully even though manual. I’ve only stalled or ground the gears about four times today. Whole car feels so great--tighter and smoother and more solid than the Subaru.
Visit to Roger on Ibiza could not have been better. Perfect three days. Billy Thompson arrive from NYC on the second day, slept off his jet lag and then joined us. Roger arranged two visits with his friends, one a visit to Orietta’s famous garden, the second a home cooked chicken and pork dinner with his and Isi’s friend, Paqitiña. On our day on our own in our rental car we drove to Santa Eulalia and walked on the beautiful esplanade there most of the day, with a good mid-day dinner at Sal Marina.
Sat April 12 almost midnight all of us watching the tail end of “It’s Complicated.” Dinner at La Boheme earlier, walking on the windy Arenal, siesta reading spell, comida at El Carro in Calpe was less than impressive even though the day was fine. Before that a drive up to see the view and the mills. Marga, Isabel and Maimen. They got lost last night when they drove here from Valencia, but got here anyway. Their gps took them to calle Shakespeare, somewhere close enough. Just to the right of here, might be the street I use every time to turn on to the main road.
Last few weeks here, days. Going faster even with visitors all this week and next weekend. Petie arrives. Time to move on back to Paris which will feel way too short, I’m sure. Even while I’m getting more and more ready to get back home. The Ibiza jaunt went as well as it possibly could have gone, except that Isi wasn’t there. Billy Thompson didn’t seem to us nearly as ill or sickly as Roger had made out. But we were with him only two days.
Isabel and Maimen and Marga are such great company, so comfortable we all feel together. I know Roger much less well than Virginia does, so he was not for me as comfy and pleasant.
Sunday Morning Palm Sunday April 13 Las Señoras de Madrid on the Naya. Thoughts of Wallace Stevens great poem in my head.
Disappointment in Tim Parks once more. His chapters on kayaking and so on remind me of other lesser scribblers I have known. But I will forge on to see how he changes his approach to his bodily situation. Question now is what we will do today.
Quick facetime with Dave and Emma a few minutes ago. They have great news but want Cécile to be on camera for it. It must be that they have gotten the larger apartment but Davey smiled and didn’t want to let the cat out of the bag. Hooray. Great news that will be. I wonder if we will be able to see where it is at least when we get there, pretty soon. A week from now our last gaggle of visitors will be here and an interesting grouping it will be. Thoughts about the visit to Roger but will record those in a while.
Monday night April 14
Decompressing from Ibiza trip and Madrileñas visit and kids’ news about their new place.
My supposition or imagination is that the visit to Roger had undertones or subtext of a making-up or forgiveness or restoration of balance. Va and Roger are old friends and colleaques, but when Va’s event happened, as I recall it, Roger and she had been in a period of antagonism because she was in her second term as chair and Roger was giving her a hard time about whatever, as many as he could find, and he fought against her and Bobbi C. True, that semester he was away on sabbatical but even so, bam! Va is out sick and in a coma and Lopez-M “takes over” as chair and keeps it. Something Roger still says he never forgave her for---because he should have become chair. He had never had his chance at that. So this long visit was a finale of sorts for Va to help put all the teaching career past to rest and patch things up with Roger, or recycle the antagonisms of old into new and future pleasantries of retirement.
Plus Ibiza itself bedazzles and who doesn’t want to see it and experience something of it Given that I was thinking all these thoughts more or less, the visit was one day longer than I would have chosen, but in hindsight I can say it was a complete delight. I let them retrace what they wanted to of the past and tried to stay out. Couldn’t help myself for “prompting” Roger now and then but I hope I restrained myself somewhat. Billy actually added to the mystery of the visit and helped turn the energy away from the R-V tension. Too bad Isi wasn’t there. His spirit reigns in the house, a great sense of simplicity, amplitude, beauty and tranquillity.
Back to liking Tim Parks book. Mostly because he brings in Coleridge on pissing and being hypochondriac.
poems from Jim
Some haikus that have helped during a very demanding time:
as I leave the farm
tiny roots deep underground
rip off stay behind 4-13-2014
in our brief exile
blue and I try not to think
of movers back home
christopher robin
at six exploring our woods
new owners’ boy paul
three nights’ freezing
after each the peepers sing
then hurray true spring
And a revision (maybe the last) of that last poem:
Unexpected
Sometimes grace
breaks loose in our feet,
shoots laser-like up shins,
through knees and thighs,
into nuts and wondrous woman parts
and guts, and on, up past thrilled organs,
past lungs pumping freshened blood,
and on and into our—
no, not head, nest of circuits, wires,
and base for the frail keyboard
that taps out messages
to others and ourselves.
No. Not into head, but heart.
And Heart, ablaze with joy, signals
Stop! Stop messaging.
Type only, “Hosanna”!
and email from David
Hey guys! If Petie is anywhere near a Carter's, we would love a couple of these terry-cloth bibs that we had for emma, but in blue or turquoise (and we also love the "little brother" pajama that you guys got - one of those in 3 months size?).
Otherwise we're all set!
Ok, so the plan would be for you guys to stay in our apartment for as long as possible - we would get you set up with a loaner small fridge, a bed that you could sleep in that we would put downstairs in what is now Emma's room, and we would leave you furniture and things so that the place would be functional (sort of like your avenue de Suffren place).
As far as the time-line goes, well, how about staying the full three months? It's the best rental deal you'll ever find in Paris, and we have to pay these three months' rent anyway, so why not take advantage of it, right?
If not three months, how about two? I think two months would be great, or at the very least plan on staying an extra month, otherwise it won't be worth it!
Ok, hope that answers all your questions! We'll try another FaceTime sometime this week!
Bee zoo!
D, C, E & e
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April 16 Weds night
email from Phil
"Of course the barefoot, silent contemplatives need to sunbathe too." LOL
Bizarre weather here. Just two days ago it was in the 80s. Tulips were blooming, bumble bees were flitting about, and trees were leafing quickly. I wore tee shirts and sandals. Yet yesterday the temp started to drop precipitously and by last night reached below 32, with heavy cold rains and even big flakes of snow. Today, it's in the high 40s and I've seen a lot of wilted tulips and daffodils.
Born again: one of Sitter's brothers - Bill, I think - joined some super conservative church in Texas and, according to John, became very hesitant to even talk to someone who doesn't share his beliefs. I hope Va's sister isn't quite that bad. On the other side of this equation, there was a very interesting story in a recent issue of the NYer by Malcolm Gladwell about how the FBI's incomprehension of a religious point of view led to the tragedy at Waco.
And in the NYRB was an interesting article about the "Formalist" school of literary criticism that got started in Russia right before WWI and got stomped out by Stalin in the late '20s. Apparently, French intellectuals later adapted "Formalism" for sociology and called it "Structuralism." Although I'm not real fan of structuralism, I liked some of the Formalist ideas about literature and criticism quite a lot. Have you heard of that movement?
Meanwhile, for weeks now, I've been working on "Echoes of a War." I also fully realized recently how much most women want to read how love or good will or women or something like that wins out in the end and makes everything acceptable to them. Yet none of my stories do that. Instead, my stories tell the reader about unsettling, ambiguous aspects of our everyday beliefs about reality. Westernized arab countries, such as Tunisia, have pleasant beaches and nice people but have a very brutal side. In 'Convictions' Washington's well meaning racial tolerance has an ugly side where tolerance ends or at least dribbles out. In "A Sense of Loss" life in the Rust Belt has become like living in a dilapidated museum, and there isn't a lot of reason to be optimistic about its future. In the latter two books, I also try to show that the conclusions to police investigations are often far more arbitrary than are portrayed in most fiction, films, or TV programs. Instead of a bad guy always getting caught, some bad guys get away with crimes or someone dead is just declared a bad guy and the case is closed. Finally, "Echoes of a War" will have a similar theme about (in)justice. So, I suspect, very few female readers will even open the book. The title alone - something about war - may put them off, and a lot of male readers won't be satisfied, either. But, as I told that book group a week or so ago, I don't identify with other writers because I don't see any other writer describing the world as I see it. I simply don't share other writers' psychology, politics, sociology, or religion so I feel a need to tell others about the world that I feel other writers are ignoring because of their psychology, etc. Which probably means I'm simply more delusional than most people but, I suspect, no more delusional than most writers. I'm just delusional in a different way.
my reply
great final paragraph there---self-knowledge as the ultimate goal of a life well-lived according to Aristotle and all the other ancients.
Never fear, though, here on BBC TV we have three or four movie channels labeled as "Movies-for-Men" so maybe you can sell
a novel or two to some british publisher/moviemaker.
It's long been an axiom in publishing for women that the book must have a happy ending. So much for literary ambitions if you want sales from the only group that buys lots of books.
You could look around and see if you could find a library group of readers mainly men. Ask over at that Political store bookshop. Trouble is some gay groups might answer the call. Post a query on Facebook or Ebay---looking for readers discussion group not all women, not all gay, mixed and interested in non-genre reading experiences. Bet it is pretty hard to find---although some good libraries should be able to help you out. All those wealthy suburbs and university area professionals.
I have Tim Parks recent non-fiction book on the kindle here and have been reading that in the few moments in the evening not given over to walking more (8k steps today for Va) and basking in the sun and air. He is irritatingly good. Irritating because every so often he seems just competently hum-drum, but then he will get pretty brilliant and good for ten or so pages.
Formalism---by the way you just gave me the best two sentence summary of what all happened with that. I had know a wee about it but could never pin it down because in America the term itself--"formalism"---got used by the New Critics and their critics (esp Chicagoans) and so whatever the Russians and later the structuralists had one always got filtered through the American sieve.
Thought of you this evening earlier when we were walking out of a store toward the beach esplanade. Some young workers
came out at the same time and one guy with a full but trimmed beard, maybe 22? his face was unbelievably identical to those Roman tomb paintings you like so much. Almost wanted to ask him for a snapshot to send you but then I thought better of that---nope, that wouldn't fly at all! Gotta admire those photographers who knew how to wait and wait and wait with a good telephoto lens and get shots of people unsuspecting they were being caught.
I do think we're all pretty delusional each in our own way. Va saw it on Facebk the other day: "there are two types of people: me and everyone else."
---------
Hi,
This article made me think of all our many food campaigns over the years! I am trying to go vegan again now as my LDL cholesterol is back up again... Sigh. I really DO NOT want to take a statin drug!
>>>>>>>>>
Subject: 'Year Of No Sugar': The Schaub Family Went Sugar Free For An Entire Year
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/07/year-of-no-sugar_n_5084561.html
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
So, how are you two?????
We are ok. Bob had a hernia repair surgery on March 21 so he is on a 6 week recovery program of going on long walks, 5-8 miles. (NO biking or other floor exercises). He got a pedometer so it is fun to see the mileage and # steps.
We were going to fly to Houston to meet up with the kents and camp with them till New Orleans but cancelled. I was afraid Bob would be lifting stuff --he is not supposed to pick up anything over 10 lbs. He had the other side done long ago--In fact, Virginia, the day of his surgery you and I went to the Filoli Gardens! At the time the doc said he would need the other side done some time. I think for this side he waited too long as the doc said it was much longer/bigger than he had anticipated. Bob, didn't you have a hernia repair???
I have been having a couple staging jobs. Always fun. My last one sold for asking price $1.1 Million! yikes.
Our 50th Anniversary trip is to England & Scotland, May 6-29th. We are going with Kathy and Joel. Do you remember Kathy Olsen? She was at the library around '71-'72. She hosted my baby shower :-) We fly directly to Heathrow. In England we will visit Bath, Oxford, Chipping Camden, York and in Scotland: Edinburgh/St Andrews, Oban/Mull, Inverness. We have a Brit Rail pass. Hope the weather is decent but I am mentally prepared for chilly, rainy, grey skies!
We will be home for the summer other than some days in SF. We have to stay home as we will be in the poor house after living on the Pound!
So, catch us up--what are you up to? How are the grand kiddies??????
cheers,
Nancy
>>>>>>>>>>>>
Nancy McDermand
408-888-2855 (cell)
2013 in Review
https://db.tt/puDnZsbt
Bob robert.garlitz@gmail.com
10:28 PM (38 minutes ago)
to NancyMcD
Hi Somehow I just saw this email. Here is a snap of the kiddies. Big news in Paris is they are able to move to a much much bigger apartment (state-owned, but rent goes from 900 to 1400 euros a month). 72 sq meters vs the 40 sq they have been living in, so they are excited. They wanted us to stay two or three more months to pay the sublet price to help them out but we finally said no to that. So we are here in Xabia/Javea for ten more days and then Paris for two weeks. Neat thing is our rental there is a 3 minute walk from their new place even though they won't be quite fully in it yet.
Last week we spent with Roger on Ibiza. Gorgeous house he and Isi built over the years. Out in the far countryside with great view of the small port town of San Antonio. Isi wasn't there unfortunately, up in Jaen with his ailing mother. Roger has a great garden all over his property---all feels much like Santa Fe. Maybe even a little greener.
Earlier visits, a week with Chuck and Louise from Santa Fe. Then my sister from New Orleans and her friend Mimy from Chicago. They were here three days. Friday Va's sister Petie arrives from Arkansas She will stay three weeks, go up to Paris with us. Nicholas a british friend who now works in Zurich is arriving same day and his younger friend Andrei, a Russian fashion designer (we think ---we've not met him).
Javea has been great. Wee too cold at first at the start of March. And too British---our tv package is all bbc and not many channels. Weather now is wonderful. Air on Ibiza reminded us of Hawaii---sweet and fragrant. Here we have two great esplanades for waking on the shore plus lots of flat boulevards. It is quiet and not too developed relative to the horrors south of here in Benidorm and Alicante. We've made a good number of visits to Valencia and A few to Alicante. Great restaurants all around.
Missing home though, been a little too long maybe. But weather back there has been terrible, so we're glad to be here.
Hope Bob is mending well and sure we remember Kathy and Joel. Should be a great trip.
Gosh--forgot that this past weekend we had the three señoras from Madrid visit---Marga and her two librarian friends Isabel and Maimen. Had a great time with them.
We plan to go out to Seattle area in late September while Louise and Chuck Kiger use our house to see new england--swap.
Va bought a post card to send you two weeks ago but hasn't written it yet! Getting her hair and nails done tomorrow.
love,
Bob
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Sunday evening 6:21 pm April 20
Nicholas and Andrei out in the pool. Va lying down. Petie also. Big dinner at La Bohême. Earlier drove to the top of the Cap, beautiful weather for the views, lots of people. After dinner it began to cloud over and get cooler.
Easter. And Nicholas’s 51st birthday.
April 22 Tuesday evening. Back from another day in Valencia. Sunny and warm. Parked under Corte Inglés. Scoped Desigual but found nothing. Shopped for ceramics, Petie bought matching blue and whites. Lunch on Reina at Bri de Safra. Drunken Italian family next to us. From there the Plaza Redona. Cafe on the Ayuntamiento plaza in the super warm sun.
Weds morning April 23
After the curlers come out of Va’s hair, we go off to Valencia again to see the sea world at the Ciudad. So it seems Valencia must have been the first of the Autonomias to create a “city” next to the city to advance itself into the Future and Away from Madrid.
Mixed feelings about Nicholas’s visit. He and Andrei had a delightful time catching up and going on with their relationship. Petie and Willow continued telling their family stories again. So I am suffering through a self-inflicted cased of hey, what about me-ism. At 70. It seems pretty disgusting, doesn’t it. There it is. Nice dreams last night though. Someone lifted a tree up by truck crane and dropped it smack down inside someone else’s house. I’m tired from the people and driving. Less than a week to go too. Paris here we come. Wonder if Roy and his babe, Sandia, will show, on their way back from Nepal to New Mex? Andrei I liked a lot. My first Russian russian? First gay Russian. Actually Polish, as he says about himself. Could spin out some stuff about the pair he and Nicholas make, but will save that for later. Tired from sangria and wine yesterday. On the days I drive I should not drink much. Not for the driving but just for the two sources of possible sleeplessness later on. Of course too much caffeine always the culprit. Biggest discovery of the journey is that cafe americano is no longer a cafe solo with more water but a cafe solo doubled into a cafe creme sized cup. The result is a double solo.
Evening of the 23rd
Full day in V again at the Oceanografic. Nice dolphin show. Lunch down under featured hundreds of silver fish swimming clockwise around the whole restaurant. Not many people dining. Felt a bit empty. Empty luxury in the classic Spanish haute cafeteria manner. White whale beautiful even if not the species of Moby Dick.
Short note from Nicholas. I know I am still tired and making too much of my sense of discombobulation from the weekend, but I wonder if and when we will ever see him again. Of course this is silly and we will visit him in Braar.
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Dear Bob and Virginia,
Thank you so very much for your hospitality over the weekend. It was great to see you. I hope you continue to enjoy sunny Spain and the visit to Paris goes well.
Love and best wishes, Nicholas
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Nice walk on Neptuno in the evening sunlight.
Andrei’s note arrived three minutes ago. “Ladies in Lavender” on the tv player.
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Dead Bob and Virginia,
Thank you very much for your hospitality. I had a very very enjoyable time! I am very glad to have finally met you. Nicholas had told me so many wonderful things about you that when he told me he was going to visit you in Spain, I couldn't resist asking if I could come as well.
I do hope that the rest of your stay in Javea will be wonderful and that you will be able to find a house you are looking for / thinking about.
Please say hello to Marilyn for me. Hope she will have an unforgettable holiday in Spain.
I am attaching a few pictures.
Warm wishes,
Andrei
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ever see
Will we go to Valencia again tomorrow for the ceramics museum? or are we tired of going up there every day. We had pizza and Fracs for dinner. What effect will that long awaited treat have. I bought them at the El Safor gasoline station, which a bronze plaque says was opened by King Juan Carlos in 1976.
That book. Arhundati Roy has finally published another novel.
Thurs a m
a wee googling and two family black sheep show up---regarding Nicholas’s dutch family foundation---
last august in the daily mail --
Just two days earlier he had been given a police caution for assaulting his wife by dousing her with water at their luxury home, magistrates were told.
Brenninkmeyer, a member of the Dutch dynasty that owns the C&A chain store, admitted assaulting his wife.
However, he was handed a four month prison sentence, suspended for 18 months, at Hammersmith Magistrates’ Court.
He was also made the subject of a restraining order, banning him from contacting his wife and from their family home in Fulham for six months.
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and fifteen years ago a member of the family who was a Benedictine in England, left the country under a cloud ----
Monk quits Britain after sex claims
By Sean O'Neill
A BENEDICTINE monk has left Britain after being suspended from his duties
following complaints that he sexually abused men who approached him for
religious help and advice.
Fr Andrew Brenninkmeyer, 54, a member of the family that owns the C & A
retail group, left Worth Abbey, Crawley, West Sussex - one of the country's
leading Roman Catholic monasteries - last week.
------
under a cloud ----
why do I care? N says the foundation is wonderful, the family is wonderful. I suppose he is pink clouding because he loves moving to a new job and a new life in Switzerland.
email earlier to Phil
Last group of visitors departed. Few more days here and then to Paris for a week or so. My favorite
photo from the past few weeks attached. We were up in the city yesterday because the Milner sisters
insisted on going to the largest aquarium in Europe. Yawn. Nice time later on the seashore.
Afraid I have a secret confession regarding the poetry you talk about below. I went through a spell of
writing some of that Ashberyean stuff, even publishing a bit. Hazards of teaching englit for too long
I can claim in hindsight. Every Eng prof must want to be a poet or writer of some sort. The stuff
is as you say but like all secret worlds, once you get into it a bit, you assume you are digging it and no
one dare tell you differently, so you glide along within the super-hip world of poetry no one ever
wants to read, not even on an empty beach. Sure not as much fun as flying a kite.
--------
to which he responds
Really enjoyed your response about poetry.
There is an interesting review of a new bio of Updike in the current NYer. The review is by L Menand who always seems to know everything about everything. If you don't have online access to the NYer, I'll email you a copy of the review. (I have a friend who is a complete Updike nut. He is actually reading the book and wants to meet with me to discuss it over lunch. Well, okay, I'll eat lunch and listen to him but I aint gonna read a whole damn book about Updike. A year ago this guy even gave me a copy of the entire Rabbit series as a gift. I worked with him at Boeing years ago. He has a Mexican wife who has lost relatives to the guns of the drug cartels.)
April has been completely uneven here. One day warm, the next pretty chilly. "Never trust April" is what I'm telling people.
I'm sure you're looking forward to Paris. It's gotta be waaaay better than watching a bunch of fish swim around.
---------
I said
Menand once again amazes me. What a smooth, accomplished piece on Updike. So detailed and complete/complex (thank goodness I have no interest or need to read the bio itself) and it explains perfectly why I never quite really liked Updike’s work.
we both liked Craig Brown’s piece on Gatsby
------
Friday night (24th) Petie prepping dinner at 9:31 Just back from day in Valencia. They did the ceramics museum while I loitered on the plaza Patriarca in front of the university (or the law school, or both).
Sat evening. 7pm Hot much earlier but now clouded over and cool. Naps. Petie watching About a Boy. Willow and I reading. Bought second kindle copy of Goldfinch because other one seemed only a teaser-size. Maybe I bought a preview or the download didn’t complete. Willow all up bright and early determined to get to all the fiestas in Teulada and Javea. We went to see the bulls up on the old town. Too early in some way. Saw a few bulls and some husky teens or early twenties guys teasing and poking at them. Felt a bit sparse and half-hearted but guess it all takes shape in the evening when more show up and have an excuse to visit and hang out and drink. So said the young woman who waited on us at the bar. Lunch at the Miramar, pretty basic. Walked, Petie did, us out to the yacht club to explore more info about renting a sail boat for an hour. Denia is the place. I just want to coast quietly through the last few days doing what we did for two months. Getting excited about going back to Paris even though it will for sure be colder and rainier. The Goldfinch feels pretty good but definitely a best-seller.
Why does it feel so chilling to be reading about the bombing in the Met in
Tart’s novel, now? Headline in the british paper when I just went to Mas y Mas to get lettuce---40,000 Brits left Spain in the last year (or two). Overall still 90k in the country. Image of how Benidorm will be flooded by global warming water rising by the end of this century! Disaster and gloom and doom. The opening of the novel is such a cheap shot---playing on all new yorkers’ fears of another manhattan bombing by bin Laden. Sorry, Donna, you’ve let me down. All of it is both gripping and not believable, Theo Decker going home alone and finding slowly that his mother is probably dead. The old man, Pippa and her grandfather. All too predictable and uncompelling and yet a pretty fair hook in best-sellerdom. Now I realize that the latest movie, The Book Thief, is Tart’s second novel, the unsuccessful one. Oh and now we learn the bombers were right-wing extremists--of course those redneck lice would bomb the Metropolitan museum of Art. Or course they would.
Sunday morning The sailing cruise is planned for 5. I am now about 130 pages into Gold Finch and completely hooked. Is it replaying Great Expectations in some way? whatever. We go to Denia for the cruise so go there for the day. Feels cold this morning.
Cruise didn’t happen. Petie pretty crushed. Choppy waters and choppy winds said the ticket woman. We ate a pretty good lunch at a place on the port.
email exchange with Nicholas---proof that all my internal upset was my problem and not his at all --- as we knew anyway
Dear Nicholas---
It was great to see you once more. I loved meeting Andrei, he is a real treasure.
On your long post today on your blog about your noetics book I noted that the idea of compassion and charity is exactly the note on which Tim Parks ends his book Teach us to sit still. He goes through an awakening through meditation etc that helps him open fully to the Christian preaching of his now dead father, who was a minister. Forgiveness and compassion coming, for him, back through his zen master and retreats.
Thanks too especially for the chocolate bunnies. I'll enjoy your further updates from Zug.
all bests,
Bob
Apr 26 (1 day ago)
to me
Dear Bob,
Andrei is a treasure (growing into it more too that is lovely to see).
Many and roundabout are the ways we come to see that, in essence, it is all about forgiveness and compassion (or Blake has it that the testing point is always love of neighbour) - and always struck by how much energy we expend pretending otherwise!
Enjoy Paris. Do come to Switzerland - the flat is very accessible and it is its own unique world!
Love and best wishes, Nicholas
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took a walk up the hill earlier this evening. Nothing special. Lot of builing trash blown around up where the neighbors moved after the house was remodeled. Big green dumpster bin of building debris still there. Willow and Petie watching Marigold Hotel.
Monday around 11:20 am Packing. Dreams still of a sunset cruise for some.
Night. Watching Fawlty Towers to cap off the evening.
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