stepping lightly, just like a ballerina

I know I have been bad about updating this, but I'm turning over a new leaf. Or, at least, things are just now starting to get interesting again.

What is up with all the sudden rhapsodizing over 'Astral Weeks?' In the last 72 hours I have heard at least 5 people talking about Van Morrison and this record. Hmph. I love this record. I have loved it ever since I switched over from hating it, about 20 years ago. I thought it was strange in 1985, but it stuck with me. I realized that I loved it in about 1988, and all things being equal this mattered not at all, as it rarely came up. Now in the last three days, everyone's suddenly all enthusiastic about it. Ok, whatever. Where were you people when I was un-confident in my own musical tastes? Now that I don't need validation, they're everywhere. I will never, everever grow so old again. Hearing the 2 pieces on NPR, the one TV piece, seeing the three magazine articles, I will try not to feel smug and instead just suggest that yes, it would be a good idea to listen to 'Astral Weeks' again soon. An aside: I associate this music strongly with the beginning of spring. The songs are all shades of green and yellow, and they make me think of things growing in good black soil, stretching for the light of the sun.

Here's something odd that happened today. I went to the pet store to purchase some dog food for the beasts, and as usual there were not enough cashiers, so I'm standing there with a 40-pound sack of Nutro Natural Choice Small Bites in Lamb and Rice Meal slung over my right shoulder as casually as only a 40-pound sack of Nutro Natural Choice Small Bites in Lamb and Rice Meal over one's right shoulder can be, and anyway this woman is taking an eternity up at the checkout stand, and she's just prattling away to the bored teenager who is waiting for her to finish writing out her check. Now, I'm aggravated because I'm waiting and holding this giant bag of dog food, and this nimrod is writing a check(!) and having to fish out her driver's license (!) and she's off on this tangent about, I don't know, switchgrass or something that she is growing for her skunks (!). Anyway, so she suddenly stops in this middle of this soliloquy and looks right. at. me. and says "I have seven cats. What do you say to that?" And I say, "um, me?" and she says "yes. I have seven cats, what do you say to that?" and I think okay, what am I going to say to this, and so what I say is this:
"Oh, wait, I know the answer to this one. The answer is one. I am the one going to St. Ives."
And the woman just *looks* at me. And takes her stuff and goes out the door. So the teenager is ringing my stuff up now and says: "You're weird." Okay, this woman was just talking at this kid for like 15 minutes at top speed and volume about having seven cats (which pretty much is game-set-match on the insanity question) and raising skunks and switchgrass, and I'm the one who's weird, huh?

The world spins on, apace. Retail service-industry teenagers think I'm weird. Music reviewers can't get enough of a 40-year-old Van Morrison record. I can't wait to see what happens tomorrow.

an anecdote that will probably interest precisely one reader of this blog

Sophia Hawthorne used to call Herman Melville "Mr. Omoo." I find this rather charming. That is all.

the radical scaling back of one's expectations

I was in the grocery store a couple of days ago, and was trying to purchase less and get more out of the whole experience. I went ahead and splurged on a very expensive (okay, comparatively speaking) Honeycrisp apple. It was exceptionally good. I'm not kidding around, this apple restored my faith in agriculture, median voters, and the American economic system. I kind of now want to tell everyone who's all tied up in knots over the current world situation: go eat a really good apple, and really concentrate* on it while you are eating it. This little Zen sort of moment will do you a world of good.



* by concentrate on it, I mean really think about everything that has to do with this apple. Hold it in your hand, look at it, think about how it grew, and how you ended up getting it, and feel the heft and weight of it, then eat it slowly and think about the texture and the taste. Okay, fine, make fun of me -- I'll go sign up for an OCD support group now.

apocalypse postponed; what to read while you wait

I have been reading a great deal (which sounds remarkably like "I have travelled a good deal in Concord...") and I can definitively recommend the following for a fine diversion, which might come in handy about now, if you are sick to death of politics and politicking and the Cassandrine wails of the media. Yes, I know that titles of books are to be underlined, but I'm on a clamshell terminal here and that is not working out.

"Uncivil Seasons" by Michael Malone
"The Decameron" by Bocaccio
"The Persian Expedition" of Xenophon (I love the little snarky asides -- like the part where he describes the Syrians as very nice but oddly entranced by fish)
"The Red Book Mabinogion"
"The Normans in Sicily" by John Julius Norwich
"Girls on the Run" by John Ashbery
"Local Wonders" by Ted Kooser
"The Story of Edgar Sawtelle" by David Wroblewski (I know, it's an Oprah, but I started it before she signed off on it)
"Genie du christianisme" by Chateaubriand
"Hymn of the Universe" by Teilhard de Chardin
"Akt und Sein" by Dietrich Bonhoeffer
"Isis Unveiled" by Helena Blavatsky (I know, I kept meaning to get to it, and now I did)

books you can skip, if you want:
"Special Topics in Calamity Physics" by Marissa Pessl
"Sweetheart" by Chelsea Cain

This is for those of you keeping score at home. Just doin' my part to keep people reading, in the face of crushing indifference.

where are we going, and why am I in this handbasket?

Well, things seem fairly dire at this point, so in that greatest of all American traditions, I've decided to just not think about it. I mean, I lay awake last night in a complete cold sweat thinking about global financial meltdown and was all panicked and upset...so at about 4 am, I got up and played with my dogs and decided to watch a DVD collection of Warner Bros. cartoons that a friend of mine gave me. I felt much better. Everyone else seems to have some kind of plan -- Henry Paulson, Newt Gingrich, innumerable bloggers -- mine is, as of right now, to eat chocolate pudding and play with my dogs. I believe that Congress should buy everyone a pony. It would improve the fundamentals of the livestock/equine breeding market, and the nation's hay-baling equipment manufacturers. Also, the construction industry -- we're all going to need barns. It's no stupider than other stuff I've heard in the last 72 hours.

...and the ambiance has that certain je ne sais quoi

This is the funniest thing I have read in weeks -- Camille Paglia, via Salon.

"One reason I live in the leafy suburbs of Philadelphia and have never moved to New York or Washington is that, as a cultural analyst, I want to remain in touch with the mainstream of American life. I frequent fast-food restaurants, shop at the mall, and periodically visit Wal-Mart (its bird-seed section is nonpareil)."

Its bird-seed section. Is. Nonpareil.

I snorted sodapop out my nose. I'm trying to imagine Camille in all sorts of places she would consider plebeian, describing them in her own "you little people need an anthropologist to tell you what's what" sort of way.

Camille Paglia at Burger King: their ground-beef patty sandwiches are exquisite.
Camille Paglia at Costco: the ready availability of 20-pound jars of mayonnaise and packages of frozen shrimp the size of peat-moss bags is toujours perdrix.
Camille Paglia at Kohl's: the 80%-off rack is sine qua non.
Camille Paglia at Kansas Speedway: the tailgating is a veritable Montmartre (immediately preceding the French Revolution).
Camille Paglia at Tractor Supply Company: its vast selection of bagged pet foods and John Deere-logoed outerwear reveals a Midwestern weltanschauung of thrift and practicality.

Sheesh. Camille Paglia, everywoman. (slaps hand to forehead, rolling of eyes)

a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma

View halloo to one and all. I have been a little depressed, which I am chalking up to the election season (now 50% longer! with lemon-freshened enzymes!). I go home at the end of the day, looking forward to no electronic input of any kind. I have been reading a lot of Greeks and Romans and historians thereof, to remind myself that really, things were not exactly *better* as the Normans grew to power in Sicily. It occurs to me that the Fall of the Roman Empire might have been hastened had there been 24-hour cable news coverage of it.

I have a question -- do we, as a country, now have on hand a quantity of portable trailers that outgas somewhat-less formaldehyde than previously? Because it appears that we may need them, in the same darn place we needed them before. Don't even get me started.

I was given something called "Amish friendship bread" today, which appears to be a kind of sourdough starter for a kind of quickbread. If you can call something that takes ten days of mixing and adding stuff a quickbread. Not sure what this is supposed to be -- will I eat it and discard all my clothing with zippers? I'll have a slice and suddenly feel compelled to go to a barn-raising? I'll let you know.

My perusal of Tacitus proceeds apace. My Latin, rusty from disuse, is getting progressively better. I find that the more I read in another language, the less time I have for reading political blogs and comments areas of newspapers, and the better I feel about the world. Here's the scorecard so far: Germanicus? Awesome. Agrippina? Not so much. Crispus? Thumbs up. Tiberius? Kind of a creep.

I wish there were some sort of modern-day Tacitus. I suspect that if such a person exists, he/she is, in fact, a political blogger. It is thus with a kind of hope-tinged regret that I find myself reading many, many, many of these kinds of blogs. Mostly, it makes me exasperated that this great opportunity (i.e., the opening up of the great digital podium for all to speak) has attracted so many people who, quite frankly, cannot write. "You with your jejune little grammatical rules! How dare you tell me, The Chronicler of Our Age, that I need a better understanding of the subjunctive mood? How dare you! You are in thrall to the mainstream media! You are keeping me down, man! You're part of the problem! You don't want to hear the truth! You are threatened by the Glorious Coming Wave of Citizen Journalists! Spelling is patriarchal oppression! Oops, out of time -- gotta go feed my cats and watch teh Battlestar Galacticaz. 111000011010zz!!"

Whatever. I blame the iPod for all of this. You somehow end up getting the idea that the world revolves around YOU and your playlist. It's all about customizing things for this big collective "you" out there. Like, heaven forfend that you should have to sit through a Journey song you don't like or something. Perish the thought that you might have to get along with people who don't agree with you. Horrors -- the idea of reading something that makes your blood boil with rage? Forget it, who needs that kind of stress? Just keep reading and listening and thinking about stuff that you already know you like. Slag off all the people who disagree with you, embrace those who seem to be just like you. No problem. To quote Aaron Sorkin (which I don't recommend as, say, a habit): "Hubris, yeah, that always turns out well."

forecast for region: sunny, 20% ch t-strms, high of 87. mstly clear after 8, low in the upper 60s.
forecast for my house: shady, 40% ch mowing lawn, 20% ch baking Amish bread, 100% ch playing with dogs. extended forecast: reading, with a chance of housecleaning on Saturday. 30% ch of journeying Sunday to Leavenworth County to look at a sunflower farm. 0% ch of watching political commentary on television. It is remarkable how much better you feel about the world when you just. turn. it. off. Not to mention how much more time you find you have on your hands to knit, bake a pie, think a thought, look at the sky.