Monday. November 12, 2001

yeah...going through magazines is spooky

"Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
It starts when you're always afraid
You step out of line, the man come and take you away."

"For What It's Worth" Buffalo Springfield, 1966

I'm dreaming of ordering up breakfast tacos and at the same time trying to control bad guys of some sort.

"I'm going on." he says.

"What?" Oh, FFP is all dressed and is going to the club. I should go.

I struggle out of bed. throw on shorts, polo and athletic socks and shoes. I grab a commuter cup of Capresso juice and the Living Arts and front page sections of The New York Times. The big shocker at the club is that the TVs are up. There is only one going but someone tunes them all in and gets closed captioning going. There are earphones on the bike I use but they have all this static. So I look at my paper and try to work the crossword in my head.

I don't do any machines but the twenty minutes on the bike wakes me up.

We go home and I toss off the puzzle. Which is about children's games.

Time to get to work on the mess that is my house. Just do it. I think about taking a shower and then decide that I might as well delay it and just do the cleanup. So I just brush my teeth and start sorting magazines and picking up things again. Boy, this is time-consuming. On the other hand, I don't do it that often. Sure I discard a few papers and catalogs and magazines as the weeks go along. But I'm not too thorough. And I was gone for eighteen days and then a couple of more last week. Excuses, excuses.

And then Mom calls. She can't get the words 'airplane crash' out. Not because she is that upset. Just because that sometimes happens to her.

"There's been another..." she coughs. "I can't talk."

Finally she says, "There has been another accident."

So I turn on the TVs all over. Fox Network goes back to Montel Williams after a while. But the cable yields up fires and smoke and airplane engines on the ground.

I answer some e-mail about my New York City trip plans. Gulp. It's just an accident, a random thing, I say to myself. I had been searching for flights earlier, frustrated at the available options to any of the three airports. Gulp again. (Flying from Austin is often a matter of where and how many times you prefer to transfer.)

But I am still going to plan this trip. I am.

Of all the tasks I've set myself, the magazine sorting is the most time-consuming. I keep stopping to read things. Either stories or articles in The New Yorker or blurbs about restaurants and entertainment in Time Out New York. I get the preponderance of the mess under control. (For the record, the oldest magazine allowed to escape recycling was a 1992 New Yorker.

My next task is to clean out the cabinet where we keep pills and remedies and stuff so the ones spilling on the cabinet can be put away.

The next step is to clean out the drawers with napkins, place mats, paper plates, table clothes and such. Getting ready to use what's needed to serve twenty. Find stuff I already have. (There is a temptation that I have to go out and buy all new stuff for serving pieces for a party. It seems easier sometimes that finding the stuff you bought for the last zillion parties. This is in direct violation of my new 'less stuff the better' credo, though. In fact, in locating the stuff to keep I am discarding a bunch of stuff.

So, anyway. I'm sort of putting off the pantry. So I clean off a card table in my office that has become cluttered with stuff. It takes a while because I have to discard, file, ask FFP to file. Consider each piece of junk. It's not that easy to keep up with, she pleaded.

Finally, it is time to go out. There is an AIDS Serives Austin Red Ribbon Dinner. We think so anyway. After I've showered, dressed and we go up there, though, they tell us it has been cancelled. Well, that's nice. A call would have been nice. Note to charitable organizations: if you cancel something, it might be nice to tell the people who reserved the event. They might be less prone to just say no next time you ask.

So we are all dressed up and will tear up the check in FFP's pocket. So we go to Jeffrey's and feed the charity of capitalism with a couple of drinks (martini, a glass of wine) and a few apps (shared the Osetra, both had a small portion of acorn squash soup, I had duck breast with some ravioli that was stunning and FFP had foie gras). Yeah, we've been somewhat generous to various causes but we are our own favorite charity just like most people.

We eat in the bar. It isn't very busy. Some guys at the bar discuss drinks. One guy sounds like he might work for a distributor. He talks about some sweet drink.

"Girls like it," one of the other guys say.

"Yeah, girls like it," he says.

Then they are talking about tequila and the guy says something about tequila made in South Africa. I think he's been drinking too much.

There still aren't many people around. A couple of tables are now occupied by young taut girls. We ask after several of our friends who work there. Most are off on Sunday/Monday. Except Kisha is working.

"She's serving Nicholas Cage in Josephine's House," says the waiter. (The house is the private party area next door.)

"Really." I say.

"Yeah and Kate Winslett and Kevin Spacy."

"Hmm, I guess they are making a movie." And I tell him about sitting next to Sandra Bullock on the plane and not recognizing her for about ten minutes of 'where do I know her from?' I'm afraid if Kate had walked in I would have just thought she looked vaguely familar. Yeah, I saw Titanic. Go away. I think I would recognize Kevin and Nicholas unless they made the slightest effort to just look like someone else I knew. Men are easier. It's a good thing that I don't care one whit whether I recognize celebrities. I'll give them space like anyone else anyway. I'll never forget the look of bemusement on Lyle Lovett's face when we were snapping pictures in the Four Seasons bar...of the guests that the ballet had from overseas somewhere. (OK, maybe he wasn't even thinking about the fact that we were taking pictures of people he didn't recognize and ignoring him. Maybe, it was the two twenty-somethings.)

So, yeah, I'm not into celebrities when they are just out in the world, not performing. If they leave me alone, I'll leave them alone. That's that.

So we go home and watch the end of Third Watch and then I watch Crossing Jordan and the beginning of Third Watch from the tape but FFP is sleeping. I think he recorded Boston Public and Ali on another VCR. Whatever. I don't really care whether I see any of this.

We seem to have concluded that the crash isn't terrorism. The Air Bus is at fault. Whatever the cause. These things happen, sadly. We have a war to fight. Yeah. I guess. Unfortunately, I think we believe we are fighting to guarantee that bad things only happen to bad people. Well, not we exactly. But some people. There will be other tragedies, other terrorists. I'm reading now that the anthrax is probably a Unabomber type. Did I mention that I watched a Unabomber show the other day. Just for a moment of relief from this crisis.

Meta:
I was going to find a new quote but then the air crash happened. So, maybe later.

JUJUST TYPING
There is a certain pleasure.
In tossing things.
In planning for the future.
Tossing the past.