Saturday, January 19, 2002

detail...the yard's sousaphone player

"A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery."

James Joyce, Ulysses

First I stayed up too late after we got home. The opera wasn't over until 11:30 and I stayed up too late this morning, reading some papers, watching some reruns, working a New York Times crossword puzzle.

So I'm dreaming all this stuff and I know it's seven but I don't get up. Then it's eight. I'd made an effort to remember these dreams to write them down but now they are gone, too. Finally, after 8:30 I get up and struggle into my clothes and pour a cup of coffee (FFP's been up and has made it) and call SuRu. She sounds pretty drug out, too. But she says she will call me when she is ready.

So Saturday starts slowly. I do have more energy. I've been dreaming all week about getting the entire house in order and my life, too, over the weekend. When I'm energetic, I have these dreams. Spoke to our friend Allan last night who retired as of the first of the month. He hasn't had time to clean out his closet yet. He says the matter of what to do with fifteen years worth of the New York Review of Books is looming. I know the feeling.

None of our usual neighborhoods (Tarrytown, Clarksville, South Congress) sound appealing today but we pick Clarksville. We try to vary from our patterns, trying some alleys. Some make us double back, having no outlet even for pedestrians unless we want to walk through someone's yard or drive. We weave and amble. I see several things during our walk that I consider photographing (I've brought two cameras, a 35mm and a digital). I think I might take a picture of an interesting house and its porch contents, a scultpured fountain, a house painted a certain shade of green. But I don't take a single picture.

FFP gets tired of the weaving and goes straight on to Sweetish Hill and we meet him there after more weaving and ups and downs. It was a pretty good walk.

We sit outside Sweetish Hill. Not many people outside. It's a little windy and cold but sunny, too. We are all reading abandoned papers, I'm working on a crossword in one. Then we weave back to the car. A good walk and the neighborhood provided the right level of entertainment to one and all.

Mom has called when I get home. I call but there is no answer, no answering machine. I wait and she calls back. She has call waiting (who knew?) and hasn't picked me up. She wants to redo a photo album. She saw an album at her miniature meeting that was like one of those talking picture frames where you could record a short message. I understand that this is a ploy to go shopping, more than anything. I agree that tomorrow we will go somewhere and see about photo albums. I now get it. It isn't about the errand, it's about the going. She is feeling better, she says. I hope so. She says some acquaintance is coming to visit them.

I have eschewed a snack at Sweetish Hill. I feel like a good salad. We don't have too many good ingredients. I tell FFP I'm going to the grocery store. He's surprised. I'm trying to do things differently. I rarely go to the store, especially alone.

I go to Randall's. I go up and down every aisle. I see my favorite cookies, but I just buy fruit and stuff for a salad. Which is really what I want. I have a goal to get through the Valentine's season without eating any of those pure sugar candies called conversation hearts. Luckily, Randall's sells the Brach's kind. They taste weird. Not enough sugar perhaps. For someone who really generally doesn't like sweets there are some pure sugar concoctions that can turn my head.

After putting away the food and making two bowls of salad, I fool around with scanning pictures, finishing cleaning out my suitcase from the New York trip, and other clean up tasks. I usually save thank you notes and other things like that in an 'archive and souvenir' box. The one I'm using is overflowing. I decide that if I could pare down what I'm saving that would be good. So I could keep using the same box and not expand the mess. I'm surprised to find a menu for our 25th Anniversary Party because, momentarily, I'd forgotten we had it. Ridiculous, I know. I've slept since then, I always say.

I also found a lot of notes, doodles and 'to do' lists. On one I'd written, "Can't remember stuff. Can't remember what I was trying to remember."

I found 'thank yous' from people I couldn't remember doing anything for, cards from people I don't recall and also a postcard from the Louvre I'd written to myself (but not mailed, although I sometimes do that). I found pieces of the Berlin wall I'd bought at reduced prices in 1999 (I think) and I found very old snaps of friends' children probably sent at Christmas time. I found a note dated 5/26/75 to myself: "If you can't make yourself do one thing, you can at least do something constructive." I found a political button for McGovern/Shriver '72. Clearly at some point I'd forgotten, I'd consolidated some souvenirs from long past in this box. I voted in that election absentee from tramping around Europe.

I found several lists of what I gave or got for Christmas. I found programs from weddings where the people aren't together anymore.

I found this note which, by the way, makes not one iota of sense to me either, now. Well, maybe a little but altogether, no.

Insanity.
What's the Difference?
Sucked into Dan's dream.
"'Dan's world', you said," he said.
Did I?
Then: taxes, insurance, employees, money...leaking, seeping, running away.
It's better to buy art and hand-crafted furniture, give $50,000 to the opera and food to the food bank.
It's better to be profligate and support people with handouts. Running real companies is time-consuming.

And, no, I have no idea who Dan is. I'm not sure when this was written because it's not dated. However, we gave $50,000 to the opera only a few years ago (when I don't know) and so it wasn't too terribly long ago.

I also found the household budget for 1979. We budgeted $150/month for entertainment...movies, eating out and such.

Every year these friends of ours have a kind Chinese New Year party although they have it around this time, regardless of when the date is. In any case, a few weeks into the year, they invite a lot of people, hire a piano player, a Chinese chef, a sushi chef, a catering company to put out traditional cheese plates, vegies and ham and stuff and have an open house for a ton of people. With Peking duck, sushi, wine, champagne, liquor. Oh, and they have about eight valet parkers, too.

I was determined not to be the first couple at their door this year and so I didn't even get into the shower until 3:30 for a four o'clock start. Nevertheless, we were there at 4:15 and things were still pretty quiet. I got some white wine and FFP got some Scotch and we had Peking duck and the waiters hovered to help us in any way because there really weren't that many people there yet. After the duck (FFP had some dumplings, too), we got big plates of sushi.

Then we sat by the piano player (Floyd Domino) where we could see the front door and watched the people come in and greet the hostess and surge around. A few people we knew came over to us.

We took another wander around as it filled up. We were tempted to have shrimp fried rice or other Chinese dishes showing up, but we didn't. I got a club soda since my wine glass had been filled up once (twice?) and I'm trying to cut down on drinking. There were crowds at the rented tables now and I heard a woman I didn't know say, "Live in our studio and take care of the dogs..."

We listened some more and then decided that it was the 'go' part of our 'come and go.' We went to Arboretum and got tickets for Gosford Park which was at 7PM. We wandered Barnes and Noble for forty-five minutes. I didn't have anything in mind to buy so I wandered up and down the aisles, pulling down interesting books and looking at pictures or reading a random sentence. "God is a programmer." "Carbohydrates don't make you fat." I wondered who bought a picture book on weird chickens, marveled at some pictures in a coffee table book on Africa, considered buying a dictionary of French terms that are in the newspaper but not your typical dictionary. I met up with FFP and he'd bought something that won the Booker Prize.

There was a crowd to see the movie and we had to queue up to get in. I liked it enormously in the Merchant Ivory sense of just admiring the glassware, silver, outfits. (They could have actually shown more of the food.) I liked the way they shot one group of people and you could eavesdrop on other conversations.

After the movie, it was home to some nachos and Cokes (so much for the diet) and a bit of TV and newspapers. (I have accumulated piles of them again, alas.)

JUST TYPING
Changing things.
Can be as simple.
As a trip to the grocery store.
A walk down a blind alley.
Or a small observation.
Everything can flutter behind the one decision or insight.
Forever changed.