.Sunday, March 10, 2002

our streets are painted allowing the dog to step into colorful abstracts

I'm sure it all means something...

and sunlight, leaves and surveyor's flags add to the fun

"As sheer casual reading-matter, I still find the English dictionary the most interesting book in our language."
Albert Jay Nock, Memoirs of a Superfluous Man

I work on some stuff and finally we get off for a dog walk around 10. Or maybe it was 10:30. Who cares. We had picked an area of the map that presented some barriers but we had a nice outing nonetheless. Gradually we are covering our city on the ground, bit by bit, I feel. Things are always changing, of course. Teardowns, reconstructions, infills. Still. We try.

After the walk, we decide to return the dog to the abode. We end up eating things we shouldn't at Chili's. Then we tour around BookStop without buying anything.

FFP decides we should see Monster's Ball at the soon to be closed Arbor. I always enjoy Billy Bob. But I'm still not sure the movie works. The screenplay is so fanciful somehow. It is so...unbelievable. Since when do plots have to be that believable, though? Allegory is a better way to look at the piece. Handing racism down until it erupts and festers and heals. Still. There were some OK performances. Billy Bob seemed to be the same guy as in The Man Who Wasn't There as if the man of many faces was suddenly too tired to take on a new one. Still...I'll go see anything he is in or has anything to do with.

Then we end up at Houston's eating things we shouldn't and having a bottle of Cambria Julia's Vineyard Pinot Noir (1999 if you are counting). They have reasonable wine prices. The waiter claims they have Silver Oak. The waiter looks like Timothy Hutton. Anyway, we have this huge serving of smoked trout dip and then share a club sandwich and a rare tuna salad (with mango and avocado). We can't finish it and a large part of the sandwich goes into a take home. But we shared a cobbler of some sort anyway. Had nuts in it, I remember.

So we are home before six. We end up watching King of the Hill and Simpsons and Six Feet Under and the September 11 film. The film is tasteful in what they show (or filmed). And touching. I didn't realize this French cameraman was basically right there when the chaplain was killed. The only disconcerting thing was hearing the thud of bodies. And seeing how helpless New York's finest was against this onslaught of destruction. We taped it and so we watched the end and then the beginning and I might have just watched it in a loop not unlike six months ago but we stopped it. And I read for a while and fell asleep.

I'm thinking of giving up the journal again. I think that if I didn't do the journal that I would work on other things. Books I mean to write, getting my office in order, working on our finances, learning more about putting Web pages together and digital photography and video. It's like an essay I was reading by Anne Fadiman about mail. She quotes Hemingway writing to Fitzgerald as saying, "Such a swell way to keep from working and yet feel you've done something." The thing is: is my other possible 'work' somehow better than these entries? Sadly, probably not. I feel that if I had more time the journal would lead me to other stuff. Be a 'warm up' to that creativity that I somehow feel isn't being fulfilled.

JUST TYPING
The day stretches in front of you.
You could do anything.
But, of course, you won't.