We arrove at the gym just before nine. In the morning. On a weekend. But I discovered--well, I must have read it on the schedule months ago but I didn't take it seriously because the hour of nine o'clock in the morning on a weekend doesn't exist outside of my own house--a 9:00 a.m. step class. I took a step class! I couldn't keep up sometimes because I didn't know the routine, not because I am in lousy shape. Or not necessarily because I'm in lousy shape. Also because of the unreal hour, it wasn't as crowded as the evening classes. Let's hope this becomes a regular thing.
Neither of us expected to be thrilled by John Singer Sargent, me because he did a lot of portraits and RDC because he's too close to an Impressionist. We did go, finally on the last day, and while we weren't thrilled, a couple of paintings stood out: the play of light on water in Venice canals, the intensity of sun reflecting down an icy, stony, wet mountainside into your eyes, the corner of a building rendered rapidly but with much detail in watercolor.
We spent most of the afternoon downtown, wandering and eating and reading, an ideal last day of summer. We glanced at Oktoberfest in Larimer Square: the featured beer was Coors. Bah. We read and browsed at the Tattered Cover. I came away with Embers, which someone back east mentioned; and The Parrot's Theorem, which I think is going to do with mathematics what Sophie's World did for philosophy, and of course I picked it up because of the title. I started it over a late lunch at the Wynkoop (even though I had Crime and Punishment in my bag) and interrupted RDC's reading Al Franken by exclaiming that a parrot can't eat two pounds of Brie in one go and also about the maths. It's translated from French into British English, and I appreciate that it thereby keeps a foreign flavor and it's why I just said "maths" instead of "math." Or maybe I'm rebelling against Carson.
I only just started Crime and Punishment but I can tell why it's one of Egg's favorites. I will not read the foreword until afterward, but the endnotes say that Dostoyevsky's notes indicate that Raskolnikov's dream is at least partly autobiographical. A mare is whipped, deliberately in her face and eyes. Last night we watched "The Doors," even after realizing that Meg Ryan plays Pam, and at least twice during it, Val Kilmer as Jim Morrison raves about "whipping the horse's eyes." It reminds me unreasonably of Into the Wild's whatsisname's love of Tolstoy.