WeatherWhen I left the house this morning, it was cold but not snowing; downtown it was snowing. Almost everyone I heard said that chez lui, it was dry, but that snow began around downtown. It snowed in that localized way all day. No one should wonder why Denver has a brown cloud: weather just gets stuck here because of the particular patterns of wind currents and fronts. And downtown proper is a relatively small area.
Because of the snow, the eleventh hour, and an unproductive afternoon (the Quadra is on its last chips), we didn't attempt the symphony tonight. Last night we decided it would likely be too cold on Saturday to ski and that the symphony was possible; tonight instead of the symphony or an early night for skiing, we have spent the evening listening to Fleetwood Mac and the Cowboy Junkies and working at our computers.
Ulterior MotivesI just bought BJWL a birthday card. Like the ones she buys for me, it is indistinguishable in cover art from your basic soppy and insincere condolence card. It is fairly weird. I barely read the "poem," having learned that--especially when I resort to the convenience store in the building since it's snowing and I'm ill-shod--birthday card poems are all stupid and insincere. I avoid cards that say things ooooh how I love youuuuuu Mommiiiiiiie because I figure hyperbole doesn't improve our relationship. I did pass up the one with a pop-up donkey with a mouthful of teeth inside with the caption, "from your smart-ass kid" on the principle that discretion is the better part of valor. So I bought a card, not that I had a lot of choice (there were about five "mother" birthday cards and no blanks), and sat at my desk addressing the envelope, and then got around to signing the inside. That's when I finally read the "poem." It had two, left side and right side, artsy and mathsy, maybe, left brain and right, id and superego, black and white? I thought the contrast between the two, in content as well as in font, peculiar:
On the right side, in floral script, something about "never being able to repay you, Mother, for all the things you've done..."
Now, I was loving that. As I've said, I love multiple interpretations. Nope, I can't repay her for everything she's ever done. No way. The only thing I can do for my karma is to just love her and love her and love her and love her and take her home and hug her and kiss her and call her George.
Now, the left side was yer basic sans serif font.
Caring more tenderly
...
Understanding more clearly,
Loving more dearly--
That's all part
Of being a mother!
This could be more soppy maternal shit, but also it could be taken as faintly imperative, like a command rather an instruction. It's also cribbed directly from Godspell.
Anyway. I liked all the subtextual messages I was able to find in a simple Hallmark's card. Which is how the much more ponderous concept of a Christmas present throws me for such a loop.
For Christmas, JJC bought RDC the newest Jerry Garcia, which I bought him for a not-birthday present--isn't that somewhere in Alice in Wonderland?--so today he exchanged it for The Dance, the Fleetwood Mac reunion live album. I have to find out whether RRP has it; I'd like to get it for her. Being a TV slug one night I came across the same concert as the album on PBS. I think that was the Saturday after Thanksgiving, when we had mostly but not fully recuperated. RDC said he thinks the video of that concert is available--and I'm sure it is, at least as a membership carrot to PBS. Anyway, it would be some consolation to RRP to the hideous concert she and I went to just before RDC and I moved. The one at which the best music all night was The Pulp Fiction soundtrack someone had blasted in the parking lot.
Live, loud Fleetwood Mac with CNN muted is excellent Nordic Track material, as is "Northern Exposure." How trite. How married. And now here we write, with Blake in bed, foot tucked up and beak tucked back, Margo crooning "Sweet Jane." Of course, we couldn't put Blake to bed until after The Dance ended amid the cheers of "Don't Stop." Audience noises, whistles and cheers and applause, excite him. Eric Clapton's Unplugged is probably the most exciting album he's ever heard. And now 200 More Miles rarely leaves the CD player after RDC gave it to me for Christmas, and The Dance today. Poor Blake: he likes live music but he certainly can't sleep to it.
Life is good.
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Last modified 9 January 1998
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