Whither the year?When I first recorded my voicemail greetings today, I said it was January 10. Where did this month go again? I guess there really has been only last week, so I haven't missed much yet. If ten days seems like forever, then I must be a crone.
DecoratingLast week I began to decorate my cube. I finally got T-pins, which work in the dividers, instead of pushpins, which don't. I realized my card collection is a fairly representative Favorite Person compilation:
A black and white photograph of a nineteenth-century woman reading Chaucer (postcard from CLH); an original (French) Tintin cover of Explorers on the Moon, On a Marché sur la Lune (postcard from RJH); a Griffin and Sabine postcard (from HAO); Pooh and Christopher Robin playing Pooh Sticks and Christopher Robin asking that Pooh never forget him even when he's a hundred (card from ABW); a card with a drawing of its caption, "Booklovers never go to bed alone" (from RRP); two sun conures grooming each other (from RDC); and a Magic Eye--remember those?--card that says "My Best Friend" all over it in regular sight and in cross-eyed, Magic Eye sight, "Forever," from DEDBG. This is a fairly representative sample of my favorite people, but I wouldn't've posted the cards unless they pleased me aesthetically all on their own. I also bought myself a Madeline-shaped card, and a coworker who raises ostriches gave me postcard of an ostrich's face, which is not aestheitcally pleasing close up, unless you love that individual ostrich. I want to find again a card I gave someone once of a flock of ostriches on a beach and some of them flying over the waves.
A collage of older cards hangs in a large vinyl frame over my desk at home. One from CLH bears quote from Emil Zola: "If you ask what I come here for I will tell you: I came to live out loud." I believe she was commenting on more than the volume (quantity and loudness both) of my laughter. PSA used to send me lots of Merchant-Ivory looking cards of impressionist paintings but the one in the collage is a Joan Baez quote: "You are a precious jewel. You--unrepeatable miraculous rainbow emerald splendor person" with several more exuberant adjectives I haven't memorized. One from SSP of a woman on a porch overlooking a lake that is startlingly reminiscent of his family's summer cottage (it is an old collage). Penguins from PLT's mom. Holstein cows wearing Ray-Bans from 3SK.
Walking and WildlifeYesterday HAO and I took our weekly five-mile walk along the bit of the Highline Canal trail passing through a nature preserve. We always see birds, but this weekend we saw a few birds I've never seen there before: a kind of kingfisher, blue and with a band across its breast that I think was a female, and among all the regular mallards in a the pond, a pair of black and white waterfowl that I think were common golden-eye. I used to bring binoculars and my field guide with me on that walk but I haven't for a while. Clearly I have to again. I have no idea if the pair really were common goldeneye, but we went to the library immediately after the walk and that's the nearest species I found in the field guides.
The other treat on yesterday's walk was seeing three coyotes. At first I thought the first one we saw was a dog, but it moved too confidently to be a domestic dog, and its shape and coloring gave it away. The neat thing was that its coloring really did blend it in perfectly with its surroundings. It was loping through a marsh (which is why red-winged blackbirds, herons, kingfishers, and ducks live there) and its fur blended perfectly with the dried reeds and rushes. It disappeared behind a rise and then we saw only the tips of its ears from our side of the hill. I commented to HAO that I was surprised to see one alone, because they usually travel in groups, and then a few steps later we saw two more coyotes range up and join the first. LJH, nature girl. I still don't know my trees though.
And a few nights ago RDC and I saw a fox. Driving at night, I saw it run across the street in front of us, and RDC barely got a glimpse. But a few months ago on section of Highline by our house (which is also nice but not as wild as my regular long walk), we saw a fox hunting on the other side of the canal. It loped along, intent on its business, and at one point I think it pounced on a mouse. That was a treat to watch.
After HAO and I walked, this time taking a shortcut cutting off one of the many loops, we stopped at Koelbel. On the shortcut we passed a pond that had, in addition to several pairs of mallards freezing their cloacas off on the ice (why don't their feet freeze?), one pair of black and white waterfowl diving and paddling that I couldn't identify (big surprise). The closest I found in the field guides was a common goldeneye. I don't know if that's a duck or a grebe. Or what makes a waterbird not a duck but a grebe. Or much of anything about birding, as much as living with Blake has heightened my sensitivity to wild birds.
Books and buyingI also took out My Side of the Mountain. I had to get the bad taste of Equinox out of my brain. It was a good book, mind you; I was just mad at the author for being such a greedy unyielding ass and losing his falcon. And I still want to know how he's allowed to keep peregrine falcons, but I skipped any research on the status of endangerment and how to get licenses. Since Amazon sells--of course--new books, it couldn't tell me the original publication of My Side: 1959, so it could have been how Equinox's author became intrigued with falconry. He didn't say, though.
I selected the older of the two hardcovers Koelbel had (it had five of the sequel--for which, N.B., George did not receive any Newbery honor), because it had the original pen and ink cover of Sam with Frightful on his shoulder. The newer version has a stupid '80s-looking drawing with Sam in stupid '80s clothes. Hello? Did Huck Finn wear Tommy Hilfiger? As soon as HAO and I captured our lunch from Wild Oats and returned to the front porch of the 'brary to read, I plunged in. Here is a boy who loves his falcon. When reading it as a child, I liked all the instructions about how to run away to the woods to live. (I originally had "to read." What are synonyms in the lisa idiolect?) What I admire now is how unobtrusive the instructions (and warnings) are; they don't interrupt the flow of the story. And as a child I completely didn't notice (or don't remember noticing) how very 1959 the story is: he tells someone he's up on the mountain as a Civil Defense Initiative to find out if we can all live off the land after The Big One. George clearly wrote to an audience used to duck-and-cover drills in elementary schools. Yikes.
What RDC and I were doing in Littleton at nine o'clock on a Saturday night was returning from Wild Oats. And Park Meadows. I was feeling extremely claustrophobic, having stayed inside against the cold and damp all day, not motivating enough even to run errands that could have included acquiring more possessions. A movie? I ran through the possibilities and the viewing partners. Then RDC suggested we go to Crate and Barrel to use a Christmas gift certificate.
So we did. Also RDC had never been to Park Meadows, which is touted as a shopping resort. It's a mall, I assured him. Just after seven o'clock, we parked in the jammed lot and strolled up to the entrance. I am ashamed to say I knew which end of the mall to park by for C&B. All this build-up to say that Crate & Barrel was closed at 7:00 p.m. on a Saturday, the only store in the mall to do so. We did an upstairs and a downstairs loop, stopping in the Museum store with its Curious George and Degas products and in the Channel Six Learning Store. I showed him the $20,000 dollcastle in the weird interior design store. We didn't find dessert.
GamesSo we went to Wild Oats and ate chocolate cheesecake while playing checkers. I'll never learn the strategies of chess, although I do still remember how pawns and knights move, so checkers was fine with me. Except I didn't remember what a king's advantage was until I was almost in a back row. Oh yeah! If it can't move backward, it can't get out. Right. RDC won. I wasn't surprised.
I'm not much of a strategist, which is why I always lost games to CLH (except one round of Stratego) and why I sucked at the game she taught me in Aspen in September. It's a card game called "Ratfuck," which is the exclamation you curse with when taking a beating, and involves planning not only your own success but also the failure of your playmates. I don't understand that, I don't think like that, I don't want to think like that. Which probably helps explain why I'm such a loser and why I dislike team sports. I would like to be as good as I can be without my level affecting anyone else. Maybe not a loser but a loner. Which is why I like sports like swimming and cycling (except that drafting affects the others), diving, track, skating, gymnastics. One person's excellence doesn't mean another person can't do just as well. Psychological but not physical effect.
My father thinks boxing (and presumably wrestling) is the only true sport because it's the only one to pit man against man. I say anyone who needs to define hirself against external instead of internal measures isn't true to hirself. Of course, my father wouldn't understand why the pronoun "hir" appeals to me, despite its being precious or pretentious, so we're obviously entering this discussion at opposite poles.
Presents!It was on the way home from Wild Oats that we saw the fox, and then when we got home and fetched the mail, the package RJH said he'd sent actually finally really arrived. Imagining Characters: Conversations About Women Writers : Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot, Willa Cather, Iris Murdoch, and Toni Morrison. I know nothing about George Eliot except reading The Mill on the Floss and seeing a Masterpiece Theatre version of Middlemarch (does that count?).* I know less about Irish Murdoch, mostly only that in "Antonia and Jane," Imelda Staunton's character's lover needed to have Murdoch read to him to be turned on, which is odd enough, but worse, Jane hates Murdoch. So I shall have to find out what Byatt thinks they've done good enough to be paired with my buddy Janey-Jane, and with Willa and Toni. And, oh yeah, with her. Charlotte. "Poor, poor Charlotte." Miss (not Ms.) "Jane Austen sucks" Brontë.
*I just (980202) took out, with some embarrassment, a mention of the movie "Impromptu," which featured not George Eliot but George Sand. Why is George such a name for women who want to be or act like or who are or were expected to be men, like Nancy Drew's friend? Does this mean Curious George might have been a girl monkey? Does that mean the Man in the Yellow Hat might not be gay, as some have theorized?
Not only is Byatt a favorite fiction writer of mine, but as a scholar she's written an introduction to Elizabeth Bowen and Passions of the Mind; and as a public speaker she's charming and self-deprecating and a superb reader, so I can't wait for Imagining Characters. But that was only an aperitif. The perfect thing (which RJH wrote that he wished he could witness my receipt of) was The Jane Austen Quiz and Puzzle Book. I squealed. I danced. I jumped up and down. I frightened Blake. Then I called RJH. We haven't actually spoken in two and a half years, so that was a treat; that plus DEDBG calling on New Year's Day has ratcheted up my connectivity.
When I arrived chez HAO at 11:00 Sunday morning and crowed at her over my new presents, HAO began to page through the quiz book, then asked, "When did you get this?" I had started to work on it when I got off the phone with RJH at 10:30. I had slept during the intervening twelve hours, but I got a lot done. She couldn't believe that I remembered what three fruits were served at Pemberley, but is it so unbelievable that I would know how to look it up? She thumbed. "Who was Emma's grandmother?" I have no idea, and my guesses of Emma and Isabella were wrong. But see, that's the genius of this gift: not only did RJH give me the book itself but also an excuse to reread all six novels. Concordances be damned.
The book is decorated with the woodcut illustrations of 1890s editions. I get to guess the quotes that inspired the illustration. This is the part that I've invented on my own: I'm going to color them in (using the crayons and colored pencils I put in the Curious George lunchbox CLH gave me).
And I finally gave HAO her Christmas present.
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Last modified 26 January 1998
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