18 January 1999: Einstein on an Island

RRP and MPR have set a date, a Saturday in the middle of November. This is not ideal for me, what with vowing I'd never go to Connecticut in the winter again, but maybe, just maybe, I could allow that she shouldn't set her wedding date for my conveniene. Hmph.

Best "Simpsons" line ever: "500 channels and nothin' but cats."

Nearly missed the bus this morning. The farthest the bus has ever gotten so far has been the stop before mine, which I can run for. Either I make it without the bus waiting or the kindly driver makes an unscheduled lisastop midway between stops. Not this morning though.

This morning the bus was abreast of my complex when I was still in its parking lot and also already in the left lane, ready for its turn. I sped through the parking lot, wondering if breaking through the hedge would save me instants or if I shouldn't leap for the sidewalk until the next driveway. I ran. At the sidewalk I nearly ran into the street without realizing it would be wise to look for cars first. I did realize and waited for one car before dashing across. Meanwhile the bus waited to make a left to my stop.

I was close enough to the stop now that if the driver saw me, she'd probably wait. But I doubted she'd seen me. I continued pellmell and got to my stop before the other regulars had even boarded, but if the bus hadn't had to wait for its left, I'd've missed it.

That was my adventure. Boy, wasn't it exciting.

Later at work someone who takes my same bus said he missed altogether, by maybe 20 seconds. By then I'd realized that the holiday meant less traffic and fewer stops for the thus-faster bus. The driver pulled over a couple times en route but we still made it to the station three minutes early.

I have attributed my lack of progress in From the Heart of the Country to the spine refusing to opening past 30 degrees and started A Thousand Acres instead, but I feel guilty because I've only read King Lear once. I mean to read Cities of the Plain but both rabbits and dogs die so I hesitate.

So HAO and I walked yesterday but the wind was so strong that our jackets acted like sails and our talking was shouting and so to prevent earaches HAO suggesting bailing on the last mile. So we did. At one point I decided to be her windbreak in a years-too-late apology to a girl I went to high school with. I attended two soccer games in my high school career, one in 10th or 11th grade, the state semi- or finals (we lost) and the other a home game that I must have just wandered by. I remember talking that day to one of PGN's regular patrons about the Jackson School of Diplomacy, so it must have been 12th grade, when I wanted to go to Tufts. Anyway, I was sitting with classmates and it was cloudy and windy and I huddled in the lee of LPR and asked, "Shelter me from this vicious wind" and someone else translated what he thought was my intent, "Yeah, be a barn," and only then did I realize they all thought I was commenting on her weight. She was chunky, but I said what I unthinkingly said only because she happened to be sitting to the windward. This is why I didn't have friends in high school.

Anyway, I'm a lot bigger than HAO and was a barn for her.

HAO said she wanted to make hummus but didn't know what tahini was and used a recipe that only called for sesame seeds sprinkled on top and I gagged and she said yeah it had tasted pretty bad. So we picked up some tahini and made a hummus full of lemon juice and tahini--which is sesame oil whipped into a paste or something, yummy--and watched "Wuthering Heights" with Ralph Fiennes, not burned a crisp despite costarring with Juliette Binoche. The latter wholly sounded awfully French, not British, let alone Yorkish or whatever you call someone who's supposed to sound like Dickon in The Secret Garden.

According to the box, this version was faithful to the book, but many elements failed, including the framing device. One such device was added, Emily Brontë strolling on the moor brooding on her potboiler plot. Thus the novel's device, that of Nell telling Lockwood the history of the families of Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange while he recuperates from his one horrific night at the Heights, is unnecessary. Except that without it, the nightmare scene of Catherine's long-awaited return is precluded, so this movie keeps Lockwood's night if not his illness; except that the nightmare scene of Catherine's long-awaited return is here dull and without suspense or the least terror. And chronologically two minutes but narration-wise two hours later when Heathcliff goes after Catherine, the whole scene looks like something out of "Touched by an Angel." And Juliette Binoche with blond hair as Cathy Lockwood looked too much like Julia Roberts.

HAO gets points for recognizing who played Emily Brontë, though.

Note to self: besides that I shouldn't watch cinematizations of novels anyway, I must eschew any such movie that tells the author in its title, as if otherwise the audience wouldn't know. Supposedly "Bram Stoker's Dracula" followed Dracula a lot more than Bela Lugosi did, and "Hamlet" was a lot stupider than Branagh's "William Shakespeare's Hamlet," but Branagh gets all points reduced for "Mary Shelley's Frankenstein." Spew.

Anyway.

Does anyone know how MLA likes paintings to be cited? My first instinct is majors in italics and minors in quotes, Mona Lisa and "Fingerpainting of Sally with tree and swan." And the equivalent of MLA for art history has its standard, I'm sure. I just don't know what they are.

On the walls of my cube I have a three-dimensional map of the U.S., some photographs, some greeting cards, and various Macintosh ads. One is a magazine or catalog cover and features Peter Gabriel holding a sunflower. Another is the first ad I saw for an iMac and the last is from the "Think Different" campaign--the Dali Lama is the thinking-different thinker. I cut a Mac logo from elsewhere and pasted it under Pete's elbow and the Dali Lama has the correct stripey logo but the iMac ad has the new, black Macintosh logo. I don't like it. Reportedly it's not working so even if Jobs won't go back to the supposedly archaic stripeys, I won't have to deal with black either. I was just idly zoning at my walls and thought of that.

Okay I started that last paragraph to wench about Macintosh logos but I have to add this cooler-than-thou bit. First a disclaimer: I would prefer a map of only Colorado or Connecticut or of the whole world but the nature of my work means I have to pretend to like all the states equally. So there they all are. But I like how I've customized the map. The Crossing, set in New Mexico and Mexico, contains some of the most gut-wrenching descriptions of anywhere by anyone. "Before him the mountains were blinding white in the sun. They looked new born out of the hand of some improvident god who'd perhaps not even puzzled out a use for them." That line (properly attributed) is pinned to the New Mexico/Mexico border. Dot Org recently had a meeting in Las Vegas (whither I am thankful I did not have to go) and a medallion from Caesar's Palace hangs from that corner of Nevada. Postcards from friends pockmark the Pacific coast. And an article from Yankee magazine is pinned to Old Lyme, Connecticut.

My beloved DEW subscribed me to Yankee magazine in the mistaken belief I would ever read it and that my reading it could alleviate my homesickness. This elitism nearly caused me to miss an article entitled "How to Stay Cool in Old Lyme, Connecticut," which I found when I surprised myself by thumbing through the rag. There was no cartoon in the corner to animate by flipping pages, but this article somewhat made up for that lack. Mostly it advertises an island-with-house for sale in Old Lyme, but its hook mentions Albert Einstein's summer vacation there in 1935. He walked around with ice in his hat. (The other way to stay cool is to buy the house on the island in the middle of a lake. Actually not in the middle. Kind near the southeast corner.) And yes, 1935 was the last time anyone of note came to town, unless you believe Paul Newman once ate at the now-defunct Lymelight restaurant. (I was into double digits before I learned that that name was a pun on a real word.)