I'm trying to adjust to the fact that I am aging. I'm not doing too well--did I always have those smudges under my eyes, how long have the lines joining my nose to the corners of my mouth been visible at rest, and what about that mustache--but I like this shot okay. I also know if I think myself old now, I will hate myself at 45 and 65 for not appreciating my youth when I had it, just as I am now disappointed that I always, always, always have thought myself overweight.

Reading: Booth Tarkington, Magnificent Ambersons

Moving: a walk through the neighborhood of a couple of miles culminating at a Starbucks for a frappucino, bad enough, and a slice of chocolate cake (which RDC and I split amicably).

Listening: "Amadeus" music-only track

Watching: "Cinema Paradiso" and crying happily

17 February 2001: Blake

Last week when I talked to my mother, I was sitting at the dining table while Blake pranced upon it exploring. RDC was gone, so he was being himself and not the cast-obsessed alien lunatic he's otherwise been these last few weeks. Because she gave it to us, I told my mother how much Blake likes the candelabra, that he worships it and can't walk by it without bowing and otherwise making abeyance. She laughed, perhaps trying to, but making an effort to enjoy her grandson as much as she would if he were human, and asked for some photographs of it. So for the past week I have tried to capture this behavior. A couple of nights ago, sitting there reading The New Yorker while RDC made dinner (such a rough life), I got it. Mostly. I didn't get the deepest bow with the broadest shoulders.

Does he worship because he thinks it pleases us, because we in turn praise him when he acts like this? Or does he just Know What He Likes? He can't worship only because of our reaction, otherwise he'd have abandoned courtship of the cast by now.

If only the cast or the candelabra were a hen cockatiel, Blake would be getting all the action he so desperately craves. Or perhaps if he were confronted with a female of his own species, would she understand and appreciate all of this? Wouldn't that be a pity if she didn't.

---

I finished The Magnificent Ambersons. I liked it more at the end than at the beginning. The decay of the American city once industrialization takes hold is background in to the inevitable decay of the American family that doesn't go along with industrialization and doesn't participate in the work ethic. I can't quite remember what book it reminds me of. The symbolism is screamingly obvious and it's that that reminds me of another novel or two. A young man who has always hated them is run down by an automobile. What a surprise! But it was good.

Now I have to grapple with Fowles again.