Reading: The Sisters of Henry VIII

Moving: housework all day

Watching: "Pi"

1 December 2001: The Same Piece

Painting yesterday and today, we listened to the Beatles, Jerry Garcia, CSN, Steely Dan, Peter Gabriel, and Elvis Costello. Yesterday, of course, the Beatles were the main priority. In my world, John Lennon has always been dead, since I was largely unaware of rock and roll until middle school and I was in seventh grade in December 1980. To lose George Harrison, who was always my favorite, is real to me, like losing Jerry Garcia in 1995 and Ken Kesey two weeks ago. Not a personal grief, but a personal loss, for what their work has meant to me. "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" and "Blackbird" (which I know he wrote) are my favorite Beatles songs. Also "Eleanor Rigby," "Norwegian Wood" (whose authors no website wants to divulge) and a personal talisman, "She's Leaving Home."

Painting today, listening to Jerry twinkle away with "Tangled up in Blue," I said how interesting it is to me, the non-musician, that Jerry Garcia, Mark Knopfler, David Gilmour, Eric Clapton, and Stevie Ray Vaughn could play the exact same piece of music, disallowed to improvise, and you could tell who played which. When David Gilmour plays guitar on in songs as unGilmour like as Kate Bush's "Love and Anger" and "Rocket's Tail," it's obviously him.

That's interesting: I remember that example because, I am sure, NCS played "Rocket's Tail" for KFC, who was absolutely not a Kate fan but who immediately recognized Gilmour when his part began. But Sensual World came out in the fall of 1989, after I broke up with NCS, when they were renting a house together in Willimantic. And I went to that house, but I think only once, and I know it must have been very early in the school year, before I began to go out with SSP, and I'm sure that proving Kate to KFC was not NCS's priority when I was around. Huh. The only earlier song I can find in which Gilmour played guitar for Kate is "Army Dreamers" from Never Forever, and that's not so obvious (because that song is nearly a cappella). Hmm. 20 July 2002: no, Sensual World came out in the spring of 1989. Mystery solved.

Except that after we finished for the day--RDC cooked while I finished my windowsills, and that's when Imperial Bedroom played--we came downstairs, I to my computer and RDC to the couch, and RDC began to watch "Pi," which we TiVo'd recently--we rented it a couple of years ago. We both immediately (I through the reflection in a photograph frame, which is how I watch television while at my computer) noticed how like "Requiem for a Dream" it is. Only then did we learn, because I looked up on imdb, that they have the same director. Also the same music, which is a large part of the feel. But Darren Aronofsky's directorial style is as obvious as Spike Lee's or Alfred Hitchcock's.

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Okay. I'm going to skin down (she says again). RDC measured my inseam for a pair of gortex pants the other day suffering some delusion that I can wear unisex (i.e. men's) clothing. In a fit of self-abuse I took my other measurements, and that was Yet Another Wake-Up Call. My hips measure the Answer. Unlike the mice, I know the question: "Why are you so damn fat?"

Here we are hiking in Golden Gate Canyon State Park in November. I have my arm behind my back in such a BJWL pose it makes my blood chill. Why do she and I arrange our arms so unnaturally? So it will look like we have a waist at all. Holy fuck, I'm posing like my mother, unconsciously even. RDC isn't looking so svelte either, but what pisses me off about him is that that belly's already gone. It's not fair. I don't want to be a man, I just want a male metabolism.

I nordic-tracked three times this week for 30' a time, though my diet wasn't particularly good. I walked only once, on Monday, because I never remember to go to sleep (N.B.: it is 11:05 right now) on time. Today I didn't exercise but I scraped and scrubbed windows and then primed and painted for seven hours. Surely inhaling solvents is aerobic?

The second time we went I looked more like myself. Whew.

I think we hiked Beaver trail the first time and maybe Mule Deer the second. In the first, we climbed up to a view; the second time, we had view all along, and it got better with every foot of altitude we gained. Still no snow on the Continental Divide the weekend before Thanksgiving. That's since been rectified.

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One recent weekend day, I looked out the bedroom window to see a squirrel colonizing the neighbor's window. The window-unit air-conditioner is set up on 2x4s and insulated with dishtowels. (This might be why it makes such a racket.) The new owner has spoken of installing central air, for which we would love him except that he leaves an outside, motion-detecting light on, lit, ten times brighter than the sun, all the damn time. But he hasn't really moved in yet, we think, unless he's invisible. When he does, I'll ask him not to treat my bedroom like a maximum-security prison, all lit up. Anyway, this squirrel discovered that the sill between the frame and the accordion plastic, with its high-tech dishtowel insulation, would be a cozy nest. We saw it rip at the dishtowel to make it fluffy; we watched it watch us when we would, say, make too much noise opening a window to take its photograph and disturb its slumber. But look at that face! That peach-hogging, pear-devouring, plum-scarfing, eggplant-aborting, sunflower-decapitating, birdfeeder-raiding face! I was in love with this squirrel. Last weekend we noticed that the towel was inadequate and it had added some more squirrely material to its nest--grass and twigs.

(Hey, we'd tell our neighbor he was being infested if we ever saw him. Maybe we'd trade him info ("take in your ac to save on your heating bill and keep the rodents out") for darkness, please and thank you.)

It would generally retire to its nest before dusk. With a birdfeeder just a house away (our house), it didn't have to spend much time foraging, I guess. Protected from the wind, sunning in the south exposure, that squirrel would wrap its tail over its body and luxuriate--I imagine a lot of heat pours out of that aperture.

Yes, I'm talking about it in the past tense. The other day I noticed a two-dimensional squirrel in the street. I'm not good at individual squirrel identification--I can tell the fattest male from the smallest female who make a living off our birdfeeders and that's about it--especially when they're flat but about this particular roadkill I had an immediate bad feeling. The nest has been empty since.