Reading: Blindness

Watching: local news

Moving: walked 2.5 miles

27 September 2002: Friday

I scampered downtown to take care of a few last errands. The first oddness I noticed was traffic I thought heavy for 11:00. Certainly heavier than at 8:00. The bus driver announced he would turn north at Lincoln instead of continuing west downtown to Auraria campus. He was disgusted: some peace rally, he said.

As I walked to the library, I saw a crowd, not a large one, in front of the City & County Building. I left it behind as I headed for the post office, wondering what has happened to me in the past ten years that I didn't know about this ahead of time, that I was carrying an Eddie Bauer shopping bag with a parcel to mail and a skirt to return and continuing with my errands instead of participating.

I did my errands and turned around, east toward the rally and home. By now the rally was a march and folks were streaming up from the C&CB, up Cleveland, and left on 16th to the Adams Mark, where it halted. From the C&CB to 16th, Court rather than its parallel Cleveland is the nearer route, but mounted police blocked Court at 15th and 16th--and the Adams Mark flanks Court on either side.

Dubya was at the Adams Mark fundraising for the Republican candidate for Colorado's new Congressional district. His presence, not the rally, had redirected the 15 bus route away from the south side of the Adams Mark and the 16th Street Shuttle away from the north side, and closed Court (between the two halves of the hotel). Much more likely for the city to disrupt itself for the president than for peace.

There were Quakers ("Quakers oppose all war"); Anabaptists ("Anabaptists for peace"); folks holding signs that did not identify their carriers, that looked 11 years old ("No blood for oil"), that said "God bless Iraq," "Uproot the Bush," "A plea for peace," "Allow U.N. Inspections," and the root sentiment, "No war for votes"; and me (now rid of the bag), participating in spirit if not by sign or voice.

In the afternoon I cached some local news to watch its opinion of the GOP fundraising and peace rally. I saw a story promoting Sunday's Walk for the Cure. The news--the NBC affiliate, which has seemed the least insipid--apparently had previously promoted a certain style of walking shoe, which now, the newscasters said, was sold out locally. This was pretty bad but no worse than my walking through a peace rally with a skirt to return. Then there was a story about the lunch, and then, to be fair, a story about the Democratic candidate, and then, to be fair again, one about the rally.

Apparently the best speaker (or maybe just the most notorious-looking) the news could find, the only person it quoted, was a woman, no more than 20, cropped and butchy, who said that we should at least allow the evacuation of women and children from Afghanistan. It disgusts me both that she did not know what country her country had invaded or might invade and that she classed women with children, and that the news could not, or did not, bother to find someone more articulate.

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Blindness. Blake and I spent the afternoon on the couch reading (actually Blake spent most of that time spelunking and singing behind the couch). Everyone's blindness is like a milky bright sea, not darkness. Luckily neither Saramago nor his translator uses the phrase "white blindness" very often. I might not have been able to take seriously a bunch of humans coming down with myxomatosis. The character in the list is the Dog of Tears, whom I haven't met yet. This will be the only character with anything like a name, one that reminds me unfortunately of Mundo Cani Dog who so saddened me reading The Book of the Dun Cow.

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I am watching and simultaneously reading The Enchanted April. I have a theory that a passage of one book quoted in another book is generally the Author's Giving the Theme. Like Stu Redman liking Watership Down in The Stand (pitiful weaklings against an Adversary), except that usually Glen speaks for King in that book. Um, Pilgrim's Progress throughout Little Women. Elizabeth and Her German Garden in The Shell-Seekers. If von Arnim's style in it is similar to that in April, I can see how Pilcher emulates it.

It's also just kind of Twenties-esque in a way I can't articulate, but it reminds me of Cold Comfort Farm. But more The Bottle Factory Outing, which is 1974, so I clearly know nothing. But indeed I'd never have put Outing so late.

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TiVo obediently fetched me a Katharine Hepburn movie I had never heard of, "Song of Love," in which she and Paul Heinreid play Clara Wieck Schumann and Robert Schumann (and an American who lacks Kate's Continental flair randomly plays Brahms--he must have owed the studio a film). But I say, this is too hard. I grew up on "African Queen," linking Kate and Bogie in my head so much that eventually learning about Spencer Tracy and Lauren Bacall was a shock, and it was a while before I liked "Casablanca" because to see Humphrey Bogart in love with someone who wasn't Rosie hurt. I got over it, or so I thought: seeing Victor Laslow with Rosie Sayer is just plain weird. Whereas I have no problem linking Kate with Cary Grant. At all.

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New Pete album! New Pete album! New Pete album! New Pete album! I'm listening to Up right now, and the song that's been on the radio for a while now isn't on it. That's okay. It's kind of techno (to me), which is also okay. Mostly he uses his voice as an instrument more than in his poppier stuff, which is great.

Also I received Long Walk Home, his soundtrack to an Aussie movie "Rabbit-Proof Fence." Moody and atmospheric and filled with Aboriginal tones and themes and not as passionate as Passion, recognizably Pete but not as rehashy as Birdy.

In sum, new Peter Gabriel music for the first time in ten years. Maybe eleven. In any case, less disappointing after eleven years than Jean Auel, sacrilegious though that off-the-cuff parallel be.