Telegram

Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.
Wednesday, June 30th

Ending June



I said last week I was going to bring the pictures over, but I haven't yet. I guess I called Friday. Later that afternoon it rained so hard that the gutters overflowed, the power went off, the streets ran like rivers. I went back to the church and vacuumed up the muddy waters in the basement. I didn't really want to try bringing them on the weekend -- and anyway there was the fire company's parade and picnic, which took up the whole day Saturday; Sunday is a work day for me, there was the strawberry festival and later on I went to that Dartmouth picnic. Monday, the day just slipped by. Tuesday I ended up moving all those black rubber things, wich were wet and heavy and covered with dirt and bugs. I was not dressed to go calling. Today I was taken to task for agreeing to move all those rubber things, and we all know why I did it when he took the day off. I was punished by being put to work on some other grubby, sweaty tasks. Friday and Saturday I will be working on the wedding all the time, so that leaves tomorrow. I've been putting it off because there's a lot I don't understand, and a lot I don't dare believe.
David on 06.30.04 @ 05:51 PM CST [link]


Tuesday, June 29th

F


For my other alphabetic project, I completed the letter "F", about two weeks ago. The book was
A Room With A View, by E. M. Forster. I saw the movie, as the saying goes, and now I've read the book. I found it the most completely satisfying of all the books I've read since I undertook this project. For the most part, excepting some florid descriptive passages, the prose was a delight to read, and supported the plot and characterizations well. It was light reading, but not light-weight, always interesting, and the conclusion did not disappoint. It well deserves its reputation as a minor classic.
David on 06.29.04 @ 05:34 PM CST [link]


A Look Back


I'm not sure whether I lived up to the letter or spirit of the Alphabytes challenge, but I guess in some sense I satisfied it. I used a word list compiled by KarenD of Hat On Top, and used the words as kindling for the day's entry. I made no efort to use the word in question, and after a while I tried to avoid its use in the actual entry. There was only one word I really hated and didn't want to write about. I found that my format and schedule made it relatively easy to fulfil the challenge as I understood it.

Thaanks to the good folks at word-windmill.com for creating Alphabytes 2004, providing the portal, and letting me participate.

David on 06.29.04 @ 06:32 AM CST [link]


Sunday, June 27th

Free Range Avians



There can't be a zoo without people. Today at the park I was watching the swallows who have made their nests in the ceiling of the pavilion. they have been a terrible nuisance over the years, capitalizing on the configuration of the space, which suits their nesting needs. The township retrofitted some birdproofing into the place -- little tightly-woven spikes running all along the rafters. But the birds, some of them anyway, have found a way to build their nests in spite of the obstacles. It is educational to watch them going about their business, but it isn't a zoo (or an aviary). There was no human intention that they live there, and they are squatters in spite of our efforts. As in so many things, the difference is in the intention, not the result.


Alphabytes, "zoo".

All done!


David on 06.27.04 @ 08:06 PM CST [link]


Saturday, June 26th

Small Town Saturday


Today there was a parade in honor of the fire company's hundredth anniversary. There was a brass band, and four corps of bagpipers and drummers, and scouts, and antique cars. And there were fire trucks. New, aging, and antique; large and small; red, yellow and luminous; trucks carrying hoses, trucks carrying water, trucks carrying ladders. Across the street from me were a mother and her small son, two or three years old. He stood there on the sidewalk, eager, craning his neck, as one truck after another came along. Then he would wave the flag in his one hand, and his other hand he would also wave. The truck moved on and he was on the lookout for the next one. It took him a surprisingly long time to wear himself out.

Alphabytes, "youthful".


David on 06.26.04 @ 06:57 PM CST [link]


Friday, June 25th

Nova



When I was about fourteen I reached the conclusion that I was not interesting. So I sought a new persona which suited me better, and I found the exotic race I wanted to join in my reading. I became a gypsy. As far as i can remember, I didn't do anything particularly gypsyish: I didn't wear garish clothes, or trade horses, or sing soulful music. I peppered my talk with a few words of Romany, I expressed my contempt for the gaje, I got a pack of Tarot cards and told fortunes. This phase tapered off over the next few years, and by the time I went away to college I was a white guy again, though I still had the cards around and might lay my hands on them if I made an effort. And, after I had given up my silly playacting, all my friends were discreet enough to never refer to it again.


Alphabytes, "xenomania".


David on 06.25.04 @ 08:13 PM CST [link]


Thursday, June 24th

Wages of Fear




My book of quotations has in its index over a page of references under the subject of "war", well over a hundred. It seems as if everything memorable which might be said on the subject has been said. The consensus seems to be that wars are stupid, absurd, wasteful, vain, vicious, pointless and wrong. And yet... there's a good, right around the bend, tha we can get just by paying this price. I hear about one war that's being waged right now, every day; the other eight or ten or twelve conflicts around the world, not so much, but I presume that though the combatants may differ, the combat is much the same.


Alphabytes, "war".


David on 06.24.04 @ 07:58 PM CST [link]


Wednesday, June 23rd

Handsome Is




I've had my picture appear in the paper a few times, and I didn't mind. Once it was on the front page of the local paper, an arrangement of T and me dressed in vintage clothing, all an angle to try to bring the marks in to the rummage. Because vintage clothing was all so very hip and trendy back then, what with Kramer and all. Anyway I had my fifteen minutes of fame, all for a good cause, and I am mostly joking these days when I tell my friend the photographer that she must must must put my image in the paper. One of the best things I like about the face I wear is that I don't have to look at it except when i want to, which is no more than necessary -- other people have to look at it whenever I'm in their presence, if only to be polite. But having imposed it on a wider audience once, I'm just as happy keeping it within more intimate gatherings from now on. I am willing to admit that I am no Franchot Tone. Francis the Talking Mule was a movie star too, and people paid to look at him. I'm content to be somewhere on the bell curve in between.


Alphabytes, "vain".



David on 06.23.04 @ 07:44 PM CST [link]


Tuesday, June 22nd

Unfettered




Several people I know are feeling it this week. It's a sensation you probably get to feel a couple of times in your life; more likely, one, on your graduation from high school. After all, when you get out of college, you've been on your own a while, in some fashion, and you have looming before you the specter of responsibility. But liberation from high school is real emancipation, for most, without the jeopardy of life out in the open. Just the open road, going somewhere you've never been, and a joyous goodbye to all the life you used to know. As we crossed the street I congratuated her and asked how graduation had been. She smiled.

"Welcome," I said, "to the rest of your life."


Alphabytes, "unfettered".
David on 06.22.04 @ 05:08 PM CST [link]


Monday, June 21st

Flavor King

music: "Tasty"; Good Rats



One of my rare insights into my own personality came several years ago, when I realized that while I aspired to become a wine connoisseur, I really didn't care much about wine or particularly cherish its taste. What I really aspired to be, in other words, was an elitist. I hardly ever touch wine any more, and I am probably the better for it. I don't go for the exotic or the novel in the world of food, either; I don't eat out too often and I won't cook anything complicated for myself. What I like: fresh bread, cheese, India pale ale, or beer, sweets of all sorts, some fruit, water. I occasionally drink soft drinks but they usually disappoint me; I find Coca-Cola an obnoxious beverage in almost every particular. And if I buy milk I usually let it go bad in the refrigerator, but it has plenty of company in there with all the other foods I bought thinking I'd eat them.


Alphabytes, "tasty".



David on 06.21.04 @ 05:55 PM CST [link]


Sunday, June 20th

Wheezy




I haven't had much trouble with allergies this year, and I'm not really sure why. Conditions have been very conducive to the proliferation of pollen and mold spores, with all the rain and the sun and the spring and all. Now it's the end of June and those things ought to be tapering off. Usually I have one major attack a year, anyway,which clears up on its own in a couple of days. I sneeze five times a day, in season and out, but that is more of a religious practice than a reaction to anything in particular. Too many sneezes, though, and the whole respiratory tract goes into open rebellion, and I am too gentle a satrap to suppress it brutally -- I let it run its course and take back the burnt-over district when it's done.


Alphabytes, "snotty".
David on 06.20.04 @ 02:15 PM CST [link]


Saturday, June 19th

Beach of Memory




It is the music of my earliest childhood; bouncy, cheerful, a little rowdy, propelling itself ever forward on the wave of the beat. There was other music, too, of course, but surf instrumental music seems to my mind to be specially the property of that time and place, before we moved east and lived with the seasons. Those sunny days, those happy houses, the station wagon with the tailgate down, and the one amenity playing Dick Dale or the Astronauts or the Ventures. Telstar, Misirlou, Ram-Bunk-Shush, Church Key, Apache, Surf Beat. Nowadays it's utilitarian music for me; in the death of winter it tells me there's an endless summer out there somewhere, on a weekend like this it lets me shed the years and pretend that I am still celebrating the end of school and the beginning of new adventures, it let me shake my ears and warm up my brain. Simple, ever-familiar, ever-new.

Alphabytes, "rambunctious".


David on 06.19.04 @ 10:52 AM CST [link]


Friday, June 18th

Aphorism




Quantity is always a quality, but quality is never a quantity.


Alphabytes, "quality".


David on 06.18.04 @ 07:15 AM CST [link]


Thursday, June 17th

The Summons


The intercoms disapperaed a long time ago -- but I remember well the days when they might awaken me to a minor problem, an emergency, or a panic. I met all those crises well enough, but the panic button made me reluctant, and I hold back. I hold back my money, in case an emergency comes up. That's okay; there's not much I want to spend it on anyway. I hold back my love, in case...in case it is not returned, in case I give my heart and it is broken, in case I give it and find myself, one day, at one end or the other of the panic button again. Those aren't good reasons.


Alphabytes, "panic".

David on 06.17.04 @ 08:57 AM CST [link]


Wednesday, June 16th

Slocum Centennial




The morning paper is nothing but an opportunity for outrage at a distance. It has been a few years since I last read Ulysses, but the little I retain about it concerns the occasional appearance of minor characters who tut-tut over the previous day's headlines, many of which recount the Slocum disaster. Slocum was a hundred years ago now, its last survivor buried a few months ago; and t remains an example of the outageous consequences of human indifference and neglect. But, too often, we would rather express our outrage afterwards than work to prevent the conditions which lead to the disaster. One of the great triumphs of the last century in American history was that we finally took our outrage at Slocum, Johnstown, Triangle, epidemy, and undertook political and bureaucratic efforts to reduce the likelihood of their repetition. The good thing about big government is that the life-preserver's on the boat when you need it, and the fresh outrage in the paper is some bit of trivia about Britney.


Alphabytes, "outrage".
David on 06.16.04 @ 04:46 PM CST [link]


Tuesday, June 15th

It's About Style




I admit to my literary offenses. I love metaphor,I love overextended sentences, I love lists, I love mystery and paradox, I love repetitive rhetorical devices like catalogues. But I hope I eschew jargon. I have never used a smiley. I don't use abbreviation-shorthand to make my use of cliche easier and quicker; no shortcuts here! I proudly spell out the cliche to the last letter. So, the neologism "nanotech": a double-compound word which got too long and suffered an amputation as a consequence. The "nano-" prefix has a precise meaning in scientific terminology, it's a precise degree of magnitude. Outside of that realm it seems to convey nothing other than "really tiny", which I find a little vague. These observations seem to me reason enough to avoid the use of a term not in general use, and of no particular value to me. so, I can asure my readers, you will never read the word "nanotech" in these pages.


Alphabytes, "nanotech".
David on 06.15.04 @ 07:16 AM CST [link]


Sunday, June 13th

History



We have our own Magnificent Ambersons. At the end of the nineteenth century they became the first family of our town, with wealth to spare; they created a new, "family-style" restaurant which turned into a national chain. The brothers were trutees and elders, built the new session house which later became the town library, built the Sunday School which became the choir room, purchased the lot back of the cemetery which became the New Yard; they owned several imposing homes on vast tracts of land. On one of those tracts was built the subdivision I live in. New restaurants came along and surpassed them: the road and the automobile made the urban self-serve cafeteria obsolete. I know the granddaughter of one of them, and her children and grandchildren. She works at the church one day a week, after a forty-five year career as a music teacher. She lives modestly but comfortably, and only occasionally refers to the magnificence which was her birthright.

Alphabytes, "magnificent".


David on 06.13.04 @ 07:53 PM CST [link]


Saturday, June 12th

Quiet Village




If we were trying to tell the Martians what a Saturday in June is like, this day would be the example. It has been pleasantly warm, the sky clear and blue, what breezes come gentle and refreshing. It is quiet; no manic celebrations, no bustle or business. No sounds of mowers or blowers, the birds and cicadas are at rest. People are passing time with their children in the yard, or weeding, or browsing the odds and ends at the garage sales. There isn't any traffic. So I'm heading back to the housesit, where Ben is snoozing on the braided rug by the front door, and I'll sit down with my Forster and read for an hour.

Alphabytes, "languid".


David on 06.12.04 @ 03:51 PM CST [link]


Friday, June 11th

Ancient Tones



I had my four years of classical Greek and I try, sporadically, to keep up some kind of competence in it. I am usually able to handle the koine but the complexity of the inflections in Homeric and Attic wears me out. I wouldn't be surprised if the long familiarity with its rhythms has influenced the way I express myself; I certainly have no problem with convoluted sentences (see yesterday's entry), and I have had occasion to use many perfect voices over the years. I had had a pluperfect one but it blew a gasket. I have always enjoyed the tart and exotic tang of Greek on the tongue, piquant but refreshing; Latin has always suffered from too much salt. and let me not start on the barbaric blandings of my native tongue.

Alphabytes, "kudos".
David on 06.11.04 @ 04:12 PM CST [link]


Thursday, June 10th

Coffee Nerves



I don't remember the Reagan years as being a time of optimism and prosperity; I remember them as being full of inequity, polarization and anxiety. It was the last time I remember actively taking a position in a political controversy: I was strongly opposed to that administation's policy in Central America, and while, if it were happening today, I might be less eager to support the leftist insurgencies in El Salvador and Guatemala and the Sandanista government in Nicaragua, I still think they were mostly wrong and I was mostly right. Today things are still simmering throughout Latin America, continued economic injustice there continues to provide fertile ground for criminal empires, thuggery, instability, totalitarianism, and has been the source of decades, now, of domestic problems in the United States due to the continuing influx of undocumented workers and the resulting shadow economy, an economy on which we are, by now, utterly dependent. And what do I do? I buy Fair Trade coffee.


Alphabytes, "jitters".


David on 06.10.04 @ 02:48 PM CST [link]


Wednesday, June 9th

Lists



Innate: human, male, thin, balding, myopic, shy, introspective, healthy, baritone, heterosexual, heretical, awkward, honest.

Acquired: English-speaking, enduring, faithful, bookish, sociable, unselfish, catholic, orthodox, musical, humorous, plain.

Alphabytes, "innate".
David on 06.09.04 @ 07:36 PM CST [link]


Tuesday, June 8th

Pandora's Legacy



The funny thing about hope, it exists only in potentiality. Once realized, or dashed, a hope ceases to exist. The list I've got here is strong on theological virtues, but we hope not only, or even primarily, in the promise of the life to come, but also in the little pleasures and averted catastrophes of this life. I have a little hope that I'm nursing, and I'm much more comfortable with the hope, and the possiblility it contains, than I am in either its fulfillment or its collapse. So I postpone the simple action which would prove whether the hope is hopeless or not. I've had hopes evaporate in the past, because I left them in the box too long, waiting while I generously released their sibling miseries, and after I had mourned the death of a hope, a new one came along. The world is a regular riot of hope, and there's the miracle.


Alphabytes, "hope".


David on 06.08.04 @ 07:36 PM CST [link]


Monday, June 7th

Brief Candle



Sometimes the funerals are rather strange affairs. I expected it to be pretty gloomy one; the mother of the deceased is an active church member, who has lost two of her three children to the grave now. She is ninety-three and as big as a sparrow. The woman was relatively young, about seventy, with many survivors; her death rapidly followed a cancer diagnosis. All this, you'd think, would contribute to a somber mood. But the reception was a relatively lighthearted event. Everyone knew everyone else, they chatted about the good old days, ate prodigiously, and the kids sat on the floor with their food and went outside to run around. Maybe tyhey were in shock. Maybe they're unusually phlegmatic. Maybe the joy of the reunion overpowered the burden of the loss. You can't ever figure people.

Alphabytes, "grief".


David on 06.07.04 @ 08:29 PM CST [link]


Shingle


Yesterday was Confirmation Sunday. Thirteen young people, dressed ever so fine, strode into the shallow and tepid waters of the Sea of Faith. We stood and recited the creed:

I believe in God the Father Almighty..

The dictionary says faith is unquestioning belief; the Church says faith is the assent given to a truth. Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. We walk by faith and not by sight.

He descended into hell..

By faith we assure ourselves that the world is real, is rational, and is capable of being known. We are assured that God is real, is rational, and is transparent to the reachings of the mind. Without faith in some truths, knowledge cannot begin.

The forgiveness of sins..

Out of sight of the sea these days, yet its withdrawing roar is evidence that it still exists.

Where ignorant armies clash by night..

Alphabytes, "faith".
David on 06.07.04 @ 06:53 AM CST [link]


Saturday, June 5th

Don't You Just Love Hearing About Me?



I don't suppose it's possible for any journaler to declare, with any degree of credibility, that he or she is not egotistical. Implicit in the act of journaling is the assumption that one's actions and thoughts are worth recording, and by journaling publicly, there is the further implication that these actions and thoughts might be entertaining, edifying and interesting to others. But egotism is distinct from vanity, as it is distinct from selfishness or solipsism. No one is more egotistical than a baby, or less vain. I am egotistical enough that my favorite first word in these entries is "I", but I'm not especially vain, at least not about my appearance, and it bothers me very little that my egotism is not affirmed by, for instance, having a journal that many people care to read. But then, the true egotists don't care for general opinion; to the contrary, they take up positions likely to be met with hostility by the mainstream, and comfort themselves with these evidences of their superiority and forward-thinking. I'm not especially egotistical by this measure any more. I have very little idea whether I'm in the mainstream in my views or not, and I don't worry about it much.


Alphabytes, "egotistical".


David on 06.05.04 @ 07:34 PM CST [link]


Friday, June 4th

Meeting by chance



It's not the stuff of drama, this life of mine. I was driving past the farm stand yesterday, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw my friend's van exiting. We waved at each other. I pulled over a little up the road; she pulled over. We talked for a few minutes. Where are you going, she asked. I'm going to find that house -- the one with the pipe organ in it -- where tonght's meeting is being held. That's near my house; come on over. So I went, and we hund around and talked, and ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and she showed me the house, and the gardens, and the dog pooped. She has a teenage daughter, and life is full of drama for her. She had an accident with the car on the way to the driving test, and a lot more happened, and in the end she passed the test. That's drama -- not Shakespearean, nobody died or went insane, but still. I walked her out to the mailbox, and went away and found the house. She didn't come to the meeting.


Alphabytes, "drama".
David on 06.04.04 @ 05:58 PM CST [link]


Thursday, June 3rd

Olcott Ave.



To part with something of value for the benefit of others: this is an act of charity. These days it generally means parting with legal tender. This morning I was driving past the office, the heart from which the medical services of the VNA circulate, and I saw one of my friends from the sale coming out. She lives at some distance, yet she travels up here, works in the office, serves on the board, attends meetings, visits the sick, comes three times a week in rummage season and works like a teamster (non-union), organizes, cooks, and serves at the functions which honor the staff and volunteers. It's charity, and hospitality, and virtue, and love. It certainly bursts out of the narrow confines of that word as it's understood these days.

Alphabytes, "charity".
David on 06.03.04 @ 04:25 PM CST [link]


Wednesday, June 2nd

B'scratch


I am getting good at bitching. Complaining, griping, finding fault: it is an infectious conversational disorder. I have become especially good at second-guessing other people's decisions and questioning their motives. It's funny how people are never given credit for purer or more idealistic motives than the ones they claim. The best thing about bitching is that it's not a mirror, it's a window; there's no danger you'll see yourself when you look in.

Alphabytes, "bitch".
David on 06.02.04 @ 05:40 PM CST [link]


Tuesday, June 1st

Two Survivors


Aberrant cells go berserk, wreak havoc in the organism, and do their best to bring about the destruction of them all. Little suicide-bombers in the tissues. I sat down with Kathy today and we talked about the Relay; I was there at the end and was able to tell her how much had been raised for the ACS. She got to wear a purple shirt this year, took the survivor's lap, and saw twenty-four luminaries put out in her honor by the track. A year ago she was so sick she came up in her pajamas to watch the luminary ceremony, and went home afterwards, exhausted. She's one of the good people, and her story is one of the happy stories. My teenage friend, though, sat at the edge of the track, where the candle in memory of her father was placed, just sat there as the walkers and runners went by. A couple of months since he succumbed, by all accounts in misery and despair, and left his unfinished business behind. She got up and rejoined her friends, and smiled and played and laughed, but the aberrant cells stole her father, and her heart is broken.

Alphabytes, "aberrant".
David on 06.01.04 @ 05:19 PM CST [link]




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