tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-48062487616576432762024-02-08T06:19:41.743-08:00Walking Around Looking At Stuffjust what it sounds likeausten cornellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15236500325645256548noreply@blogger.comBlogger66125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4806248761657643276.post-17031816716857458512009-10-13T01:26:00.000-07:002009-10-13T01:55:12.736-07:00I Spoke PrematurelyUpon describing my <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">symptoms</span> to my beloved, and he being someone who has suffered much from his <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">respiratory</span> system, he diagnosed me as suffering from allergies. I'm not very familiar with allergies, so this was useful. A dose of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">loratidine</span> (the generic version of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">Claritan</span>) and I was doing much better. It does pay to have friends, and to share one's troubles with them. <div><br /></div><div>I am really enjoying the weather. However, the cloudy overcast made sleep in today. I only woke up because my dreams were just getting silly and I was tired of them. Upon seeing how late in the morning it was, I trotted around the house briskly, pulling myself together. Later in the day, after having gone grocery shopping, which never fails to make me feel like an entirely plausible adult, I was seized with a strange "wrath," to turn on the oven and fill the house with warm savorous odors.</div><div><br /></div><div>So I proceeded to spend a good chunk of the evening making delicious vegetarian casseroles, three entirely different ones, and I tossed a stray eggplant into a shallow dish and baked it to a pulp, just because it was there, and I fired up the glorious new convection toaster oven my excellent sister sent as a wedding present, and really did bake all the sweet potatoes it could hold in about 2/3 the time it would have taken otherwise. I'm not quite sure about what I will do with the eggplant, but a roasted vegetable is no variety of hardship. I may just heat it up and dress it with a dollop of yogurt and hot sauce. The sweet potatoes I will probably mash, and cover with some kind of sausage, vegetarian or meat, and eat as a very satisfying and simple dinner for a cool evening.</div><div><br /></div><div>I am not so very much given to "emotional <i>eating</i>," but I am inclined to emotional <i>cooking. </i> Well really, any creative endevor will do, but the ones with a brutally practical result hold a particular satisfaction. Cooking is great, because everyone needs to eat, and after venting, I have a fridge full of delicious food, to eat myself or feed to others. Back in the day, I would have packed this into bento boxes to take to work for breakfast and lunch. Maybe for the whole week. Now, I can feed my beloved, and my roommates as well as myself. It all still lasts for about a week.</div>austen cornellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15236500325645256548noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4806248761657643276.post-31511861398034888642009-10-01T12:15:00.000-07:002009-10-01T12:21:41.471-07:00I'm Not Walking Around At The Moment, Nor Am I Looking At StuffI am having my first cold of the season. It is not too bad a cold, so I am lying about coughing and enjoying the cool weather. Having a bit of a cold makes me feel like summer really is over, and autumn has really begun. We take our joy where we find it.austen cornellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15236500325645256548noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4806248761657643276.post-54025060384841477072009-09-22T18:30:00.000-07:002009-09-30T12:51:40.528-07:00A Happy Announcement!The beloved and I got married on Friday! We went to the County Clerk's office with friends of ours as witnesses, and did it all in a small and pleasant way, and had a very good time of it. Our witnesses are married to eachother and know everything about wine, and they took us out for a really splendid lunch afterward. So in the happy glow of food and wine and friendship and legal marriage, the beloved husband and I arrived home to take a long comfortable nap together, then scamper off to Erev Rosh Hashanah services. The Jewish New Year starting the evening of 9-18-09, fortunate numbers referring to "Life" made the day irresistible to us as a time to get married. (The Hebrew letter "chai" is the 18th letter in the alphabet, and used in the word for life. A good letter, a good number. I'm not explaining this as well as it could be explained....)<br /><br />So we are starting a new year well! I am an Orthodox Christian, but I do enjoy the Jewish High Holy Days. They make a great deal of sense I think, as a friendly gentile observer. A big happy party to usher in the new year, then the first ten days of the year are spent pondering the previous year and what you want to do differently this year, then Yom Kippur, a twenty-four hour repentancefest. Now I like Great Lent in my own tradition, but it is forty days in early spring which is just a rough time of year already, and the Menaion (sorta a day-by-day liturgical guide) can get just nutsy about what is to be done when and how to observe what minor feast day. And this is all before you get to Holy Week..... The excitement drama and irritation can be good fun and spiritually beneficial, but some years it just spins up into a vast unclear penitential circus. I really like one solid twenty four hours where the focus is very clear, and the liturgy clearly leads you through it all. Over forty-plus days of Great Lent, my attention can and does wander. Accompanying my beloved through the twenty four hours of Yom Kippur, even as I discreetly don't fast, is strengthening. And then a few days after Yom Kippur Sukkot starts, and goes for some days. How cool is that? A holiday where you build a pleasant little outdoor pavilion in which you hang out with friends and family and be happy about life and eat good food.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">That</span> is the way to start a new year! And, I think, a new marriage.austen cornellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15236500325645256548noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4806248761657643276.post-43246075641106872092009-09-20T17:28:00.000-07:002009-09-20T17:28:00.396-07:00More Fine Austen Pastiche!Well! Those charmers at Quirk Classics, the people who brought the world *Pride and Prejudice and Zombies*, have just brought out *Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters*! And a merry read it is! More liberties were taken with the setting, <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_0" class="blsp-spelling-error">steampunkly</span> so, and as always, Austen's greatness shines through. Really, I like these pastiches far better than the usual ones, that usually demonstrate by their drabness the <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_1" class="blsp-spelling-error">excellences</span> of what they try to imitate. I usually toss that sort aside and think--well that's time I won't get back. Not so with Quirk Classics' efforts. By their very ridiculousness of setting, they show a much greater affection and understanding of Austen's work. I can't help but imagine Austen herself would like them.<br /><br />Now if only someone would do Agatha Christie pastiches where Jane Marple is a biker in a post-<span id="SPELLING_ERROR_2" class="blsp-spelling-corrected">apocalyptic</span> world....austen cornellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15236500325645256548noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4806248761657643276.post-86326502973948389902009-09-19T16:38:00.000-07:002009-09-19T16:38:00.674-07:00VengeanceI certainly enjoyed Tarantino's *Inglourious Basterds*. A slaughter fest of Nazis is a fun fantasy revenge. A better one, a far better one, I will see soon.<br /><br />At the Hillel where the beloved worships, there is a Holocaust scroll--a Torah scroll that survived the destruction of its community, found its way to Westminster, and was subsequently sent out to another congregation. The last Torah reading of Yom Kippur will be read out of just that scroll. All the children, as well as anyone else who wishes to look at it, will be invited up to gather around during the reading. Seeing that scroll, that had been meant for a display in a Nazi "Museum of An Extinct People," surrounded by happy healthy wise young Jews, is the best vengeance possible.<br /><br />Living well *is* the best revenge.austen cornellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15236500325645256548noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4806248761657643276.post-4676477906388502612009-09-17T17:13:00.000-07:002009-09-17T17:18:51.934-07:00Just Thinking....Part of what I like about magic is how very human it is. There are no drugs I know of to take to make one a better magician, no one is trying to invent ways for computers to perform magic <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_0" class="blsp-spelling-corrected">independently</span> of a human <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_1" class="blsp-spelling-corrected">operator</span>, no one "samples" videos of other magicians' performances and expects that to be treated as an original creation. An actual person does it in front of other actual people, and maybe a camera. I really like that.austen cornellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15236500325645256548noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4806248761657643276.post-66066163599646811152009-09-10T12:06:00.000-07:002009-09-10T12:06:00.445-07:00Well! More Official By The DayWell! The beloved and I now have a marriage license and a date upon which we shall make our relationship a legally recognized entity by the government. Gracious....<br /><br />I'm not one of those women who has thought long and hard about what they wanted their "special day" to be like. The beloved and I are planning to hold the big family-and-friends party thing in about two years, so that will give us a chance to think about it.<br /><br />We have been together for years now, and for years have been planning on looking after eachother until one of us dies, so I'm not expecting that a change in the legal status of our union will make *that* much difference, but longterm gay couples of our acquaintance who married during the brief period they were able to do so say it does. Well, we will see....austen cornellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15236500325645256548noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4806248761657643276.post-15677183989627505122009-08-26T14:55:00.000-07:002009-09-09T20:52:12.875-07:00A Poem by Charles Simic, From *Dime-Store Alchemy:The Art of Joseph Cornell*(As I say in the title of this post, this is a poem by Charles Simic. Being a prose poem, that may be difficult to discern. Here goes--)<br /><br />STREET-CORNER THEOLOGY<br />It ought to be clear that Cornell is a religious artist.<br />Vision is his subject. He makes holy icons. He proves<br />that one needs to believe in angels and demons even in<br />a modern world in order to make sense of it.<br /> The disorder of the city is sacred. All things are<br />interrelated. As above, so below. We are fragments of<br />an unutterable whole. Meaning is always in search of<br />itself. Unsuspected revelations await us around the next<br />corner.<br /> The blind preacher and his old dog are crossing the<br />street against the oncoming traffic of honking cabs and<br />trucks. He carries his guitar in a beat-up case taped with<br />white tape so it looks like it's bandaged.<br /> Making art in America is about saving one's soul.<br /><br /><br />(Me again--I especially like the middle paragraph. So true, so true. So go read more poems and write more poems.)austen cornellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15236500325645256548noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4806248761657643276.post-52140043764486572572009-08-25T15:00:00.000-07:002009-08-25T15:00:02.525-07:00So I'm Thinking...Would a conference of magicians and students of religion on the nature of faith be fun? I think it would be. Possibly, it *could* turn ugly, but...with outlandishly good food I think that possibility could controlled.austen cornellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15236500325645256548noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4806248761657643276.post-88047300819396929662009-08-24T16:46:00.000-07:002009-09-09T21:08:18.733-07:00Poetry and VisionA poetry professor of mine back in college once quoted someone else as having said--"Observation is the antidote to sentimentality." I think of this as I am, well, walking around looking at stuff. Especially as I have Mr. Simic's *Dimestore Alchemy: The Art Of Joseph Cornell* in my worm leather backpack, along with small color photocopies of Joseph Cornell boxes I especially like. I think of this quote when I am at the Magic Castle. What if I am not even sure of what it is I'm observing? I also consider the Anais Nin quote, something along the lines of "We see not what there is but who we are." Hm.<br /><br />I'm never seeing more than just the very tip of the iceberg, only some of the connections that swoop like a fine silver web throughout all that exists. To pluck a single strand of it is to tug at the entirety of all that is.<br /><br />No wonder whatever I look at slowly dissolves into light. Metaphorically. Or not.<br /><br /><br /><br />Michael Van Welligan(?) 's class Observation is the antidote to sentimentality.<br />Simic's poems I marked, my experience of the city,<br />What?austen cornellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15236500325645256548noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4806248761657643276.post-58190280771681787022009-08-24T16:28:00.000-07:002009-08-24T16:41:07.625-07:00Iris MurdochA slightly mad and very brilliant New Zealander I respected hugely, as one must such people, introduced me to her work. All through college I thought the world of her and read plenty of her books. Then, a few years after graduating, I completely lost interest, to the point of not clearly recalling my previous fondness. It happened right in the middle of *The Green Knight*, as I remember. A college friend once summed up the entirety of Murdoch's work as "secret Jews and surprising homosexuals." Yup, I thought, as I closed the book and put it in the pile to return to the library, and she has already done the one where the secret Jew *was* the surprising homosexual.<br /><br />So today, casting about on the Internet, I find this quote by Iris Murdoch from an interview with Sarah Booth Conroy, published in the Washington Post in March of 1990.<br /><br />"One of the problems in life is to distinguish between demons, magic, and God."<br /><br />Yup. I very much like that she said that.austen cornellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15236500325645256548noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4806248761657643276.post-20841769176700914132009-08-22T16:39:00.000-07:002009-08-22T17:04:36.959-07:00Touching BaseMy physical condition and the drugs I take for it have been leaving me bedraggled lately. Feh. I'm hoping to be able to write more in the coming week.<br /><br />One wonderful (and that is exactly the word I mean) thing did happen this week. A kindly member at the Magic Castle allowed me to examine and even slightly operate what I in my limited experience consider one of the loveliest of modern illusions. The sheer beauty of its mechanism equaled the beauty of its effect. Even my first awkward attempt made me catch my breath. The sheer wonder of the experience is something I would like to put in a box like one of Joseph Cornell's. Delightfully and Cornellianly (?) enough, this encounter took place down in the Museum, the walls of which are full of recessed, *boxlike,* displays.<br /><br />Yesterday late in the afternoon, with this very thought in the back of my head, I started rallying enough to find my copy of Charles Simic's *Dime-Store Alchemy: The Art of Joseph Cornell.* I had picked it up a while back and looked into it casually, but now I read it and LOVED it. It is a physically lovely book of Simic's poems upon the artist, with photos of some of the works mentioned. I commend it to your attention, especially if you like Joseph Cornell's work. I imagine it would be pretty intriguing if you are not familiar with Cornell too. (And if you are not familiar with Joseph Cornell, then rush off this very instant to look him up and prepare to be intrigued, enchanted and confused. Go! Go!)<br /><br />A better art scholar than I am could say if what I have just produced in this "New Post" window, that you now read in your own box of flickering light pixellations, is the prose equivalent of some element of how Cornell's boxes work....austen cornellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15236500325645256548noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4806248761657643276.post-71571416730482616492009-08-20T13:03:00.000-07:002009-08-20T13:15:57.580-07:00Success!So--I have finally met ALL the baby cousins! They are uniformly brilliant and beautiful, and took adorable photos, posing with their great-grandmother, my Grandma.<br /><br />This is another thing that is cool about growing older, being able to see stuff like this. I can remember when the parents of the baby cousins were babies themselves, and here they are now, competent adults raising children. So cool, so very cool. I live long enough and of course the babies turn into cranky young people, but we will deal with that when we get to it. The beloved and I are looking forward to being the Crazy Aunt And Uncle Out In L.A.<br /><br />Further notes on success. I found myself in downtown Claremont late-ish one evening this week, after the Spaghetti and Meatball special at the The Press, and 6$ all-day movies at the theater, rambling about with some ice cream and warm feelings for the little town. Even then, I ran into people I know, one of whom was dedicated to making sure I was safe and near my car. I could not have liked her more in that moment. I figured I must be doing something right to be living around people who will be this kind to me.austen cornellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15236500325645256548noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4806248761657643276.post-27276011261943736042009-08-12T16:34:00.000-07:002009-08-13T20:10:53.496-07:00Julie and JuliaWell go see the movie if you haven't because parts of it are just glorious. I don't know about you, but back in the day, I became aware of "blogs" by hearing about the Julie/Julia Project. My dad had learned to cook by starting on page one of *Mastering The Art*... and working his way through to the end. In his case it took more than a year.<div><br /></div><div>So anyway, once the book version of the blog came out I snapped it up, as this looked like the new "overnight success story" as well as the subject matter looking good. (I started it and for some reason never finished it.) I'd looked at some delightful knitting books that had also started as blogs. That looked like the new thing--we'll all write blogs about our cunningly particular circumstances and hordes of Internet surfers would discover us and gasp as Anais Nin reported of her readership, that we had expressed exactly their experience beyond their wildest wishes of ever having discovered a voice. No, really.</div><div><br /></div><div>One of my thoughts upon leaving the movie was a stinging sense of shame about blogging. As though the faster and easier we can "communicate," the less we have to actually convey, until we are down to this form of shrilly screaming into the electronic ether to hear our own tinny echoes. Being old and cranky and familiar enough with magic tricks to not be so very easily lead about by media, I am still writing here. I would like to engage in some conversation with people who like the stuff I like. Since 9/11, no one can afford to hide any light that they might be able to contribute. That is worth the risk of a few tinny echoes.</div><div><br /></div><div>So before I completely wander off topic and into what needs to be another entry, go pick up the book. This is one of those situations where you really do want to see the movie before you read the book. The book will fix anything wrong with the movie, and then the movie that *you* think should have been made instead of this one will be so freakin cool to imagine that you will have a lot of fun and think many, many thoughts. Now all this goes only for *Julie and Julia*. I have not read *Our Years In France* yet, although I have perused *An Appetite for Life*. I will rashly commend them to you too, just because Julia Child is that freakin cool, and just about anything connected to her has to spur a person to think and to do. </div>austen cornellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15236500325645256548noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4806248761657643276.post-71820284680680921152009-08-09T23:09:00.000-07:002009-08-09T23:09:00.351-07:00MutabilityThe physical changes of aging don't especially upset me. Neither does death or dying. What is pulling my heartstrings is seeing how my *unconsidered* sense of time and place is slipping away. The scent and texture of life lived in a specific historical moment. What details of the physical world have changed over the course of my life? How will they continue to do so? I suppose this can produce simultaneously a keen sense of poignancy over the gone past and a keen sense of interest in what is coming to displace the unconsidered present. What is coming to make Graco infant transport systems look as vintage as perambulators? What will candy wrappers be like in twenty years? What will candy be like? What about the future of bar soap?<br /><br />This is a sort fun place to be balanced right now. And I'm not even fifty....austen cornellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15236500325645256548noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4806248761657643276.post-72812666584405494392009-08-08T13:46:00.000-07:002009-08-08T13:46:00.423-07:00Steampunky Non-fiction!Okay, so maybe I am the last person on the planet to finally read *The Devil At The White City* but I did. I quickly followed this up with another Eric Larson book, *Thunderstruck* about Marconi and this time only one murder, but a really grisly one.<br /><br />Yup, I think Mr Larson just might have done it, he may have come up with "steampunk nonfiction" How have changes in technology and culture influenced eachother in the past?<br /><br />Any other suggestions for what other *contemporary* works may qualify for this genre?austen cornellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15236500325645256548noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4806248761657643276.post-46420812329138230442009-08-07T14:36:00.000-07:002009-08-07T15:16:31.166-07:00Nellie BlySo I just finished reading *Around The World In Seventy-Two Days*, by investigative reporter Nellie Bly, in 1890. In case you don't know, she set off to see if Jules Verne's fictional account could not only be duplicated, but bettered. (She popped in to visit the Vernes at their home on her way through France. Jules Verne was utterly delighted by her feat.)<br /><br />Again, this was an enchanting view into a time and place. I believe she was twenty-five when she set off, with a shocking lack of luggage, even to the minds of free-and-easy modern sorts as ourselves. Even more shocking in her day, she went off alone--meaning she had neither man nor gun with which to protect herself. "...I had such a strong belief in the world's greeting me as I greeted it, that I refused to arm myself. I knew if my conduct was proper I should always find men ready to protect me, let them be American, English, French, German, or anything else." (Wow, how many doctoral dissertations can you find in that statement? Go ahead--in the right crowd it is an evening's entertainment and conversation. Just make sure you have enough snackies and drinks.)<br /><br />One hundred and twenty years ago, an educated and literate woman could innocently write "I somehow always connected Japan and its people with China and its people, believing the one no improvement on the other. I could not have made a greater mistake." She then proceeds to tell of how her experiences taught her that they were two very different cultures. Some of what she said made me blink, adoptive Angeleno as I am, but she belongs to her time and place as I do to mine, and no doubt back in the day, her stories were revealatory to plenty of Americans.<br /><br />I had ordered this book at Metropolis Books, down in the historic core, a while back. I t came in and I went to pick it up shortly after the poor girl was found murdered. After finishing the volume, the irony was not lost on me, over the very different fates of these two young women.austen cornellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15236500325645256548noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4806248761657643276.post-28910402280050437342009-08-03T14:53:00.001-07:002009-08-03T14:57:13.696-07:00Ah-hah...I finally figured it out, I think, the reason why the pattern of the teeth in a ray's lower jaw stay with me. The pattern is <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">similar</span> to decorative panels on a building I used to walk past all the time in Lincoln. Once I saw it, I would be close to the public library which was often my destination. This is funny, this recognizing things without knowing why, or knowing what the connections are. Huh....austen cornellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15236500325645256548noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4806248761657643276.post-8028637465759936282009-08-01T09:00:00.000-07:002009-08-01T09:00:00.766-07:00I Don't Quite Know What To Do With This...So the beloved and I were down in the Historic Core one *evening* this week, which we had not done before. We met friends for dinner at the Nickel Diner, which has a perfectly delightful dinner menu we had not had much opportunity to sample.<br /><br />We had a good time walking over there, me pointing out plenty of the interesting stuff. The beloved is a very kind and patient man who appreciates enthusiasms. (and my God, we walked part of the way on *Broadway!* Broadway!! And then we crossed Spring St! Spring!! And if that was not enough to prostrate me with excitement, we went by Sixth and Main! That means Cole's was to be treated of, and old trains, and French Dips, and--well you can imagine....)<br /><br />We arrived a tad early, so I refreshed myself with a "lavender blossoms" soda, a beverage so twee as to make rabid fans of Victoria sentimentalia roll their eyes. I'm glad I tried it at least once. So our friends arrived and we ate and had a good time until late. We parted pleasantly, and the beloved and I went on our way.<br /><br />Well who should we run into but someone I had not seen for close to a year! He was a roaming musician, possibly homeless, possibly afflicted with troubles. Back around my workplace we would visit occasionally. He had been on my mind for a while, so seeing him was good. It turned out he had suffered terrible physical damage in a dreadful accident since last we had talked. He asked after my health, and compassionated my difficulties. Mine were nothing compared to his. His graciousness awed me. Just about everyone we passed in the streets that night greeted us in the casual and easy manner of small towns<br /><br />This all happened in the general part of town where the young girl was recently found murdered and the homeless man who allegedly killed her was arrested. "Terrible things happen everywhere" is a statement I can assent to intellectually, but that night I could not reconcile that this was the same place where I was walking around feeling safe enough, having a good time, and enjoying meeting people on the sidewalks.<br /><br />Really, I don't know what to do with this....<br /><br />(P.S. "compassionate" the verb is archaic, but really, I can't think of a more current usage that is any better.)austen cornellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15236500325645256548noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4806248761657643276.post-83663825575080786132009-07-31T14:46:00.000-07:002009-07-31T15:15:32.610-07:00Yet More On Live PerformanceSo we went to Dr. Presto's Magic Mansion this week, at the Three of Clubs in L.A., and watched a fellow juggle a pancake, and, yes, were uproariously entertained by doing so. No wonder so many religious traditions insist on direct experience for their mystical elements. A very dear friend many years ago introduced me to the quote--"mystics are the ultimate empiricists." So true, so true....<br /><br />I can *tell* you about seeing the pancake-juggler, but really, that is a separate experience from seeing him yourself. The beloved recently noted that someone was telling a good story, just not very well. (The story was good, the telling was not.) Now to give my dad his due, he is a raconteur of the first water. He told a story once of seeing a myna bird in a hotel lobby that was a miracle of hilarity and wonder. And really, it really was not anything more than that he saw a myna bird on a perch behind the front desk.<br /><br />This difference between the story (uhm, how to say, "what actually happened?") and the telling of a story is a fascinating one to me. I suppose the wide world of journalism is based on that.... I hardly know how to continue recording my thoughts at this point....<br /><br />Well, go watch a live performance. Chat up strangers, who are bound to tell you amazing stories, simply because you are a stranger. People walk around brimming over with such stories of love and crime and loss and suffering and joy as to leave me flummoxed by the knowledge of them. The pretty young lady with the deeply tragic air just cannot get over how Daddy could be so horrible as to not pay for the leather interior for her car--my God what will her friends think? The comfortable looking matron in the Lyra-enhanced pantsuit did things while she was in the Peace Corps that she can only tell to strangers late at night when far from home, in the hopes of someday being able to sleep again. The mud-bespecked workman with the manners of a prince, the fellow in the expensive suit whose stinging bitterness about how the bagger on the new mower works seems a little out of proportion....<br /><br />You get the idea. So anyways, go see Scott Nery generate such drama with pancakes as you could not imagine could be done.austen cornellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15236500325645256548noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4806248761657643276.post-53846712824590331692009-07-30T16:21:00.001-07:002009-07-30T16:34:47.132-07:00Ho w Can I Keep From Singing?So last week in the gruelling heat, I go to the movies at our downtown theater. This is the ONLY way to see movies-- at a small local theater. It was Tuesday, so all day all shows cost only six dollars. I bought a ticket for "Public Enemies" but that hardly matters, because I was standing in the blessedly cool lobby, just so happy to be there. The kind young man behind the refreshment counter is happy and patient with me as we closely discuss the lack of Good N' Plenty. Raisinets are there, but really, isn't *that* almost a breaking of federal law, or a risk of U.N. sanctions, to *not* have them? He draws a Coca-Cola Cherry for me, as I had not seen it as a fountain drink in an age. I confide that I have a bag of licorice honey drops in my pocket. He assures me he won't tell. I tell him--"You are a very silly young man in a way that speaks well of your character."<br /><br />In the theater before the movie starts, I discover I have sat one row up from a delightful local community theater person of my acquaintance. After "Public Enemies" in which I am careful not to rattle the little paper bag the honey drops were in, she and I chat, and she tells me helpful information to pass on to a mutual friend of ours.<br /><br />Living amid such people as these...austen cornellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15236500325645256548noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4806248761657643276.post-71773470053755285402009-07-27T17:06:00.000-07:002009-07-30T16:54:07.464-07:00What Is It About Cities?So the beloved and I were downtown recently, noting parts of the landscape that he recognized from playing Grand Theft Auto San Andreas. This was a hoot--how our respective interactions with creative works informed how we met the built environment of Los Angeles.<br /><br />What a marvelous thing is a city! It is among my favorite things humans have created. Having grown up in a suburb myself, where everyone was adamant about both their Christianity and their fear of Chicago, I found the talk about the City of God in Revelations pretty hilarious. When earth becomes Heaven, it will be in the guise of a "highly dangerous" human creation, dangerous by its very design? I don't think that street paved with gold and filled with the glory of the Lord(?) will be at all "mean." I do quite like the idea that Heaven--in being Heaven exactly--will still be somehow "dangerous." (And what would that mean at that point?) I also think something vast and subtle is being expressed poetically and theologically by this big bad decadent city of Los Angeles--Weirdass Storyteller to the World--having been named originally for the Mother of God, a mention of St Francis of Assisi and yes, obviously, the Angels.<br /><br />(My Spanish and my memory are not good enough to call up the original name for L.A., but as I recall, it translates as something along the lines of "The City of Our Lady of the Angels of That Little Garden That St Francis Liked So Well." Consult a wiser head than mine.)<br /><br />To you who are better poets and theologians than myself--tell me your thoughts on this.austen cornellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15236500325645256548noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4806248761657643276.post-40903245483927788712009-07-27T16:53:00.000-07:002009-07-27T17:06:28.466-07:00Return to Lincoln NebraskaI had not been back in many years. The whole location and the years I had spent there hung in my memory as though sealed in a glass ball. Everyone I had known had died or moved away. And yet the streets were full of beneficent ghosts as I walked along all the sidewalks that had been so familiar at one time. The things we remember without trying , that texture and shape of what life once was.<br /><br />I suppose Lincoln was the first place I was an adult on my own. I arrived broken down and half mad with sorrow. And then I got better. The wind, the cold and the heat, the great enduring kindness and honor of the people, all those lengths of pavement I walked all over. I did not keep a car all the years I lived there. The houses back then usually had sapphire blue "tar paper" roofing that did my heart good to see. I first read Willa Cather and she seemed like a wise kind prairie woman, like the ones I've met, but who was saying things I needed to hear and could not yet understand. During this recent trip I bought used copies of her books and read them as I wandered about the city we both had known and it was like conversation across time.<br /><br />Some of this may be an imaginative leap, some may just be the eternal glowing NOW in which we find all manner of stuff connecting. I don't know.austen cornellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15236500325645256548noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4806248761657643276.post-38224523896803064202009-07-21T17:00:00.000-07:002009-07-21T17:00:00.320-07:00Aquarium of the PacificThe beloved and I visited earlier this month, and you should go too if you can at all swing it. We stayed all day and looked at everything at least once, and actually enjoyed the children screaming with excitement. They screamed so honestly, it did my heart good to hear them, and usually I'm in the W.C.Fields camp about children. It was also merry fun to watch the creatures in the exhibits watch the humans. On a previous visit to the Aquarium, I watched an entire family of four hop around trying to encourage a cuttlefish to change color. The cuttlefish hung there, seemingly fascinated. I think another cuttlefish joined the first and watched too. When I finally turned away, I found myself nose to nose with a small shark who had been watching me.<br /><br />There were sharks and jellyfish and sea dragons--leafy and spiny--and sea bass and otters and sea lions and sorts of everything else, but this trip I especially enjoyed the rays. At an exploration booth we were examining sharkskin, and various shark teeth (including a model of megalodon's hand sized tooth--I love those) and I was abruptly fascinated by the ray's lower jaw, its teeth arranged like a sample of tile for crushing and grinding. Later we watched the big ones eating with those flat teeth. The pattern of the ray's lower jaw teeth looked like something I remembered from a dream, and has stayed with me since.<br /><br />The booth was run by a volunteer, who of course knew everything and found all of it intensely fascinating and was delighted to tell anyone about it. Man, I am here to tell you, you want to find out about something or need help in a strange place--if you can find someone who is volunteering there, you will be in the best hands possible. Remember this the next time you are stranded in an airport with troubles. Traveller's Aide folks will take care of you. So I'm chatting with this very cool woman, and she says,<br /><br />"I'll tell you, the very best stress relief in the world is to spend a few minutes at the ray pool, petting the rays. They're just like puppy dogs of the sea. I stop by and visit, and I don't have any more troubles."<br /><br />Well we discovered she was correct. At one pool, the bat rays in particular fairly hopped out of the water at my beloved in particular. The delight of the surprise, every time it happened, also did my heart good. In a different setting the bat rays would look like devilish creatures, but here they were utterly adorable. Puppies, water, but with no inconveniences of wet dog, yeah. Just coat the whole experience with chocolate and that would be perfect stress relief.<br /><br />It must be really cool to be an Aquarium volunteer.austen cornellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15236500325645256548noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4806248761657643276.post-66790159752397522762009-07-21T15:36:00.000-07:002009-07-21T15:36:00.482-07:00Live PerformanceSo last month the beloved and I went to the show at the club I have written of previously, and were uproariously entertained. Okay, this is why just about any live performance is worth turning out for, over seeing things on television--it is a real thing happening to you when you are there, and plenty of things are much more entertaining when you see them live. I was utterly thrilled to watch a very skilled gentleman balance a wheelbarrow on his chin. See that on television--okay it is kinda kooky. It is much easier to be present in your own life if you go look at actual things.<br /><br />I understand--everyone is tired and stressed and overwrought by just getting from one end of the day to the other. But even the effort involved in getting out to a real entertainment is part of being present in one's own life. Television watching can be fun, but sometimes at least, doing so takes as much as it gives. Or more.austen cornellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15236500325645256548noreply@blogger.com0