#47

I first encountered Anne Tyler in 1991. I was a senior in college, taking an elective course called Popular Literature with Dr. Gerald Siegel. That was an excellent class. We read In Cold Blood, I, Robot, and Gone With the Wind. I recall vividly a really bad unintentional pun from Mitchell's lengthy novel, something along the lines of:

When life hands me a bowl of lemons, I make a meringue, Scarlett said tartly.

Dr. Siegel read that aloud as part of a longer passage, and then the pun struck him, he sniggered, said "Oh, God," and the class fell apart. Strange that I remember such a thing so clearly, 16 years later. Strange that after taking dozens of literature classes at four universities I can still remember the syllabi of most.

I also remember Tyler's Breathing Lessons rather clearly, and I'm a notorious forgetter of novels. A sort of clueless grandmother who likes the Grateful Dead features prominently. There's some confrontation at a family planning clinic. Whatever! I liked the book enough to buy The Accidental Tourist after that semester, but didn't read it until now.

Tyler has a great comic touch; she creates warm, familiar characters, and her books are light without being insipid. At least that's true of the two I've read. Macon Leary appealed to me because I've got some things in common with him, things I despise and try to change. His manner of changing--however fictional--done me good.

It's also fun to read novels featuring locales like York Road, Towson, Timonium, Lexington Market, and waitresses who call patrons "hon." I remember Anne Tyler shopping at the Towson Borders from time to time. She was very gracious, very humble (unlike some Baltimore-based novelists). One time we had dozens of copies of five or six of her novels in hardback as remainders. She signed them all and we stacked them around the Info Desk with Signed by the Author stickers and they sold like hotcakes.

Touchy Feely

I manage to avoid much of the Liberry silliness because of my HVAC equipment room 'office' and second-shift schedule, but since I've been here two years without going to many gatherings I decided to attend the Employee Appreciation Luncheon today.

Ugh.

The food was great (whichever Aunties made the bean salad, the couscous with chick peas, and the feta spinach salad--yum!); there was pleasant chit-chat; there was coffee; there was some old dude retiring...and then a motivational speaker took over.

Appalling.

He read bad poems. About ripples in ponds and butterflies causing hurricanes. Then he made us close our eyes, and while playing some dentist's office soundtrack (perhaps Acoustic Alchemy?) he tapped people on the shoulder, who in turn had to stand and roam around touching people who "gave their all" or "made [them] laugh" or "shared a secret" or "was trustworthy."

I don't hold truck with this sort of tepid feel-good activity at all. I don't want people randomly poking me on the shoulder or patting me on the head, co-workers or no. A couple times I peeped with my head down to look at the feet of whoever was touching me. Half the time it was the mutherfucker giving the presentation. I don't need your pity pokes, Mr. Man. Someone touched me at 'is a leader' and I snorted contemptuously. Mostly I practiced zazen and imagined perverse variations of the touching options: touch someone who gives you a major wood; touch someone who smells like onion; touch someone so old they're growing mold, etc. Then my turn to touch people came and I touched everyone within reach at every opportunity.

There were some Aunties who actually started crying at the end.

Meese is the Word

Ed Meese of all people is speaking here at Towson University tomorrow evening. Unfortunately I'm scheduled to work--nothing would be more pleasurable than showing up to ask him a pointed question or two.

Funny how awful I thought things were under Reagan, and how I couldn't imagine a worse, more corrupt regime. Those days seem rather quaint now. Hopefully 20 years down the road I'm not thinking: "Wow, I remember thinking George W. Bush was awful, but these jerks in power today are truly terrible."

In the Pink

So I'm doing laundry Friday night and I notice as I'm pulling clothing out of the dryer that everything is kind of pink. Five pair of pants, two pair of shorts, several shirts--all have streaks of pink. There's no shred of red clothing in the load, and I'm a bit flumoxed to have ruined a couple hundred bucks' worth of laundry mysteriously.

Then I notice there are angry blood-red splashes like Freddy Kreuger cut open the dryer door. Upon closer inspection I see that the interior drum of the dryer is also dark red. Puzzled, I look around the basement and see a long table set up with a bowl of red dye and a sheet of streaked plastic with brushes...

"Cha!" I yell. "What did you do to the dryer?"

She dyed costumes for the student performers at her work fundraiser, then threw them still dripping into the dryer. My wife doesn't believe in allowing the dye to set, washing the costumes after, running the washer while empty to rinse the dye out of the machine, washing the costumes again before drying. She simply throws just-dyed clothes into the dryer. Of course the students were amazing, their costumes were lovely, and the entire stage production at Center Stage went off without a hitch, including a great job by Marc Steiner as MC. That's what's so wonderful about Cha--she can stage manage an enormously complicated event and pull it off without a hitch, and then ruin my laundry.

Of course she was so upset she woke up early Saturday and bought me clothes.

Thanks Guys

One expects that Brazil will beat most anybody, so I didn't actually think Ghana would pull off an upset today. Still, I really wanted Ghana to win, but they simply proved yet again that a team can seriously outplay Brazil and lose. Brazil looked sluggish, were selfish with the ball, and outside of a miserable defensive collapse due to opening jitters (allowing Bill-Buckner-hobbling unfit Ronaldo to score his 15th WC goal), Ghana played a truly masterful match. I thank them for the Cinderella run which gave me no end of joy.

Brazil has too much firepower, too many players with exquisite skill around the box. They coast through matches, but are deadly on quick counterattacks and always exploit defensive failures. Had Adriano been called offsides instead of getting Brazil's second goal the outcome might have been different.

I don't think Brazil can beat Spain playing as they have been, and they'll likely have trouble scoring on France, who until recently were themselves incapable of finding the net. But somehow they find a way to win. Looking forward to this afternoon--I like both teams.

Ouch

Three days spent moving the in-laws' shite. Three huge truckloads of junk loaded and unloaded. Today roped BroJ into helping out. We killed ourselves with that fucking piano. Couldn't get the truck up to the house because of yesterday's 10 inches of rain. Got the truck stuck in the fucking muck and took 45 minutes to get it out. Moved furniture out of the house across a muddy field to the truck, including the damnable piano, which we rolled along on various pieces of scrap lumber until we got fed up and hefted that shit and baby-walked it over to the slick aluminum ramp up to the truck bed. I composed a Symphony for Hernia and Sciatica once we got it into the truck, using themes from Schoenberg. Now I understand why there are such beings as piano movers. They must be superhuman muthafuckas.

Arrived at the Liberry at 5pm, bleeding from my bashed fingers and badly barked shin, hunched with aching back and limbs. Too old for such labor, and don't know how Cha's parents, both well into their seventies, can handle it at all. I was literally spent after emptying the truck this afternoon, which we finished at 4:15. Glad to find a lot of Inter-Library Loan to do this evening to top off my day.

There's still more shite at the old house. Cha and The Nameless are up there trying to move a fridge and some desks and a few dozen remaining boxes and small pieces. God bless and keep them and their backs. We still have to move some dressers upstairs at the new place. BroJ and I got them in the house and left them in the living room. Couldn't face wrestling another bit of furniture up that narrow stair. On my last trek up I was carrying three stacked drawers full of undies and I got to the second step from the top and almost keeled over--just couldn't get my legs to continue moving. I had to put down the drawers and take a break right there on the stairs.

Netflix

I'd seen all the Bergmans available at Netflix as of six months ago, and began going through an Existentialist withdrawal. What better fix than Persona, with the most ethically challenged psychiatric nurse in cinematic history? Bibi and Liv stride around rocky Scandinavian coastline in gorgeous black and white, Ingmar drops disturbing avant-garde camera tricks and montage bits into the mix, and no one lives happier ever after. Absolutely shattering, even on a third viewing.

Uncanny

It never fails--whenever we move or help someone move it rains like a muthafucka. Today we spent about eight hours loading the mother-in-law's stuff into a 15-foot truck while torrential downpours soaked us. Tomorrow Cha is going to try to dispose of most of it at a flea market. Failing that, the Salvation Army will get a load. Although we don't settle on the new house until next week, we've been granted permission to move in now, and should be done Monday. Then the in-laws will be right across the alley.

They've been in their house 20 years, and have accumulated an enormous stash of trash. I swear to God I'm getting the 800-Get-Junk guys into our house ASAP so when I'm in my 70s I don't have piles of useless shit stacked all over the place. Cha kept screaming at her mom about all the junk and how she should just get rid of it, which struck me as terribly ironic. "Heal thyself," I told her, which earned me a punch in the kidney. At least she cleaned up her godawful mess in the basement--she roped poor Virginia Monologues into helping.

Cha's dad is acting like a prick again, and after telling everyone he was pleased with the new house has decided to obstruct it. "I'm not living there," he says. "I will go to the Philippines."