hangin' around

I've been suffering back pain for about three months--I've had back issues off and on in the past, but nothing like this. I got so desperate that I bought an inversion table, which arrived today. I spent 20 minutes hanging upside-down and I feel like a new man. My eyeballs almost burst when I went full Monty for the first time, but I adjusted quickly.

Note to self: don't go to the Mughal Garden buffet before inverting.

After 3.5 weeks off the stress of last year is finally starting to fade. Now the stress of the upcoming school year builds slowly. Live in the moment.

#42

I'd not read Roth in some time, and found at Deadalus for a good price the Library of America volume entitled Zuckerman Bound. Ghost Writer is the first novel in the volume, though it is actually a novella.

An easy way to hook me into a story is to mimic in style and tone and theme the late short stories of Henry James. Roth does so here, and even uses a common James situation: the young admirer of a great artist manages a meeting with his hero and learns hard lessons about sacrifice and gift.

Nathan Zuckerman is 23 and eager to launch his career. Already after having published a handful of short fiction he has been talked up by The Saturday Evening Post. One of his literary heroes is a Mr. Lonoff, and Zuckerman lands the opportunity to meet Lonoff at the master's home, where he witnesses the traumatic effects of a life dedicated to Art. Zuckerman himself is beginning to feel these effects, when he writes a short story about an event in his family and discovers that portraying his family members as they are in real life opens him to charges of stereotyping Jews and anti-Semitism from his father and his father's associates.

Of course this novel is by Roth, so despite its Jamesian pretentions there is masturbation. And yet it is a short masterpiece worthy of its pretentions.

#41

Reading Dreams From My Father re-affirmed my instincts about Barack Obama: that he's a profound thinker, a remarkably compassionate person, and an idealist who's learned hard lessons about making dreams a reality. I'll add to my list that Obama is a damn fine writer.

The book is not simply autobiographical. Obama asks big questions about race and heritage. He writes wonderful travelogue about his time in Hawaii and Indonesia and Kenya. He moves gracefully from the personal and into the universal, and ties disparate moments of his life together in an elegant narrative. Nothing here made me doubt that Obama would be the least manipulative and most intellectually capable person to inhabit the Oval Office in a long time. I doubt George Bush could read a book like this without a dictionary, let alone write one.

But I do have questions. Compassion and profound thinking are gifts to a point; they can also be earmarks of an ineffective leader. Obama is caving on FISA and his statements about Iraq suddenly evince Clintonesque parsing. I know he's meeting with her donors this week, and the reality of two-party politics of course forces him to at least outwardly toe the party line and make distasteful gestures of compromise to please the big corporate donors and the various competing centrist and conservative groups under the Democratic umbrella. Lefties like me who project their hopes on him will have to be patient. Only time will prove us wise or foolish in our choice. Is he doing what he has to in order to win, planning eventually to live up to his ideals? Or is he a mere politician, a moral chameleon who will change his ideals to get power?

Nothing in this fine book gives me pause about my choice to back Barack. I'm in fact more willing after reading this to cut him slack when he does things I think are wrong or bone-headed. Some slack.

I wore my B'more for Obama shirt Saturday while doing errands. An African American gentleman gave me a 'fist-bump for recycling' as we emptied our bins in the single-stream containers at the Sisson Ave center. "I'm angry about the telecom phone waffling," he said. "But I'm counting on Obama to be one of us working on the inside. Sometimes he'll have to compromise in ways that piss us off, and I think we're seeing that now." I told him about the book and recommended he read it as we stood ankle-deep in tuna cans and wine bottles. I told him the book made me hopeful for the first time in a while about the state of our politics. "Michelle will keep his ass in line," the man said as he returned to his idling red convertable Beemer.

The same shirt got me glares as I dropped off a clothing donation at the Anarchist-run 2640 Space. I recognized some Greens there as well. Can Obama pull other disillusioned third-party dabblers and activists together? Can he do what he did in the Chicago slums on a national scale? Can he beat an aging, inarticulate war hero whose policy stances are to the right of Barry Goldwater?

It's a fun time to be alive.

netflixed

This quiet little gem turned me into a squirming basketcase. I won't say more because it's a hard film not to spoil in some way. Very clever and almost intolerably tense.

The first batch of shirts

Just as the shirts become available, I find myself unable to drum up the enthusiasm to wear one. And folks wonder why I abandonded the Democrats to support 3rd party politicians for so long?

I was laboring under the misapprehnsion that Obama would be better than Clinton on corporate accountability. Hmmmm.

The shirts are ready to go. Colors available: black, blue, brown. American Apparel 100% organic tees made in the USA.

netflixed

Some of the "edgy" Cockney/Irish tough hitman thrillers bore me; In Bruges never did. It strays a bit too close at times to smart-alecky Sexy Beast territory, but on the whole I found it quite enjoyable. Bruges is one of my favorite places on Earth, and the town and its art are used here to grand and clever effect.

Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, and Ralph Fiennes are excellent. As is Jordan Prentice.

Coming Soon

Move Like Seamus plays Mick O'Shea's July 11th and 12th. Start time: somewhere around 9:30. Cost: somewhere around $3. Outcome: something akin to rocking.

Time to start rehearsing again.

#40

For years I've been working through Manly P. Hall's Secret Teachings of all the Ages. I found Lectures on Ancient Philosophy much less rough going, and now have my feet of clay more firmly planted on the appropriate Path.

I can say no more lest the unprepared gather truths beyond their capacity. Silentium, after all, est aureum.