Million-Dollar Baby Saturday, August 23, 2003

Junior's here! He graced my friends in Astoria yesterday (I think) and looks cute as anything. No name yet, but whoever he is, lots of luck and love to him. Can't wait to meet him.

An interesting concert last night, good chats and some good music, but let's leave today's writing for the little guy.

@ 10:10:00 AM, ,

World Keeps Turning Friday, August 22, 2003

Meanwhile, a Steely Dan concert tonight, while my wife learns how to speak to the deaf (which sometimes includes her husband) and my friends in Queens wait for their baby to arrive. Has he already, maybe? No word for a day now...

@ 10:26:00 AM, ,

Sad About Girls

Gals on the iPod this morning. Hearing Kate Bush these days reminds me of a girl from grammar school. Baltic black hair, cropped short, over an Abe Hirschfeld face, all French curves and large liquid eyes. I remember her smiling a lot and being spunky, almost Boopish. Definitely an "it" girl, the object of many inopportune priapisms, and much crude speculation. I used to pass her house, gaze up at the frosted bathroom window on the second floor, and hope she was showering: as if she could send out "naked" vibes, as powerful as neutrinos, to oscillate down to my receptive pelvis. The guys who had been left back once or twice had much more vivid imaginings.

A few years ago, she ran into somebody I knew, who related that she was a wreck. She'd gotten married, and gotten old in a hurry. No different than anybody else who turns thirty; no different than me. But just knowing that bit of grace had flown away...it was worth a sigh, even if I made a joke instead.

That's how I feel about Kate. The songs just don't work anymore, and it makes me sad that they don't. I poured a lot of energy into caring about her music, and buying into the image that went with it. (And, yes, having a crush on her.) Hearing the lyrics creak, hearing her voice sound shrill and squeaky, hearing the music sound just as blitzy and dated as Flock of Seagulls...it makes me sad. There are still standout songs, but for the most part, the trust is gone. For a while, I've been kicking around the idea that what makes you passionate about an artist isn't the work itself but some spirit that you accept without reservation. In other words, you trust that artist to relate to you the same way you'd trust a spouse or a buddy. You're sharing the creative moment with that person, and you have full confidence that he or she is going to deliver his or her part of the bargain.

If that trust is violated -- a spiky album, a stridently political short story, a $50 million sellout action movie -- you take it personally. It's not the same as, say, my screwing up a story at the office and having to make swift, hot-faced fixes on deadline. Somebody you let into your heart has betrayed you. And what's worse than that?

On the other hand, there's Rosanne Cash, who never got into my heart but I desperately want to have in there. She lost me before she sang a single note, onstage at St. Ann's Church in Brooklyn Heights, when they used to do edifying folk-rock shows there. She came on in a flapping denim shirt and black stretch pants, with short, spiky hair; she talked about her Chelsea apartment and her fabulous friends. I thought: This is the daughter of royalty. She's got "Ring of Fire" and "I Walk the Line" in her blood. And she's turned into just another New York ditz.

More to say about her, but there's work to do, and I've just discovered I may have to come in on Sunday. That's a signpost, all right: Dead End.

@ 10:18:00 AM, ,

Double Shift Thursday, August 21, 2003

A corner office, east along one axis and south on the other. So one set of windows looks out on the Trade Center site -- currently somewhere between a Leakey excavation and a moon base -- and the other stares down West Street, across the harbor to Governor's Island, then the tireless spine of the Verrazano Bridge. An indentation in the building gives us another window, looking west: a Dixie Cup's worth of Hudson and the thuggish waterfront of Jersey City. Past that, dear old Bayonne, where my baby waits for me.

A very human day, lots of sympathy, lots of small comforts. A good friend had a birthday, there were unrelated chocolates and cookies on the desk, and I had a crisp little story to edit and some interesting things to look over as final reader. (The regular one's on vacation, hence the night shift.) Most days, that kind of simple friendly spirit is tough to come by. What would it take to have it there constantly? ("To improve the quality of the day--that is the highest of arts." --Henry David Thoreau)

Signposts! Signposts!

Leaving soon.

@ 8:10:00 PM, ,

Battered Old Bird

Nondescript morning. Slept a little later, lingered over e-mail, had a bracing conversation with a couple of the other editors. Nasty, slanderous, heart-lifting.

On the way in, Mr. Waugh offered a signpost:

It was All Soul's Day. Guy walked to church to pray for his brothers' souls--for Ivo especially; Gervase seemed far off that year, in Paradise perhaps, in the company of other good soldiers. Mr. Goodall was there, popping in and down and up and out and in again assiduously, releasing toties quoties soul after soul from Purgatory.

"Twenty-eight so far," he said. "I always try and do fifty."

The wings of the ransomed beat all about Mr. Goodall, but as guy left church he was alone in the comfortless wind.

It's impossible for writing to get better than that--warmer, more human, closer to the divine. Must approach that somehow. Maybe not with the current Secret Thing, but there will be others eventually.

Speaking of which, I wanted to send a complicated backhanded message to a friend who for discretion's sake I won't name but who sent me a couple of notes yesterday: one a compliment, the other full of questions. I tried to answer them but came up short, I think. I'll leave him, and you and me, with a line I heard on the iPod this morning:

Well here's a boy if ever there was
Who's going to do big things
That's what they all say and that's how the trouble begins
I've seen them rise and fall
Been through their big deals and smalls
He'd better have a dream that goes beyond four walls

If I ever knew a guy who fit the first two lines--without sarcasm or irony--it's my buddy; and if there were better advice than the last line, I can't think of it.

@ 9:45:00 AM, ,

Ringo Chung Wednesday, August 20, 2003

A nifty day, full of friends. One, a soon-to-be dad, checked in: No news on the bundle, work a hassle, got me a book out of the goodness of his heart. Another commiserated about the fever swamp that my head has become on the average day. Her husband offered to lend another shoulder. Yet another had kind words about the Secret Thing and bought in a tray of Gristede's chocolates besides. On the table (next to the chocolates) is a fine story that's been as clever and challenging as a crossword puzzle, instead of the open-heart jobs I've been pulling the past few days. More friends tonight, plus I get to take the train twice, which means an extended visit with Guy Crouchback in Evelyn Waugh's blitzy Britain.

If there's a downside, it's that I'm going to end up seeing my wife for about ten minutes tonight, and tomorrow I'm pulling a double shift. No time for her, no time for the Secret Thing, even if it's stalking sharklike under the surface of my thoughts. Some good ideas today while walking the track of the damned. Just need some quiet time to get them in order. In other words: Even less time with my wife! O cursed spite. Maybe I need to be a stay-at-home dad. Can I do that if we don't have kids?

The title of this post is a name I heard today; one of the all-time greats. Hear it, and despair.

@ 3:04:00 PM, ,

Light Rail With the Fringe on the Top

Woke without anger, shaved without lather, said goodbye to my lovely drowsy wife. Did my paces in light humidity and a crisp breeze off Newark Bay. Even the freighters were bright in the sunrise: white as fenceposts up top, sandy brown at the waterline.

Nothing startling on the iPod. It keeps cycling through the same artists and songs over and over. Maybe it's trying to work through some infelicitous karma. On the light rail I settled down to Mr. Waugh, volume two of "Sword of Honour." Treated to, and shamed by, the opening paragraph:

The sky over London was glorious, ochre and madder, as though a dozen tropic suns were simultaneously setting round the horizon; everywhere the searchlights clustered and hovered, then swept apart; here and there pitchy clouds drifted and billowed; now and then a huge flash momentarily froze the serene fireside glow. Everywhere the shells sparkled like Christmas baubles.

This, with a recurring character sitting to my left: a tall, broad man with drugstore sunglasses and ungodly hair--black as his glasses, thick as a dictionary and rigid as Gibraltar. He appears to wearing Phil Spector's scalp. With him always is an older woman who walks with crutches attached to her forearms. She's built low to the ground, and normally proportioned, but with two enormous bulges on her hips, as though she's wearing saddlebags under her sweatpants.

Usually they sit together. Phil Spector gives the impression of being her protector or at least valet. He rushes ahead to find them seats together, then stands first and clears the way for her when they de-train. Where do they go? What do they do for a living? I imagine them spending hours on line at government offices for a check or arguing some endless lawsuit.

This is what I've learned from Mr. Waugh: In satire, nobody's right. The person who's right is inevitably offstage or in another world--the reasonable man, the model man, the sensible man, the (ahem) religious man. ("The most important man on Earth is the perfect man who is not there." --G.K. Chesteron)

In other words, if I'm going to snicker at some poor schlubs, I have to snicker at myself too. God knows what they think of me; after all, they see me every day and probably have made some snap judgments. Always alone; mumbling to himself; scowling into a book; playing with headphones that may or may not be connected to anything. Breathing hard, sweating, Samsonite under his eyes... Who the hell would hire him? Maybe he spent his life locked in a basement, or looking after some crazy old mother, who just croaked; so now he's wandering the streets. Or maybe he escaped from somewhere. Jumped ship in the Bay, some white slaver out of the Azores...

Should I wear a suit every day? I'm open to suggestions.

@ 9:55:00 AM, ,

Censoring Your Blog Already? Tuesday, August 19, 2003

One of the disquieting things I've noticed over the past few months is that I talk to myself. Nothing of note, just little place-holder phrases, stuff I can chew like gum to keep my jaw working (and damp my appetite for real conversation). For example, I just mumbled "and damp my appetite" for absolutely no reason.

Aside from everybody thinking I'm nuts, the biggest effect of this is to make me realize just what's kicking around my head at odd moments. Mostly I find myself saying stuff like "bored" or "tired" or "gotta go home." (When I'm struggling with a headline, for some reason I find myself saying, "OK OK OK OK, sci-fi, sci-fi, sci-fi..."--like I'm betting on a cockfight, or calling out a square dance.)

My two-cent Viennese take on this: Over the course of the day I go into micro-funks (my favorite superhero team from the 1970s) and let off steam by bitching to myself. But by putting the feelings into words, I also make them more real, which turns the funks into fugues, and before you know it I'm standing on the ferry landing wondering how I got there and when the real rain's gonna come.

All this comes back to the title of this post, posed to me by a different good buddy moments ago. I can't use this blog to "talk to myself"--a mistake I made today and hopefully have corrected with some nimble deletions. Even if I were sure nobody from the office would see my posts and try to decode them, it's not good for me to vent and bitch just for the sake of doing it. Life's too short, and the spirit is spread too thin already.

In happier news, I should be finishing up "Men at Arms" on the ride home today. How come that never made it to Masterpiece Theater? Or maybe it did....

@ 4:35:00 PM, ,

On Further Reflection...

I deleted outright most of my posts from today. Too risky. The good stuff can be condensed as:

We've got power, everybody's alive, babies are due shortly (another friend's Secret Thing), and the deli across the street from my office has regular V-8 again, not the kind with the lemon in it, which has an aftertaste like a 9-volt battery.

And I wish I were Frank Sinatra. Got it?

@ 3:29:00 PM, ,

Hush-Hush

A good buddy points out that I should be careful about what I say online. I thought I was being discreet, but in retrospect I should be even more careful. So I've edited a bunch of previous posts, for the most part negative stuff. There wasn't anything really juicy in there; nobody's name was mentioned, but the players were easy to figure out if you looked carefully enough, and the tone was probably a little too salty for comfort. I'll let the cheerier stuff stand, however: It doesn't cast anybody in a bad light, and doesn't spill any state secrets.

I still wish I were Frank Sinatra. So I'll start by making the blog wear a tuxedo.

@ 3:19:00 PM, ,

Mama and Owen and Owen's Friend Larry Monday, August 18, 2003

Success! After a crummy, deadening day I came home to discover the Secret Thing had gotten the nod. I'm going to wait on the details until I feel a little surer about the situation, but this is the best career news I've had since--literally--2000. (At which point there was interest in the ur-Secret Thing. Very few peeps since.)

Need to digest this. More tomorrow I hope.

@ 8:56:00 PM, ,

Hello, Emporium!

September, two weeks early. Cool air moving quickly on a bright day. If I remember right, Sept. 11 was this kind of day. I was sleepwalking that morning too.

Another sign the summer's dying: The editors are back. God knows where they went on vacation; secret tony places. It'll ease the workload a little, but won't solve the larger problems, which I will elide for now.

Meanwhile, ducking work. More later.

@ 12:08:00 PM, ,

Tota Jersey City Divida Est Sunday, August 17, 2003

Golden Oldies today: We went to a Latin mass in Jersey City. Arrived late, but got the gist.

(A signpost on the way over. Listening to the iPod, Grant McLellan sang:

I took a wrong turn
By a burning tree...)

Interesting experience, after thirty years of the English version. Something like seeing the original foreign movie after checking out the Hollywood remake. I had assumed that it would basically be the English mass, but in Latin. Mais no! The structure was entirely different, with the "response" parts taken up by a couple of subsidiary priests and the choir. Entirely different prayers, long silences, incense, bells, lots more kneeling. And the priests all faced away from the crowd, like Miles Davis.

An interesting turnout, too: a couple old-timers but a lot of intense-looking people our age. Some of the women even had shawls on. There's a technical name for them, but I've forgotten what it is.

(Take it, Frankie:
We stood beneath an amber moon
And softly murmured someday soon
We'd kiss...
And clung together
Then...tomorrow was another day
The morning found me miles away
With still a million things to say!)

My wife had a fine time, wants to return. We came in during the one stretch of English in the service: the sermon. (Or is homily? Dunno.) The priest seemed smarter than the average bear; he namechecked C.S. Lewis, did an exegesis on the gospel passage. I even had a signpost moment, missing two steps on the altar when I left communion. It felt like I fell twenty feet before I found my feet on the carpet and marble.

I liked the alien-ness of it, the otherworldliness; it felt more dangerous; the kind of thing you'd want before you put on a suit of armor and went up against the Saracens. Not a "Godspell" kinda service.

On the other hand...I can see why it was revised. There's more to Church than mystery and awe; if I read my theology correctly, there's more to God than mystery and awe, too--there's love and comfort and forgiveness. Saying the Nicene Creed and the Our Father--instead of having it chanted at me by priests and a choir--is a comfort. Sure, the choir believes. Sure, the priest believes. Am I allowed to believe too? How about letting me say it out loud? I even missed the "sign of peace" (democracy gone wild!). Sure, it's goofy, sure it reeks of Beatle Boots and face paint...but I like looking other people in the face during a mass, people I might never meet otherwise, and acknowledging we're all in the same boat. Just for a moment.

Autobiographical interlude: About three years ago, my wife (then astonishing girlfriend) spent a week or so listening to me hemming and hawing about Church. Do I believe, do I wanna go back, etc. She insisted I go to the tiny church around the corner from my apartment in Brooklyn. My response: Next week, next week. Not now. I gotta be ready before I go in--like when I stayed away from my doctor because I thought I should lose more weight first.

But she won the argument, and I went back at once. ("Begin at once, and do your best."--my wife) It was a marvelous church with thoughtful priests; I loved it so much we were married there, at great inconvenience and heartache to all involved; and I kept going there for months after I moved to Bayonne. It took 9/11 to stop me.

The thing that sold me on that church, though, was not the tasteful aesthetics or the literate welcoming homilies. It was the priest, a white-haired Irishman, clapping me on the shoulder as he went down the aisle every week. It was the deacon shaking my hand on the way out. It was hearing wailing babies and seeing the priests excuse them from the pulpit. Who don't love kids?

My literary hero of the moment, Mr. Waugh, was once asked why he, supposedly a Catholic, was such a miserable son of a bitch. He replied: Without Catholicism, I should be scarcely human. Bingo. The Latin mass satisfies my aesthetics like you wouldn't believe; it also plays into my worst elitist impulses. I look to Church to humanize me. Singing "Day by Day" and shaking hands with people who scare me are all part of that process. Listening to a twenty-five-hundred-year-old language and smelling incense isn't, not necessarily.

Don't worry, I'm not going to start nailing up theses and flinging inkwells. I want to go back and be part of an entire mass the next time, and I want to actually see the altar (we showed up late and I insisted on skulking around in the back, right behind a pillar). It'll probably grow on me, and I'll probably see the humanity of it in time. But I'm glad I don't "buy" it right off the bat: Maybe it means I'm not as much of a crotchety old bastid as I thought.

OK, no more religion for a while. It's getting too much even for me. Anybody wanna see "Freddy vs. Jason"?

@ 4:40:00 PM, ,

I am not asbestos!

Allergy attack. Sandbag eyes that won't quite sink. Catching up on other blogs and listening to Frankie.

Doesn't like crap games
With barons or earls
Won't go to Harlem
In ermine and pearls
Won't dish the dirt
With the rest of the girls...

Which then becomes

She'll have no crap games
With sharpies and frauds
And she won't go to Harlem
In Lincolns or Fords
And she won't dish the dirt
With the rest of the broads...

Earlier this evening my wife asked, reasonably, why I kept going to the church across the street if I disliked it so much. I think I've overstated how tedious it is, but my answer came out a little hollow: The presentation doesn't matter; what's important is the two thousand years underneath the floorboards. ("Tradition is the democracy of the dead"--G.K. Chesteron)

Yes, but. Why not find someplace that makes you feel the glory and come home happy? ("When I see the glory/I ain't gotta worry" --Tom Verlaine) Another pallid answer: Well, I do feel the glory, I just don't demonstrate it, necessarily.

Interesting fact: Walker Percy nudged me back, intellectually, anyhow, toward the Church; but his novels are at best ambivalent about actually attending Church. The priests are drunkards or radicals or hopeless; the Catholics are all bad ones. See Doctor Tom Moore, of Love in the Ruins, cited below. Waugh's the same way. He's never a booster for the Church; he presents faith matter-of-factly, when it appears at all. Frankly I think it's better in the satires, where it's implied instead of discussed outright. It overhangs the story and characters; they're in its shadow but they never realize it.

Meanwhile, Frankie's on the Road to Mandalay:

Ship me somewhere east of Suez
Where the best is like the worst
Where there ain't no Ten Commandments
And a cat can raise a thirst...

Rudyard Kipling's sister got that song, based on a famous poem of her brother's, banned throughout the Empire. I suspect he might've liked it.

@ 1:02:00 AM, ,