Wednesday 10/23/24
I've been sick unfortunately. A couple of mostly lost days. This began on Sunday. Barely did any stairs Monday or Tuesday. Temperature is back down to 96.8 today, which is regular for me. Thumb also looks much better.
I sat by the harbor and read Richard Middleton's "The Ghost Ship." Such a warm and witty work. One of my very favorites.
In Hammer films, you actually see leaves falling. I like to think that they had a leaf guy. The man who got autumn right.
Listened to this podcast in which the genial hosts faulted M.R. James's "The Mezzotint" for not being scary, saying James does everything he can for that to be the case. That is, he has all of these friendly professors grouped together, talking golf, having drinks, enjoying each others' company. Nothing is at stake for them personally, none of them are threatened or menaced.
I don't think a ghost story needs to be scary. Different stories have different aims. For me, "The Mezzotint" is pure pleasure. I enjoy it. You could say that I enjoy its company. It makes a reader feel good. You're among friends. There are dramatic moments, like when Williams says, "He must have got in." That exclamation makes this sound like a sporting affair and Williams is one of the people up in the grandstand watching on, but we are talking the abduction and murder of a child, so there was definitely jeopardy for somebody.
I like how it appears at first that Mr. Britnell, the dealer in prints and engravings, has recommended this particular mezzotint to Mr. Williams--who heads up the art museum at his college--because he knows it's "haunted," as if in this "Get a load of this, you're in a for a spooky treat," kind of way, and that's why the price is higher than it otherwise would be for what Williams says isn't a very good mezzotint. But nope, that's not in we learn at the end--Britnell just thought it was rare.
We're told that people like Williams put all of this stock in Britnell--one of Williams' friends even knows all about him and he doesn't have anything to do with the running of the museum. We know from that that Williams talks about the dealer and his catalogue, and it's a regular occurrence for him to drink some whiskey with his friends in his rooms and show them the new prints that have come in and that he's bought for the school or is thinking of buying. I like this. James is also showing us the often very common disconnect between accepted wisdom--this person is highly capable in their field, for instance--and what something or someone actually is if we actually take the time to look. Because Britnell is just saying stuff for flimsy reasons, at least in this case. This is the stuff that makes James a good writer. As I said a little while ago, he understood people as they are better than most.
Every so often I think about when a friend told me that they can't talk to their kids about Mozart like I could. They were making a point about something that had nothing to do with me. Sometimes people will get insecure and they'll do this form of resume-talking, if you will. They conversationally list their achievements and qualifications as such. My friend was doing this as he cited some activities he does with his kids. I was simply supposed to listen and be reassuring.
But the reason I think about this is because it seems sad to me in that why would anyone choose not to listen to and know about Mozart? You're in this world where that is, and you choose not to leave it alone or act as if it's not there? Obviously I didn't say this. I have nothing in common with anyone or anyone I know. People are different than what I am.
My mom received and read "The Bird" for Kerrin's anniversary on Monday and I think it did some good. She said she was going to read it a thousand more times and described it as a way to live your life and added that it's both unclassifiable and can be called so many different things. I happened to have called her right after she read it and I believe she was crying.
I think about how that story would just break the brains of everyone in publishing, even if I wasn't hated. I can't say "even if I was liked," because these people don't honestly like anyone or anything. But you know what I mean. Someone they wanted to put forward. They have all of these narrow rules and expectations and parameters for what something can be. They don't allow for wonder, for uniqueness, for magic, for what can feel like miracles. There's also no one else who can supply those things.
I haven't mentioned this, but the story is deliberately written like birdsong. Not in a way that makes a point of it, but that's part of the reason why it took so long to write. There are these rising and falling rhythms to birdsong, and it's like that. Human birdsong, if one likes.
Over the weekend I wrote two film pieces and a short story.
Downloading some B.B. King this morning, Duane Allman's Skydog box set, and working on the complete collection of Miles Davis's Columbia albums. Also some Bud Powell, a box set of recordings featuring feedback, Mosaic's Classic Columbia Condon Mob Sessions, a set of Beatles-related novelty songs, The Beauty is a Rare Thing Ornette Coleman box, and La-La Land Records' three-disc box of Dominic Frontiere's soundtracks from The Outer Limits.
It's somewhat surprising that the Dodgers have more Hall of Famers than the Yankees. I believe the two franchises have met eleven times for the World Series since 1941, just running back through my mental records. People are complaining about the match-up because people mostly just want to complain about anything. I can't say that the Guardians against the Padres would have been as compelling from either a "now" standpoint or a historical perspective. You have the two best hitters in the game who are also major stars--one being a cultural star, the other being an even better hitter--so this strikes me as ideal for baseball right now, even if the way in which the game is played--with the preponderance of strikeouts and the obsessive reliance on analytics--is anything but.
I think there's a good chance Jerod Mayo gets fired after this season. The Patriots may not win again this year. But whether they win one game or four games, I doubt you're going to see much in the way of progress, and it's progress that matters right now more than wins. Are we going somewhere better? So, without progress, with fifteen or sixteen losses, players getting arrested, grumbling, the coach ripping his team in press conferences--Mayo called the players soft the other day--and guys not working, and prevailing (or present) dysfunction, my guess is he'd be gone.
He was not ready to be a coach and he certainly wasn't ready to be a coach who has to preside over a major rebuild. There is one positive of late: the quarterback. He's already their best player. What could save Majo is if Maye got hurt. The expectations would be even lower. Then if they lost ever game and weren't competitive because the offense was so bad people would say, "It was Jacoby Brissett, what are you going to do?" The run defense is porous. That's a bad look for Mayo, a defensive guy.
As for Maye--he looks like he can play so far. Raw, but less raw than he was.
Fernando Valenzuela died. Awful. He was quite young. Recently I'd written about what a fun pitcher Luis Tiant was, and Valenzuela was the same way. The year this guy had in 1981 was one of those all-time pitching years, in terms of the impact he had on his team and the game. Orel Hershiser would have that same kind of year in 1988 for the Dodgers. Valenzuela was excellent in 1986, too. He was fun and he was a gamer. Another guy who would perhaps be deemed too unorthodox today. Look at that wind-up. That was one of the classic idiosyncratic deliveries, same as with Warren Spahn or Juan Marichal. This guy was a big star in the 1980s, and in 1981 he was a bit like Shohei Ohtani is now, only there wasn't the internet, of course. If the Dodgers were featured on the game of the week and he was pitching, you were like, "Yes!" The guy threw a screwball! Screwballs have always been cool.
I'm taken aback by how many people repair to social media to air personal grievances with family members, friends, spouses, children. They name them, they use images, they have screenshots. You can tell that they often don't have a conversation with those people about what they say that person has done. (And most of the time they're lying, or, at the very least, distorting everything to fit with what they want their narrative to be.)
I saw someone write this:
"For the third time this year I had a man tell me he 'used me' to deal with some emotional bullshit he's going through and with that I'm done dating."
That obviously did not happen. It didn't happen once, and it certainly didn't happen thrice. What an astounding, astounding coincidence that would be, right? This woman is either lying or sufficiently crazy that she got herself to believe this, or, most likely, both.
Cue all of the people saying "I'm so sorry that happened to you." What have we seen? People will believe anything if they encounter it on the internet. Also, there are many, many, many men who would do or say whatever they need to do or say to get to use their holes. To me, all of the white knights should be taken out behind the shed and put down. Metaphorically. I'm not advocating for actual execution. And if one of these guys had a chance to rape a passed out woman and a guarantee that no one would find out, they'd rape until the proverbial chickens came home. They don't care about anyone or their well-being--they just want holes and they think saying what they say might help them get those holes.
One guy responds by posting the words "The chair" and then supplied a photo of an electric chair. I click on his bio and this is what I get: ACAB forever, Pisces, 6'1, 35, single af, Edge.
People make no attempt to hide their insanity because they're so crazy they have no idea how crazy they are. And let me tell you, he was a looker. Whoever gets him will be one lucky lady.
Saw this from a woman:
"Dear universe: I would like to be a stay-at-home cat mom and full-time writer. Let's make that happen."
How many photos do you think then followed of large, broken people/pretend writers hugging their cats?
I saw this other guy say he's in "a very dark place." He wrote, "I'm lonely and no one wants a childless 45 year old dude for a friend. I have to fake being a normal person for my wife and my students."
No one wants a forty-five-year-old man, but he's married. Okay. I know in every instance that I will see what the real issue is when I click on such a person's profile. Really, any person's profile. The bio will tell the tale of the tape. In this case, I see, first off, pronouns. That's shocking. Then I see, "Gamer, Teacher, Husband, Geek." Can people really put nothing together about themselves? Then he says he grew up loving Star Trek and wishing he had a friend like R2-D2 (yes, I know, different franchises; I didn't write it). That's it--that's the bio. Is it that hard to connect some dots here? And of course it means something that he put "gamer" first.
I don't want people to be miserable. But we all must try harder to live in reality and face reality and try harder with everything. Think more. Face more.
There are many mentions of men who lost a lot of weight then left their girlfriend or wife and people don't understand this. It's very simple: There's hardly any actual love in the world. Actual love requires so much. People get what they can get. They don't want to be alone. That's how and why most people are together. Almost all of it is surface. And availability. True connections of depth are exceedingly rare. Humans don't put themselves in a position to have long-term connections because they require self-awareness and growth in order to develop once those connections are made.
An opening connection is rare enough--a true connection. I think people would be shocked if the universe somehow found a way to statistically reveal what percentage of people do what they do, in terms of relationships, simply because they don't want to be, or can't be, alone. But in order for even an opening connection, there has to be things that are there. If everyone is the same, thinks the same, talks the same, partakes of the same thing, there can be no connections between those people. There's just repetition. Repetition is not connection. Sameness isn't connection. Connection is different. Incidentally, "Fitty" is the ultimate story for all-time of what connection is. There is no purer example or representation of connection. The publishing world won't let you see it right now because the people in that world know that it's so much better than anything produced by the people in that world. The story is more than five-years-old now. That's older than my buddy, Amelia. But you will see it eventually. Depending on when you're reading these pages, perhaps you already have. And you will see exactly what I mean.
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