Dog-eared 19

I’ve decided to copy my wife's “dog-eared” feature. These posts will contain quotations from books, music, movies, and whatever else I feel like sharing.

Suttree

Suttree went on. A mute and shapeless derelict would stop him with a puffy hand run forth from a cavernous sleeve of an armycoat. Woadscrivened, a paling heart that holds a name half gone in grime. Suttree looked into the ruined eyes where they burned in their tunnels of disaster. The lower face hung in sagging wattles like a great scrotum. Some mumbled word of beggary. To make your heart more desolate.

Cormac McCarthy, Suttree, page 383.

Three Things, After a Long Absence

Can I see some ID?

I bought a pack of cigarettes for my sister a few weeks ago. The girl at the checkout counter, who was just a girl, likely still in her teens, looked at me sideways for a bit longer than is normal for that kind of transaction, so at looked at her back, waiting. She finally scanned the pack and said, “I almost carded you there….” Somewhat flattered and somewhat shocked, I said, in my attempt at charm, “Well, you got it right. It’s been a pretty long time since I was too young to buy cigarettes.” And she quickly replied, as if to immediately shoot down any confusion, “Oh, yeah [clearly meaning: obviously]. But we’re supposed to card anyone who looks under 40.” No longer flattered, and somewhat crushed, I said, “Oh,” looked away, and started to pretend something else had caught my attention as she finished ringing me up.

God damn you, father time.

Carver and Zoë

My immediate family came to visit this weekend. That includes my grandniece Zoë. Zoë and Carver love each other. It’s interesting, as a parent, to see. Carver thinks Zoë could walk on water. If she likes something, he’s almost set on liking it himself. When he sees her, he lights up. And it is just obvious to someone who has spent a huge amount of time around Carver that he thinks about her in a different way than he thinks about anyone else.

I’m not trying to say something ridiculous, like they are bound to get married, or something. First of all, they are first cousins once removed. Second, Carver is two and Zoë is six, they don’t think that way yet and we don’t think about them in that way. And when it comes right down to it, Carver would miss either of his parents more than he’d miss Zoë, but the friendship is special. There’s something about how kids relate to other kids that adults, no matter how fun and cool, just cannot match. And that’s better than fine.

The Road

Anne and I just finished watching The Road. Here are some of my thoughts:

(1) It was a pretty faithful adaptation of the book. With a few minor issues, some of which could be considered major depending on your viewpoint.

(2) Viggo Mortensen is a badass. He is the epitome of hardcore when it comes to acting. I love that dude.

(3) Anne thinks she’d take the route the mother did [SPOILER ALERT], which is to kill herself after the point when things get really bad. I like to think I’d stick it out and follow “the road,” clinging to hope. But who knows what one would do if things got really, really bad.

(4) Anne says she wouldn’t eat our dog. I say, you know, if you’re starving…

(5) Anne and I listened to the audio book of The Road when we took a road trip to South Carolina when Carver was a month old. During the movie Anne and I had a quick conversation about how the story is harder to bear now than it was then, because we have a child. We had a child then, but it was different. I figured that then the reality hadn’t really set in, and/or that it’s harder now because Carver is more of a person, with his own personality, than he was then. Either way it is true, and tells me something about love.

I love my son more than anything. Not to be flip, or silly, or spout some sort of cliché, or whatever, but I didn’t know what love could mean until Carver came along. I love my wife, and my family and dear friends, and have loved past girlfriends, and (particularly with my wife and past girlfriends) at various times I’ve felt I’ve loved them so much that I’d die if something ruined that relationship. But seriously it doesn’t even compare to how I feel about Carver. While it’s hard to think about and accept, I think if anyone I cared about other than my son died I’d be very, very upset, but I think I’d recover eventually. I’ve suffered that kind of loss before, and it’s awful but I can take it. But if something happened to Carver…I seriously, from a very informed perspective, cannot even imagine being able to go on.

And all of this informs my reading/listening/viewing of The Road. And let’s just say that the story is hard to take.

Also: I don’t think I ever fully appreciated what my parents felt about my sisters and me. When I think about how they probably think (or at least thought) about me the way I think about Carver, it makes me wish I were much, much nicer to them.

(6) The story also, I’m somewhat ashamed to admit, makes me think that maybe those survivalist crazies aren’t so crazy. Of course I don’t mean those who think our government is out to get us, or those in the town I grew up in who thought they needed to arm themselves to the teeth during the LA riots because all the brown people from the city were going to storm our fair (literally, in one respect) enclave of privileged racists. But if something horrible happens and you want to protect those that mean more to you than everything else in the world, how frustrating would it be to not have an extra $10 in ammunition when you’re left with two bullets in your revolver?

Dog-eared 18

I’ve decided to copy my wife's “dog-eared” feature. These posts will contain quotations from books, music, movies, and whatever else I feel like sharing.

Wittgenstein’s Mistress

Was it really some other person I was so anxious to discover, when I did all of that looking, or was it only my own solitude that I could not abide?

In either event people continually looking in and out of windows is doubtless not such a ridiculous subject for a book, after all.

Even though Emily Brontë once struck her dog so angrily that she knocked it out, simply because it had gotten onto her bed when she had told it not to get onto her bed, which is the one thing Emily Brontë did that one wishes she hadn’t.

Even if, as I have perhaps said, there are also things Emily Brontë did not do that one wishes she had.

Although which may well be none of one’s business either, it finally occurs to me.

And meantime I would appear to have completely forgotten my russet cat’s name.

David Markson, Wittgenstein’s Mistress, page 134.

Practically every single day at Corinth, for instance, when I did remember to let the cat back in, I said good morning to it.

Good morning, Rembrandt, being exactly how I said it practically every single time.

Russet as a color that one automatically associates with Rembrandt having been the origin of this, naturally.

Even if russet is perhaps not a color.

In any case it is surely not a color that has anything to do with painting, although admittedly it may be a color that has something to do with bedspreads. Or with upholstery.

Although not being a painting a cat can be russet too.

And being russet is apt to be named Rembrandt.

Which in fact no less an authority than Willem de Kooning found to be a perfectly suitable name, on an afternoon when the identical cat happened to climb into his lap.

Perhaps I have not mentioned that my russet cat climbed into Willem de Kooning’s lap.

My russet cat once climbed into Willem de Kooning’s lap.

Page 135.

Dog-eared 17

I’ve decided to copy my wife's “dog-eared” feature. These posts will contain quotations from books, music, movies, and whatever else I feel like sharing.

Morrissey

Morrissey was asked what he thought of t.A.T.u.’s cover of “How Soon is Now?” He said he thought it was magnificent but admitted that he didn’t know much about t.A.T.u.

The interviewer explained, “They’re teenage Russian Lesbians.” To which Morrissey replied, “Well, aren’t we all?”

I do not like t.A.T.u.’s cover.

Note: I cannot believe I didn't already have a "Morrissey" tag.

Sweatpants

The last two years of my life captured in a New Yorker cartoon.

"Look at you! Breaking out the good sweatpants today."

To the extent this was anyone's fault, it was mine.

Dog-eared 16

I’ve decided to copy my wife's “dog-eared” feature. These posts will contain quotations from books, music, movies, and whatever else I feel like sharing.

The Need for Mountains

I climbed out of my father’s pickup at a train stop in Minidoka, Idaho, then I’m getting on a train bound for Chicago and I had never been east of the Rockies, for God’s sake. And when I got to Harvard, something wasn’t right. There was something gnawing at me. And it took me probably three or four weeks to figure out what it was—I couldn’t find the horizon.

Lou Dobbs, What I’ve Learned, Esquire Magazine, February 2010, page 94.

As someone from the west, I know exactly what he’s talking about. Those who were raised around mountains deeply feel their absence when there aren’t any around. At least I do. I’ve talked about this a great deal with many people when discussing some of the things about living in Chicago that are hard for me, and I don’t think anyone from the Midwest truly understands.

Note: Of course I imagine the same is true when easterners talk about how they miss living in a “real city” when they move out west.

Also note: Lou Dobbs is not one of my favorite people, but I liked the quotation so here it is.

Dog-eared 15

I’ve decided to copy my wife's “dog-eared” feature. These posts will contain quotations from books, music, movies, and whatever else I feel like sharing.

Words that Have to Do with Poop

. . . [A] tip for scatologically minded word-lovers: many of the most weirdly cognate and thoroughly obscene, cloacal, and stercoraceous words in the English language appear in unabridged dictionaries between coppice and copse.

From Garner’s Modern American Usage, 3^rd edition, page 204 (the last paragraph in the entry “copse; coppice”).

Yes, I haven’t posted anything in quite some time. I don’t really know why.