strange radiation: the pool of radiance archive
Adventures with an unreliable narrator.
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May 31 04: Progress Report
Greetings from the beginning of chapter 18. I’ve been reading William Gibson’s latest, Pattern Recognition, and it’s fabulous: on the train to and from Port Jefferson today, I laughed out loud, I gasped, I found myself talking back to the book. (“Wait, what? No. What? Oh my god.”) Lovely muscular prose, about cities and jetlag, and about marketing and the commodification of cool, and about communication and obsession and the internet. It’s a thriller, it’s a cultural anthropology, it’s a look back at the last twenty years of pop culture and a peering-into-the-void of wherever the hell it is we’re going now. I kept interrupting Paul’s reading (an issue of Harpers that had been sitting on his ‘read me’ pile since December) to read bits aloud.
Now my internal monologue sounds a lot like Gibson and I’m full of manic energy. I want to read more; I want to sit here and write. Both impulses are good.
May 24 04: eeewwwwwww
Sure. What’s the point of public art if not to provide free advertising to one of the world’s biggest corporations? Why use something generic (if clichéd) like a cow when you can use a corporate logo? And c’mon, who doesn’t love Mickey? You love Mickey, too, don’t you? Don’t you?
May 21 04: further discoveries: everyday matters
Found a fabulous weblog today, via BoingBoing, and you need to see it. Everyday Matters is the weblog of Danny Gregory, a diarist and illustrator who lives here in NYC. The entry that I first read was about his favorite pens. And then I found this thing that he’d done for the Times about the F Train, in honor of the subway’s 100th anniversary, and it’s really quite lovely. Plus his drawings—and his writing, actually—make me want to go make something and if that’s not an indicator of the presence of the Muse then I don’t know what is.
If my uncle George kept a weblog, it would (possibly) be like this. It reminds me of him, anyway, which is yet another reason I’ll be coming back. Even if you don’t know my uncle, go forth and read it.
May 17 04: the avenging virgo returns
We just got back from Kroger’s. We had to buy ground beef and chips and suchlike—we’re grilling some burgers for dinner. While selecting our hamburger buns I looked up at the signs posted at regular intervals above the bread racks. They read:
“FRESHNESS”
MATTERS!
Why, why, why do people insist on scattering random quotation marks across their signage? For the love of god, WHY?
Sorry.
postcard from memphis
Tomorrow is Day Eleven of our visit to Memphis, and the day we put Ray in the ground. Kindly Sunday-school friends have dropped off an endless procession of chicken casseroles and spiral-cut hams, and also two Bundt cakes. We have gone out for Chick-Fil-A (which was tasty) and for Corky’s Barbeque (which was heaven). We have repaired broken trellises along the deck and mulched three garden plots. We have navigated twisty mazes of strip malls and subdivisions, all alike. Aunt Sue, bless her, has taught me to knit. I’ve finished Beta 2 of “Slow” (let me know if you’d like to give it a quick read-and-respond). We have watched cardinals and robins and all manner of local songbird stalk across the back lawn, looking for insects, and listened to them sing loudly to the sunrise and the sunset. We have walked the dog, sometimes twice in a day, to try to get something resembling excercise. There have been large doses of Jesus.
Please, please: can we go home now?
May 13 04: goodbye, ray
Paul’s father Ray passed away tonight, at his home and in the company of his wife and sons.
He loved his family and his God.
[Thanks to all of you who have sent your kind wishes over the past few days.]
May 10 04: change in plans
We’re going to be in Memphis until Sunday. Paul’s mom is going to need some help looking after his father, whose health continues to decline.
Anybody who needs to reach us can do so via cell or via e-mail.
May 6 04: sin pantalones
Oh. Tomorrow is No Pants Day. Apparently. Those of you in a position to celebrate, go forth and do so.
props: sensitive light
I discovered a photoblog the other day, via Teresa Nielsen Hayden, who knows a good thing when she sees one: the exquisite Sensitive Light. SL features the photographs of one Sensiti, a 50-something gentleman somewhere in England with a real artist’s eye. For instance, see his shots of a heron from about ten days ago; or the spectacular gallery of photos of colored smoke. Be ready to open your browser windows wide, because the images are large. You’ll be glad you did.
Of additional interest, to me, is that he runs the whole shebang through Movable Type. He gets all kinds of geek points for this. I’d love to see the underlying code, if only to verify how I think he’s doing it.
So, Sensiti: props to you.
May 4 04: paging grant morrison
So the publisher of the Washington Times has announced that when he founds God’s kingdom on Earth all the homos will be ‘eliminated.’ Because, you know, they’re ‘less than animals.’ Oh, and at a recent media event he declared himself the Messiah. We knew that, and apparently it’s not newsworthy or anything. But this bit: does anybody else find this odd? At the abovementioned event, held in the Dirksen Senate Office Building, a group of our elected officials presented him with crowns?
I’m sorry, that can’t be right. Can it?
Have I wandered into the wrong universe by mistake? Perhaps an unpublished issue of The Invisibles?
life going on
Right then. I spent most of the last seven working days doing my civic duty, serving as a juror on a criminal case. (Weapons possession in the fourth degree: guilty. Weapons possession in the third degree: guilty; not guilty; not guilty; not guilty.) If we, the jury, could have sentenced two of the four defendants’ attorneys to being fired into the sun we would have, but that option was never made available to us. Alas. Still, I feel that justice has been served as best as was possible, and I am glad to have been able to help it along. Here’s a little shout-out to the three acquittees: keep your noses clean, gentlemen, and be smarter about how you spend your Saturday nights, and with whom. You may not be so fortunate next time.
Jury duty is good for many non-obvious reasons: you get lots of reading done, for one thing; and you get to wander through Chinatown and Little Italy seeking lunch. Many lovely meals to be found there.
And then today I went back to work. It was one of those days where quarter-to-six settles in at about one-thirty and then stays. By the time the clocks all caught up with the psychic time-zone we could barely keep ourselves from running out into the street with our arms in the air.
We’re going to Memphis this coming weekend. Those of you who can spare a kind thought for Paul’s father Ray, or can encourage those powers who bring comfort to the dying to bestow a little of it upon him, are asked to do so. He’s come home from the hospital, but it’s not an easy time for the Phillipses.
And meanwhile in California a little girl who has just turned one year old has been visiting her grandparents. Happy birthday to my most delicious niece.