The Lady Rose and Her Attendants

This is the continuing saga of our visit with Big Pat's dog Rose while he cavorts in Brazil, a big man in a small thong on a bright white beach. Rose (like the kids) is all right. She sleeps a great deal and eats quickly. Pat has Rose on a regimen: She eats at 8 a.m., noon and 5 p.m. She is to be given *slightly less* than one scoop of dry dog food moistened for exactly 20 minutes.

She is to be given no treats and no table scraps, though any tidbit that falls to the floor is fair game for her, assuming we are not inordinately sloppy. She gets five walks a day for the purpose of elimination, though we take her out more often than that because we are both afflicted with "weak bladder," so we empathize.

This visit isn't going to turn us into dog people, but we do appreciate Rose's individual appeal. She is a gallant little thing, given the fact she has epilepsy, and occasionally gets the quivers, and has some back problems, so she can "hardly wiggle" (as E's mom use to say at the end of a hard day).

Rose in a nutshell: quivering but not wiggling, if you want to get technical.

I don't know why this is, but when I take her out in the yard -- she likes being on her leash; it seems to give her security -- we do what needs to be done with dispatch. She sniffs, she eliminates, she totters back toward the house.

But when E. takes her out, Rose is far more adventurous, leading E. down the walk toward the neighbors where The Madness That is Torri the Neighbor's Jack Russell Terrier jitters and yips behind their gate.

E. says it is because E. is easily dominated, but I say it's a simple case

Cover of Thelma & Louise

of Hot Girls Together, just another chapter of Thelma and Louise.

Biking with E. Third Time Out

Shutting Up about Falling Down

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It seems to me that you have a 72-hour window to complain about non-chronic pain that is going to go away, probably in a day or two but certainly in a week for two. I think now is the time for the theater of my distress to "go dark." Just don't ask why I'm wincing a little and mincing a little. When anyone new inquires, I think that starts the clock all over again -- for them.

Anyway, I went to my regular Kaiser doc today, just to check in and to get permission to drive. He was in a rare mood, suggesting the Hayward ER guys were "sissies" for keeping me for six hours because of a fainting spell. Pain can cause a "vasovagal" episode, he said, and loss of blood certainly could. Checking out the purple mural on my thigh (and the domains that there adjacent lie) he guessed I could have dumped a couple pints of blood out into the fat and muscle, so that could have knocked me out, too.

The idea was that if he had been in the Hayward ER, he would have given me an inspirational poem and a pack of prophylactics and sent me on my way.

Now, of course, E. had already measured my thighs, computed comparative cubic volume using some calculus fudges and concluded I had lost three pints of blood as measured in cubic centimeters. As for the rest of it, my doc essentially said I should .... Well, he had no specific recommendations other than never ever riding my bicycle in the rain. That was right out, he said. But I had already figured that part out on my own.

Oh, I also told him I had to miss a departmental meeting today because of my difficulty sitting down and a general malaise (last complaint; no more).

Well, good for you, he said, with feeling.

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When Somewhat Bad is Pretty Good: We Go to the Orson Welles Movie

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Two things: E., BPD and I went to see "Me and Orson Welles" at the Shattuck Cinemas last night.

The nominal star was someone named Zac Efron, who played the male ingenue. I knew he was some kind of teen star but had absolutely no idea why. Anyway, he's plays a kid who bluffs his way into a small role in Welles' 1937 production of Julius Caesar. Without spoiling the plot for you, let me just say that if you conclude that the kid actor is not a very good actor, the plot makes more sense and the resolution is more emotionally satisfying.

However, it seemed to me that Zac Efron is not a very good actor, which is not the same as a good actor playing "bad." But maybe a good actor playing "bad" is too subtle by half and can spoil the fantasy, particularly if the good/bad actor is familiar. Hey, we know you are a good actor! And thus we fail to accept the fiction as it is presented.

Of course, any way this played out was going to be dissonant, I guess, though maybe I was just working too hard. During the movie -- which I enjoyed and recommend -- I kept wondering just where Efron was trying to pitch his performance: Was he trying (and failing) to suggest that the kid was actually a pretty good actor, which would have made the ending rather sad? Or was ...?

I guess the short answer is where is a young Richard Dreyfuss when you need him? The great thing about Richard Dreyfuss is that he always both repulses and attracts, in roles and in person.

E. had no problem with Efron. She "read" his character as pleasant, open-hearted, likeable and -- in the acting scenes -- unformed, good enough in context because in Julius Caesar he has a very small part. In other words, he was just right, not all that interesting but fine in context because the nonstop hugeness of Orson Welles would probably have worn us out.

We all agreed that the guy who played Orson Welles -- Christian McKay? That's what the credits said -- was spectacular, capturing the inner Welles and well beyond imitation, BPD said.

Then we went to the bar at the Shattuck Hotel and had a drink. I can't honestly recommend the bar at the Shattuck hotel because E. wanted a grasshopper, which the bartender did not have the goods to make. We asked him what else he might suggest -- girl drink! girl drink! I kept saying -- and there was a long silence, as if he was stupefied by the question.

I mean, the silence did not end, not until I suggested a glass of port. (I should have thought Cosmo. My bad.)

Either the bartender was a great actor, playing with us as a cruel youth might do to tottering elders, or genuinely didn't have a clue.

The Day After: Rereading this post the day after -- and I do, marveling at the greatness that was Robertson Yesterday -- I realize that I omitted one other possibility for my judgment of Efron relative effectiveness. It could simply be miscasting. Everyone else in the cast has a Thirties New York face -- big features, often eccentric, even Claire Danes who really sometimes does look like a handsome man in drag. But Efron has smooth small pretty boy features. He just doesn't look like a citizen in this particular movie.

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Walking the Labyrinth

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Tonight E. and I accompanied Big Pat Daugherty to "labyrinth Friday" at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco to listen to Karma Moffet play his 24 Tibetan singing bowls, his Tibetan longhorns, handbells, Tingsha Cymbals, conch drums and bone horn trumpet while we walked the labyrinth.

The music was variety in monotony, a pattern of long, low weirdly beautiful harmonic droning, and nothing about it I have the slightest qualification to be able to adequately describe. I will attest to my deep enjoyment of it, shrug and shut up.

The labyrinth is a design on the floor at the base of the cathedral's nave. It's a circle 40 or 50 feet wide containing a passage perhaps a foot wide that bends back on itself again and again and again until it arrives at the center of the design. At that point, it is customary for walkers to turn around and wind back out, negotiating your way past those who are still winding in.

After the music begins, people line up and are released onto the floor by a starter, as the starter might at a Tour de France time trial or a Winter Olympics slalom. As an experienced Buddhist meditation walker, Big Pat was somewhat critical of those walkers who "walked" -- if you get the drift of my quotation marks. They styled, as it were, somewhat self-conscious -- somewhat to very, it seemed.

But E. was indulgent. She said it looked as if people were finding what they needed to find, and if their third eye had drifted off 10 or 15 feet and was staring back in admiration, E. found pleasure in their self-satisfaction.

It's all metaphor, of course -- the idiosyncratic pace, the silence, the contemplation even as you focus on pace and the avoidance of collisions, the act of gracefully sliding by the slow walkers, and, of course, the slow walkers themselves, content to create a bottleneck for those behind them, leaving the decision of what to do in your hands (or feet).

E. and I waited a while to hit the floor, as we would at a dance, perhaps feeling a bit like spiritual wallflowers. But after 45 minutes or so I decided to get out there and get some before it was all gone -- the line certainly wasn't getting any shorter. And then we stood patiently in that line, as one might for a thrill ride at an amusement park, the thrill here being a willingness to dispense with thrills and go ten rounds (hah!) with introspection.

I quickly found my metaphor: balance. I had a very hard time keeping my balance as I walked because E. and I quickly found ourselves bogged down behind a pause-and-stare type, and so we had to pause and stay paused. I was not vexed by this. It was what it was, and, because I was not able to move continuously, the challenge not to totter was great.

I suppose I became what might appear a bit mannered, bending at the knee, making slow and elaborate movements with my arms, just trying to stay steady. Writing this I realize I may have looked quite foolish, but I was aware only of myself and of my concentration. I didn't feel foolish, and I didn't feel interesting. I felt involved. I'm not saying I didn't look foolish to myself, that I escaped self-consciousness -- I'm saying I was involved, not evolved. I say only that I did not assume others were looking or that their judgment mattered if they were.

Then we walked down to North Beach and had an Italian meal at an out-of-the-way restaurant and talked and drank and laughed. It was all the same journey.

Editor's Note: This contemporary business of walking medieval mazes is pretty interesting. If you're interested, I assume you'll Google it, as I did.

Editor's Note to Editor's Note: The blogshark keeps linking or it dies. Here's a very nice description of the Meaning of Labyrinth.

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Is Religion a Male Disease?

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E. just said that, having read in the Financial Times about another attempt on the life of a/the Danish cartoonist who disrespected The Prophet.

(We try to kill people who disrespect The Profit. That's another story.)

One of the reasons it would be nice to be retired would be that I'd have the time to Sit and Read and Come to a Conclusion. Does religion do more harm than good in the conduct of human affairs? I tend to think it does, but I may not be making a judgment on the distortions religion visits on us but on our fundamental distortions as human beings that invent religion as a rationalization.

Perhaps, the fault is not in our gods but in ourselves? On my. Quipping so easily trumps thinking.

What Did Our Guests Put Down the Garbage Disposal?

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Whatever it was, it is now on its way to the sea, nudged along by the nice young man from Abante Plumbing, who took the plumbing course at Laney College and certainly must make Laney proud.

E. thinks it was a gradual buildup, and we shouldn't blame the Boxing Day revelers, but I think Bob yelled, "Cheese it! It's the fuzz!" once too often, and thus the disposal was abused.

Also, the water backed up into the dishwasher, and now it won't work. "Proust's Dishwasher" -- that's the scholarly monograph I want to read.

Went to work with E. As of the 30th she is officially retired, but she wants to get the jobs she's passing off to others in flawless order. In my opinion, that's like polishing eyeglasses for the blind and giving a tuning fork to the deaf, but that's just my opinion of some of the people she works with, who make the people I work with seem like bunnies in Eden.

Which is quite a compliment, since Post-Lapsarian bunnies are quite fetching, so pink and twitchy.

Graded a stack of "big stories." Grades aren't due till next Monday, and we weren't going anywhere, so what's the hurry? Some of the big stories were good, with some good reporting and clever news writing.

This was not a semester during which I thought I did a particularly effective job. But apparently I didn't *ruin* anybody.

The Greatness That is the Robertsons on Boxing Day

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Our Christmas tree this year is the hugest of the huge because E. has spent the last four Christmas holidays in Florida with Moms Landrith, and thus we went treeless since it's a job of work to hang the many lights and ornaments we own. You need time to do it, and you want time to enjoy it.

But Moms died in September so not only were we home together for the first time in several years, we also needed a bit of a morale boost. It's a strange messy unease when a parent dies who is very old -- Moms was 98.5 -- and a drain both financially and emotionally but still sporadically alert, even vital. One is sad, but one is also just a little glad, and one's accountant breathes a sigh of relief.

So I thought this year's tree must be a landmark or at least a hallmark. We hit the lot at East Bay Nursery, and in the first 30 seconds I said, "That one."

That one was a big one, a full 12 feet we later figured out, and thus about a foot too tall for our downstairs study, which is a pretty tall room as you may have noticed in the video from earlier today.

I am quite in awe of our tree, possibly the greatest tree ever but certainly the biggest tree ever because I will measure more accurately in future years. So impressed was I with our tree that I talked E. into scheduling a Boxing Day party -- which would be your December 26th -- so people could see as soon as possible The Greatness That is the Robertsons' Tree.

But after the invitations were sent, I began to wonder if anyone would show the day after Christmas. The day after can be a time of physical and emotional exhaustion since with some frequency Christmas is not what it could be, should be or -- perhaps most vexing --what it was. Even if actually it never was what it was.

However, Yoda I must be, for the party last night very good was it. I felt a special gratitude to those who showed up -- and not all that ungrateful to those who didn't, since we had 30 guests, about as many as our house comfortably holds. And Yoda Squared I unknowingly was because the quantity of food and drink the guests brought you wouldn't believe. That's the prism through which to look at the day after Christmas, a day when the crumbs of abundance overflow, all the stuff you couldn't eat or drink and welcome the opportunity to get out of the house.

A special gracias to Peter and Anita, who brought trays and boxes of leftovers from their traditional holiday feast to which the foodies throng, festooned with booze and tasties. Peter brought the remnants of this Alsatian thing with six (or maybe nine) kinds of pork, including blood sausage.

Also, a bottle of Clos du Val Cabernet Sauvignon 1996 that somebody gave Peter, which Peter said was a "cult favorite" and worth tens and dozens and possibly even hundreds of dollars. I sipped. Sigh. My tongue is as ignorant as ever.

It was fun. It was also apolitical. For years I did not explicitly recognize that all our parties had a political undertone, the politics of the workplace. That is, our party guest list was always larded with coworkers, by definition those from whom you want something or those to whom you pay obeisance or those who for one reason or another should be paying obeisance to you. I knew this without quite knowing it, though I certainly was aware I paid court to various people and resented it when certain people did not pay court to me, particularly years ago when I was an editor at Atlanta magazine, and I did not so much invite as summon Atlanta freelancers to our apartment on Lindbergh Avenue, convenient to several of the many Peachtree roads, boulevards, courts and terraces.

But now I have quit inviting those from whom I want something, and God knows I no longer have anything anybody wants, not the good folks I work with for sure, and we are pleasant but distant, and what's wrong with that?

So at party time we are content with friends, neighbors and acquaintances. It certainly is less urgent, and now I can drink as much as I like.

Now you can? Now?? my wife says.

Hmmm. There are things I still want from her, so let's leave it there.

Knowing the Music, We Did Not Agonize over the Words

WPA poster." Image via Wikipedia

Saturday we spent four hours at our cleaning lady's funeral. Since she was from El Salvador, we had assumed she was Catholic, which would have meant a nice hour-fifteen funeral and then on to a solstice party in the hills. But as it turned out, she was a store-front Evangelical, as more and more Central and South Americans are these days.

As my wife caught on almost at once, we were not so much at a funeral but at a church service wrapped around a funeral, some of the attendees loud, joyful and exuberant, others perhaps a little contemptuous, arms folded on chests.

We were somewhere in between. Candida's brother-in-law Ernesto sat next to us to translate -- for, indeed, not a single word of English was part of the service. But we did not really need translation. We come from Fundy backgrounds (and that does NOT mean we are Canadian), so we knew what was being said, as if we had spent our lives lisping in the pure Castilian.

The preacher was a lady, and darn fiery. That's a positive thing, don't you think? Maybe the Evangelical urge among Hispanics has something to do with the Catholic church's disempowerment of women. I'll have to Google on that topic, which you can do as well as I -- and why should I enforce your curiosity on the topic?

There was only one musical interlude, early on, but it was quite beautiful. A woman with a very strong very pretty voice -- pop quality, even -- sang with the audience joining in when they were inclined. Her song (or songs; it could have been a gospel medley) went on for 15 or 20 minutes, with key phrases repeated again and again. Ernesto translated those key phrases when he wasn't singing along. I don't recall what they were, though I thought I would.

Something about heaven, I think. Many references to "our Savior." Not being able to understand, I was reminded of how the beauty of religion can be divorced from the substance of religion. Paganism is growing ever more popular in the U.K. I heard on NPR yesterday. How nice to have vague, and vaguely comforting, ritual that is unmoored from the exigencies of a personal god.

Anyway, the hours at the funeral went by surprisingly quickly. We were the Star Gringos, I guess. Candida had cleaned for us on and off for seven or eight years, starting when E. had her hand troubles and had trouble gripping things. Candida worked very hard, excessively so -- and thus was a true soul sister of E.

Last spring she quit working quite so hard. Areas of the house were suddenly dusty for the first time in .... well, seven or eight years. We thought about maybe saying something. Then her niece called to tell us Candida was in the hospital, recovering from surgery for stomach cancer.

We visited her in the hospital. She said -- we were pretty sure; conversation between us was always well intentioned but not always crystal clear to either party -- that she would be back cleaning for us in six weeks. We did not think that was likely, E. whispering to me that stomach cancer is not a "sexy" cancer, not one that has been much studied with a less than impressive cure rate.

So we kept paying Candida. It was pretty clear she did the heavy lifting (metaphorically) when it came to supporting her family. We kept paying her until she died.

As a white Southerner, little makes me as uncomfortable as hiring what they euphemistically call "domestic help." Back in Durham, when I was in grad school and E. was teaching, we hired a black woman for a while to do some light cleaning and some ironing. But we couldn't take it. The inherited guilt was too much. We started overpaying her, and as a result we couldn't afford her.

I wrote the preceding sentence intending it to be funny, but it's certainly not making me laugh. But back to Candida. We kept paying her not out of guilt or noblesse oblige. It was just that we liked her, and paying her was a way of saying we thought she would get well, and telling her that and also that we were waiting for her.

If I were a religious man, at this point I would say: "But now she is waiting for us." I'm not, so I won't. Feel free to imagine it on your own. Enjoy my music even if you don't agree with my words.

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E. Gets Witty

I have posted less the last two weeks than in time period since I launched this noble blog with a sprightly tune and cracking a magnum of champagne across my head.

Metaphorically.

I've missed it. It really is a public journal, a useful reminder: 1) that no one gives a damn; 2) that still it's nice to be reminded what I was thinking about at the time as the time recedes; 3) that one reason no one gives a damn is that I'm pretty careful to keep it in my pants, "it" meaning anything really personal and "pants" meaning the world of discourse outside this blog.

So I've missed this exercise in compound-complex sentences. It almost seemed as if I was having an argument with myself, and that we had quit talking.

Talk to me, I was saying to myself.

Not till you apologize, I said back.

So I said: Did I say you look fat in that? That's not what I meant. I don't know what I meant.

And I fell into my own arms, and all was forgiven.

You see? Where other than one's own blog can one goof like that!?

I could, of course, write some interesting shit. This is my second and last year as chair. In a work of fiction, that statement would be a bit of nuance -- if followed by, "Chairs usually serve a term of three years."

Nuance (like ripeness) is all.

Oh I'll write more about this in a code that years from now only I can break.

But wait. The post title is "E. Gets Witty." We were talking about Tiger Woods and his bimbo eruption (a phrase students of the Clinton presidency will recall). E. said two funny things. One was that she was waiting patiently for the announcement that Tiger was going into treatment for sex addiction. Which made me laugh, and which prophecy I do not discount, not yet.

The second was more convoluted. I was saying that I was disappointed in Tiger in a very special and personal way. Let us concede that his desire to wander was overwhelming, irresistible right up to the point of inevitable and predetermined. One is still disappointed in what seems to be an inclination for kind of trashy women.

Look, I told E. He could have had quality women, brainy, accomplished women with exciting careers and hectic schedules, mature women of substance where post-coital pillow talk would have approached the level of a graduate-school seminar.

Look E., I said. He could have had women like you (though not specifically you, I said, you being loyal unto death, like a Roman matron).

Oh, E. said. You mean we would now be talking about Tiger and the Cougars.

At which point I laughed and laughed.

Okay, the code talker says one more thing about "things." Imagine coming into a close game as a relief pitcher. And you get bombed. You take some licks. Really, now the game is lost. But your "manager" wants to save arms, to write this one off, to get ready for the next one. So he asks you to stay out there in the service of a hopeless cause, to take the blows, get slapped around, eat up some innings.

And you do.

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Kitten Countdown is Underway

Less than a year after we were married, E. brought home our first cat conveniently packaged in kitten form . I had told her I wanted a cat, and one of her junior high students was redistributing the family wealth, their cat having gone all supply side: Birth 'em and hope someone will come.

And for 40 years after we had cats or you could say cats had us because we are fiercely loyal cat owners, willing to spend money to keep them alive. But after Oliver died almost a year ago -- died in bed with me, pressed agains my side -- we have been catless.

We concluded E.'s mom might not be with us much longer, and her final illness would mean weeks in Florida and 60-hour weeks at work to enable E. to go to Florida as needed. That wouldn't leave much time for kitten nuturing and kitten bonding, and I wanted E. to be at the center of what will probably be our last great Gathering of the Cats.

And so it was, and so E.'s mom died in September. And now E. is about to retire. It's kitten time, two of them, I think, and their momcat, too, because I have a sentimental bourgeois aversion to kittens saved while mom is euthanized.

January, probably, after the holidays. We preview the moment.

Why I Keep It in the Fairway (And Never Out of Bounds)

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E. thinks that Tiger Woods probably has been slipping around, and after a couple of belts (alcoholic) his wife gave him a couple of belts (clubwise), and the drama spilled out into the yard, which is a phenomenon shared by mansion and trailer park.

E. figures Woods' wife used a nine iron. E. is no golfer, but she understands a driver might have killed him. The point was to punish, maybe a little light maiming, not homicide.

If I go bad, I assume E. will pelt me with doughnuts, an act more contemptuous than injurious unless the missiles are really stale. But I'm not complacent. E. still has a strong arm and a keen eye, and all these years with no reason to exercise them.

Last Sunday's Poetry Salon

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If your prime criterion for a prime poetry salon is remembering such with pleasure, and revisiting that memory more than once, last Sunday's evening in the homespace of Gayle and Richard was indeed primo.

The theme was music. Yours truly -- shyly; urged on by a loving crowd -- read Browning's "A Toccata of Galuppi's." (I am a modest man, but I have to admit I fell in love with myself all over again.) Then Gayle read a poem by some Southern poet, one "Bo" De Lare -- never heard of himself but the rest of the gang nodded knowingly.

Our guestess of honor Tashery flipped the deal. Instead of reading something of her own, she played a recording of a piece of hers that won a Pushcart prize some time ago, the piece read by Edi Gathegi of "Twilight" fame at a Pushcart Press benefit in June. (A very vigorous *sexy* reading -- in the spirit of my Browning.)

First half finished with Paula and Kate, to the background of some jazz licks, doing a contrapuntal improvisatorial reading of Leonard Feather (jazz legend writer) interviewing Dr. Yusuf Lateef (jazz legend jazzer) in which Doc Lateef came off as nutty but fun: Don't call it jazz, he said. Call it Autophysiopsychic music, he said.

Which we did. Several times.

Now all this was wondrous, indeed, but then the Lady E. upped the ante right up to the empyrean. Inspired by worry that we weren't actually going to sing anything during an evening devoted to music she prevailed upon our host to print out some copies of "Amazing Grace." To lead off the second half of the night, she shared some stories, and some tears, about growing up in Africa and hearing the locals sing "Amazing Grace" a Capella in the missionary chapel her father built, and of her mother's recent death and of the part that wonderful old hymn played in her funeral.

There wasn't a dry eye in the house, or in my face anyway. And then we sang it all together.

Hostess Gayle than read an excerpt from her current novel in which the principals attend a macabre musical performance in the catacombs of Paris, a beautifully written bit that left me more than a little uneasy about her heroine's future romantic entanglements.

(Just occurred to me! That was the point! Oh the emotional sinuosity of powerful prose.)

Troubadour Mort stroked his mighty guitar and sang us a Dylan song -- sang it wonderfully -- and then led us in singing "As I Went Down in the River to Pray."

Damn, people. We were *good*.

To preserve the delicate mood, Bobby W. led us in singing scandalous blasphemous parodies of hitherto unsoiled Christmas carols.

Well, of course, once more I was in *tears* but this time not the good kind.

But I have to admit that his parody of "The Little Drummer Boy" with rum-pum-pum-pum replaced by Barack Obama (Barack Obama) has redeemed, nay elevated, the original. And if Bob W. sends me a copy, it will receive its Net debut right here.

All good things must end. Brother Jon read two Dylan poems -- Dylan, the One, not Dylan the Zimmerman -- "Fern Hill" and .... The second was an old man's poem, or Thomas's young-man vision of being an old man, quite an inconvenient state, and *being* an old man, my memory washes it off. (There. All gone.)

Jon read them beautifully, though. It was really quite a special salon, which makes two in a row. I think we shall crank one up here come early February. Needs a theme, though. Suggestions?

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My Life Hung by a Thread

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A sturdy metaphorical cable in the sense that this evening I crossed the Bay Bridge heading into Frisco about ten minutes before the bridge started to fall apart. I was going in the shepherd my reporting lambs through a USF student senate meeting. Them shepherded, I headed home listening to bulletin-averse public radio and thus learned the bridge had been closed down only when the flares that nudged me one lane over nudged another and then another lane over and then off the freeway entirely.

Educated by KCBS, I did a U on city streets, took the freeway back to the Van Ness exit, then up to Lombard, crawled westward on Lombard, worked my way up Doyle Drive and move darn briskly across the Golden Gate Bridge till I bogged down again where I had to leave 101 in Larkspur to get to the Richmond Bridge. Things picked up on the approach and stayed picked up across the span and back toward Oakland where I dropped by City Hall to pick up E. from work -- I don't let her come home from the office until she's made her "nut" -- and thus home for tea and Colbert.

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Don Draper in Tears. Oh No.

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Next dinner party I will raise the question of what *is* soap opera, what is the essential shortcoming that claws it back from the realm of art.

I mean, Romeo and Juliet is pretty soapy, innit, amidst all the gorgeous words? (It's a wine-bright question and fit for our new round table.)

I'm primed to talk the subject because tonight on Mad Men Betty confronts Don about getting into his drawer of secrets last week, and he tells pretty much all -- unless there was a flashback I missed. E. thinks that Betty now has the upper hand in the caste war with her husband, rampant sexism or not.

All pretty soapy, right, all this confrontation and contrition and adultery all around?

E. asked another even more interesting question when all was done: Will Don's loss of domestic power hurt his creativity, to which I added the adjacent possibility that if he actually resolved some of his angst would *that* hurt his creativity?

God knows my own genius feeds on my flagrant neuroses, which also make me quite charming at dinner.

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The Whooper Walks on By

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My old acquaintance from Whooping Jesus Bible College -- a very *slight* acquaintance, whose missionary visit to the Greater Bay Area was referenced a couple days ago, called again to make sure E. and I really did not want to have a meal with him.

I said I didn't want to. I said that "my years at (WJBC) were not the happiest of my life." We chatted for a while. He didn't know exactly what to say. I offered to have an email conversation about WJBC and my feelings toward it if he wished, but he seemed to just want to keep talking and let the spirit work.

I said "uh-huh" a lot and then told a beige lie -- I really did need to get going, or to make preparations for the getting of going -- and hung up.

E. had told me I should blame my unwillingness to take a meal with this fellow on her, that she was the stumbling block.

Oh great, I said. I am not a bold pagan but a pathetic pussy-whipped pagan. (Say that three times fast and then sacrifice a goat.) So I manned up to my own breach with god.

Now, the odd thing is I did not have that bad a time at WJBC, almost certainly no worse a time than I would have had at any college, beset as I was with pimples, style-free clothes inherited from my uncle and a severe case of ingrown personality.

I resented WJBC because it so completely encapsulated, summarized and exemplified who I was at the time, a hillbilly Jesus Boy terrified of a great many things, particularly thinking for myself. WJBC suited me so well. I have been a long time learning to think for myself and am not there yet.

The complexity of my disdain for Alma Mediocre is rooted in the fact that E. and I hooked up there. That worked out. We've tag-teamed our way through life, battling our heritage, roped together on the difficult climb up and out. As I said: It's worked out. If WJBC was the price of finding E. -- rather like one of those Lifetime romances about love among the ruins of war -- well hell okay.

But I will always associate it with intellectual and emotional paralysis. And I will associate that paralysis with E. because she was its antithesis, quivering with curiosity and indignation, just so damn alive intellectually and otherwise.

And that was just so damn sexy.

And By the Way: E. is Back

Image by Jose P Isern Comas via Flickr

Last night on flight 4667 from Salt Lake City, where the Air Gods put her for 30 minutes to taunt the old Mormons with the fact that a harem of dozen is nothing compared to her, a collection of crumbs after the cake is gone.

When she came through security and I saw her as beautiful as a girl (or as beautiful as a girl should have the good fortune to be, having been burnished by time), naturally Wordsworth came to mind as I strained to capture the moment. (My heart leapt up, you know?)

Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive.

It was nine at night and not dawn, but you get the idea. You can be too literal. Love is not literal, not the kind that finishes the marathon.

Man's Work

Image by h.koppdelaney via Flickr

Went online and chose seats for E.'s return tomorrow. Checked in her bag and printed her boarding passes, which I then faxed to her.

Look up "helpmate" in most dictionaries, and you'll find my picture.

Would You Like Zombie Fries with That?

Spent a happy hour-plus on a conference call with our Florida lawyer, E. and her sister being on location in the actual lawyer's office, talking about how to settle Mom's estate. The estate consists more or less of a ten-year-old car, some dishes and stuffed animals, enough knickknacks to jump start the Victorian age and some decent pieces of furniture in which E. and I (snobs to the core) have no interest.

If the estate seems vacuous, as you know nature -- and the legal profession -- abhors a vacuum, so we are expected to keep tossing money into that vacuum to "get things settled." (Editor: Insert sound of shrugging shoulders.)

After I got off the phone, I went biking with Big Pat. We struggled. It took us an hour-five to cover a distance Pat used to do in half that, and probably still could if not encumbered by me.

Then I dropped by Pat's apartment to look at Rose, his dachshund, who may be near her end, if a dachshund can be said to be near her end. (Sorry).

She is such a gallant little dog. Her rear legs twitched frantically as she tried to control them. We made hopeful noises and suddenly she walked six inches and produced a handsome example of dog excrement.

That fine turd is her ticket to ride. As long as she eats and eliminates, Pat will keep her alive. Her gaze is still strong, and she cornered me with a flurry of barks when we came back to the apartment. Perhaps, I should say I carefully positioned myself in relation to her barking so that we achieved the semblance of cornering. It's all about respect, which Rose deserves .

Then we walked down the block to Berkeley's finest Nepalese restaurant -- there are three, which is wild -- where I had a Blue Himalaya beer and a lamb curry with extra naan and a big serving of vegetables, which should reassure E. that she also has me cornered when it comes to healthy living.

Continuing the dog metaphor: Lassie, come home. I hope by Tuesday she will.

Winding Down

Image via Wikipedia

The funeral is at 2 p.m. After that, it all goes to the lawyers, who will make a thin meal of it except on us.

There's no money left. But that doesn't mean there won't be a fight over a china plate, a corner cabinet, a mug shaped like a burgher's head.

E. has the advantage of not wanting anything except some of the stuff we gave Mom, though personally I've always had my eye on that burgher's head.