it happened last night

The following is a conversation that occurred via text with someone I do not know.

 

Some Dude: What’s up kid? What’s poppin tonight?

Me: I’m sorry, who is this?

Some Dude: You muthafucka! It’s Greg! Lol

Me: Greg who?

Some Dude: I’m busting your ass murph! Greg! Boris! Marvin!

Some Dude: You know what? I think I have the wrong number! Sorry

There are few things I enjoy more than getting a voice mail from Andrew Ivers that says, “Hey … I’m done with the meeting so … let’s … go to Georgetown.” So after wrestling the Dupont Circle rush hour traffic (on foot), to Georgetown we walked. It’s a really nice walk, actually, on a suspiciously warm day in late October. We—partially strategically, I realize—walked by what Ivers says is his favorite bookstore in the District. It’s called Bridge Street Books. In case you do not know Andrew Ivers (a tragic thing for you), it takes a whole lot for a bookstore to impress him. He used to live in Boston where, he tells me, the bookstores were incredible in terms of selection and charm. Probably because everyone in Boston is smarter than people in Washington, and everywhere else, for that matter. The point is that Bridge Street Books in Georgetown has the Ivers Seal of Approval. Independent of this important award, it gets my approval too.

There are a few brick steps to climb before you can enter, but once you ascend them, you’ll be sold too. On the main level, they seemed to have an extensive collection of nonfiction and texts on art theory, so I quickly instructed Ivers to lead the way upstairs to where the fiction and philosophy collections were. Perhaps it was just the presence of Jack Kerouac in my mind that day on account of that really great album that Jay Farrar and Ben Gibbard made about his Big Sur, but he was everywhere! In his own section, in the Mallory Schwarz (aka ‘Eastern Philosophy,’ I guess) section and in the poetry one too. I’m okay with that. Some rare Hemingway stuff was found too. The Bridge Street Books selection is not exactly lacking, is my point. Here is a lame picture from it. The others won’t show up properly. Sorry guys. iPhone is failing me for the first time. Also, if you’re ever hanging around bookstores in Georgetown and don’t know what to do after, perhaps try drinking many, many guinnesses at a really great old man bar called Martin’s. That’s what we did.

Molder of Men

I know I’m late to this game (apologies in advance for the puns that will inevitably find their way to this post), but I’m really enchanted with this silly show about football, of all things. Really enchanted. It’s mostly on account of The Man too. It’s a worthwhile show and you all should watch it, but I’d really just like to say a few things about Coach Taylor. He’s Hamlet in Texas. And as much as it pains me to type it, he’s perhaps more relevant than Kenneth Branagh.

While Coach has more intuition and a palette of morals unlike most football coaches IRL, no one really cares because this is a television show—Ivers tells me, because I can no longer distinguish, apparently. Put up the fourth wall, someone. Please. Call me Millie too. Anyway, he’s dad and coach and friend and all shades of grey between them. And he’s not always the perfect example or the hero, but I think Aristotle would approve. Coach Taylor is a walking Nicomachean Ethics text.

The whole Aristotle thing is a long story, so I’ll just summarize: His ethics concern something termed ‘the chief human good,’ which is essentially ‘happiness’ and there is a detailed description of what is meant by happiness, but there is another important part of his ethics which argues that this highest form of human happiness has something godlike about it—but the chief good is not the reference point for deciding which actions are right. I think this is illustrated by Coach Taylor’s commitment to human excellence, as the Philosopher would say. He has an understanding of it and he compels his team to achieve it (and not just on the field) not by example, but by conveying that to achieve this human excellence (and moderation of character extremes, to use the Nicomachean language) is the right thing to do because it is fine. And it really works … on the show. So uh, nice work, FNL writers. Way to read up on Aristotle. Shakespeare too.

You should know, though, that the real reason of reasons I love this character is that he really enjoys scotch. Like me.

les cheveaux noirs

A book called Paris Spleen caught my eye the other day at a really charming Georgetown bookstore that I’ll post about as soon as I can get the images right. Ivers pointed out that it is a book of Charles Baudelaire’s prose poems and that he read them in a Devin Johnston class—which means that they are most certainly awesome, I understand. On page 31 of this particular edition, I found something rather beautiful. The number 31 seems to be following me around also, for the record. Here is the text in French first and in English after it. This prose poem is pretty sweet in both languages, actually.

Un Hémisphère dans une Chevelure

Laisse-moi respirer longtemps, longtemps, l’odeur de tes cheveux , y plonger tout mon visage, comme un homme altéré dans l’eau d’une source, et les agiter avec ma main comme un mouchoir odorant, pour secouer des souvenirs dans l’air.

Si tu pouvais savoir tout ce que je vois! tout ce que je sens! tout ce que j’entends dans tes cheveux!  Mon âme voyage sur le parfum comme l’âme des autres hommes sur la musique.

Tes cheveux contiennent tout un rêve, plein de voilures et de mâtures; ils contiennent de grandes mers dont les moussons me portent vers de charmants climats, où l’espace est plus bleu et plus profond, où l’atmosphère est parfumée par les feuilles et par la peau humaine.

Dans l’océan de ta chevelure, j’entrevois un port fourmillant de chants mélancoliques, d’hommes vigoureux de toutes nations et de navires de toutes formes découpant leurs architectures fines et compliquées sur un ciel immense où se prélasse l’éternelle chaleur.

Dans les caresses de ta chevelure, je retrouve les langueurs des longues heures passées sur un divan, dans la chambre d’un beau navire, bercées par le roulis imperceptible du port, entre les pots de fleurs et les gargoulettes rafraîchissantes.

Dans l’ardent foyer de ta chevelure, je respire l’odeur du tabac mêlé à l’opium et au sucre; dans la nuit de ta chevelure, je vois resplendir l’infini de l’azur tropical; sur les rivages duvetés de ta chevelure je m’enivre des odeurs combinées du goudron, du musc et de l’huile de coco.

Laisse-moi mordre longtemps tes tresses lourdes et noires.  Quand je mordille tes cheveux élastiques, il me semble que je mange des souvenirs.

A Hemisphere in Her Hair

Let me breathe in for a long, long time the scent of your hair, let me plunge my entire face into it, like a thirsty man into the water of a spring, and let me wave it in my hand like a scented handkerchief, to shake memories into the air.

If you could only know all that I see!  All that I feel!  All that I hear in your hair!  My soul voyages upon perfume just as the souls of other men voyage upon music.

Your hair contains a dream in its entirety, filled with sails and masts; it contains great seas whose monsoons carry me toward charming climes, where space is bluer and deeper, where the atmosphere is perfumed by leaves and by human skin.

In the ocean of your hair, I glimpse a port swarming with melancholy songs, with vigorous men of all nations, and with ships of all shapes silhouetting their refined and complicated architecture against an immense sky in which eternal warmth saunters.

In the caresses of your hair, I find again the languors of long hours passed upon a divan, in the cabin of a beautiful ship, rocked by the imperceptible rolling of the port, between pots of flowers and refreshing jugs.

In the ardent hearth of your hair, I breathe the odor of tobacco mixed with opium and sugar; in the night of your hair, I see the infinity of tropical azur resplendent; on the downy shores of your hair I get drunk on the combined odors of tar, of musk, and of coconut oil.

Let me bite into your heavy black tresses for a long time.  When I nibble at your elastic hair, it seems to me that I am eating memories.

###

Play it again, Julian.

Play “11th Dimension.”  We can handle it.

Hey do you want to know what’s in my head?

It’s this. Tous les temps.  This one’s for you, October.

See? It’s not totally empty.

the cutest thing i’ve seen since marilyn was a brand new kitteh

Kids just don’t really get cooler than this.

God is his homey

you say the whole point of everything’s the moving on

The flailing is mutual.

At the End of the Century

Mention of one work in a successor–in ridicule.  This made me marvel for days after reading it:

“You know these new novels make me tired. My God! Everywhere I go some silly girl asks me if I’ve read ‘This Side of Paradise.’ Are our girls really like that? If it’s true to life, which I don’t believe, the next generation is going to the dogs. I’m sick of all this shoddy realism. I think there’s a place for the romanticist in literature.”

 

Summertime Clothes

I kind of met something of an interesting woman while crossing Forest Park Parkway on Friday. It was around noon so the St. Louis sun was blazin’ and it must have been at least 95 degrees. As I took my first step onto the Parkway, I hear a

“Oh LOR,’ iss HOT!”

“Yeah, it’s totally hot. Ugh.”

“Wooooo-eeeee! I cain’t beLIEVE it!”

“Yeah, yeah. It’s so hot out today and here I am wearing entirely black! Smart, right? He he.”

“Yeah, I uh, heard that black clothes makes the heat go away from ya.”

“Well, um. Actually, I think it holds onto the heat pretty well. It’s better to wear white, I think.”

(partially interrupting my previous sentence) “Well I knew it was one or the othah!”

” … ” (we’re still crossing the street, if you can believe it)

“Well I gotta go to Applebee’s to pick up a ordah now! I’ll see ya! Hmm!”

I’m wearing black every day this summer in hopes of repeating this conversation with that woman, needlesstosay.