Eminently Skippable
Last night I dreamed that my brother — a pretty durned conservative optometrist living in the exurbs of Phoenix — was driving me around a ritzy Arizona town. We were on a curving road that followed a stone wall surrounding a Native American reservation. The road’s name was “Gardenhead Path,” and beautiful tiers of flowerbeds and trees had been planted alongside. We circled along Gardenhead Path until we came to the entrance of the reservation. As we drove around inside, I noticed that the wall was all crumbly and only clumps of ugly scrub grew near it. The rest of the reservation comprised a long strip mall and parking lot. We passed a business called The Diaper Cafe. I asked my brother why anyone would choose that name for an eatery, and he explained that “Diap” was the name of a local tribe. We parked and went into a large, dismal discount store and starting flipping through racks of mostly ugly, cheaply made little-girls’ dresses, looking for something suitable for his 3-year-old daughter. Even though they were ugly and shoddily sewn, they cost $30 to $40.
I woke up at one point and started thinking about my company’s annual report, which is due at the printer in three business days. (The CEO is rewriting his section of the report, which has been edited four times by me and reviewed by no fewer than eight other people. Big-Baby CEO got back from a 10-day vacation and threw a tantrum [reportedly nearly in tears] because so much of his poorly written letter had been modified [improved].) As soon as I felt my blood pressure start to rise, I started thinking about the sandwiches at Beantowne Coffeehouse, which sent me back to sleep.
They Did
I wrote a long entry about last weekend describing Tomoko and Kevin’s wedding, but I don’t think I’ll post it — I couldn’t really capture how happy the wedding made me. Of course, I expended way too much energy beforehand worrying about trivialities like what to wear and ended up having a marvelous time. Considering the sometimes rocky path their relationship has ambled during the past many years, the event — and the families’ supportiveness and blessings — could not have been sweeter or more satisfying.
Make Like Lou and Reed
Book report: finished How to Be Alone (Jonathan Franzen), which was mostly fantastic. One recurring theme is the plight of a fiction writer in a society that values literary fiction less and less. (Part of me wants to say, “Aw, poor widdle fewwa, it’s so rough being a best-selling writer,” but his arguments are thoughtful and well-written and really don’t smack of whingeing.) A couple of times, his views sounded very much like Scott Miller — self-effacing and slightly baffled by a lack of mass popular success. Other essays, such as one investigating the gross negligence of the Chicago Post Office and another describing a fairly new supermax prison in Colorado, were more accessible and completely gripping.
I also finished (in the blink of an eye) Nicholson Baker’s latest-in-softcover, A Box of Matches. It wasn’t nearly as satisfying as any of his other books, but I laughed out loud at several points. And I’m a fan of the protagonist’s pet duck, Greta.
Last night I started Seek My Face, but I’m not completely sure I’m in an Updikean mood. I debated buying it for what seemed like several minutes, but it was the blurb comparing the Lee Krasner-modeled protagonist Hope to Rabbit Angstrom (in the character’s detail and multifacetedness, that is) that tipped the scales.
Yipes — it’s time to go home.
Make Like Lou and Reed
heee! Good one.