Monday, March 21, 2011
Pounding the Garments on the Rocks by the River...and Reading
The Laundry Room in our building is clean, spacious and welcoming, and it has a library...of lending books, from all the smart tenants in the three Lombard Place buildings. I may never have to buy another book again as long as I live here!
Much to say about those small bookshelves sitting by the dependable dryers in our LR, but for now let me say this: I have been lost in the arms of cheap and appealing FICTION all weekend and I am not ashamed to admit it. I took a large load of laundry down on Saturday morning - with Peter working full time, it's the very least I can do, to become the housewife I was always meant to be - and I left the LR with two marvelous books, by two of the bestselling American writers of the decade: John Grisham and Dan Brown.....in recompense, I took down a few things I can easily do without, literarily speaking, and there must be someone with the same tastes I have because I know that the next time I go down there, my contributions will be gone! So glad someone else gets pleasure from this lending / exchange thing.
ANYWAY: I spent all of Saturday in the embrace of THE TESTAMENT by John Grisham and while reading, I sat back, figuratively, and let myself be awed by his detailed account of travels in the rain forests of Brazil...because the story is marvelous and filled with lovely characters you adore to hate, as well as the shift of the major character from hopeless drunk to seriously aspiring spiritual man - but the real fun, the the real meat of the read is in those adventures he puts the main guy through in the heavily forested regions of a part of Brazil very few white men go to....
..........a plane crash (how the hell did he know how to write about that without being in one?)....malaria attacks, snakes, bugs, heat....true deathly illnesses, tribes of exoteric and hard-to reach indians...did Grisham go there and do all this? I was awed! and i enjoyed the mean, venal family he invented who are all snapping at the edges of the multi-billion dollar fortune at risk....the word "billions" creates such pleasurable fun these days...untold wealth...and the goods he fills pages with his nasty family members buying....great fun...so the contrast to the journey of attempting to find the romantic, religious central heir to the fortune is all the more delightful in its horrors, poverty, meager way of living and existing, etc.....extremes beautifully portrayed, so you feel the full impact of both as a reader....I just gobbled through that one at a prodigious rate!
And then I flung it back into the laundry basket to take down next weekend for more! Next I cracked open a paperback of THE LOST SYMBOL by Dan Brown, our country's most beloved meta-physical fiction writer! This one is yet again all about deeply mysterious things that are right in front of our faces...and right now, having plowed through 50 percent of it, I am deep underneath the Nation's Capitol and looking for nasty little secret objects, while the life of our heroine is at dire risk at the hands of a tatooed-ugly-maniacal, Believer of the worst sort....reminds me of right wing Evangelicals I know....but he is tall, rich, well-built, intriguing in his sadistic focus and utterly in line with the albino from Davinci Code....they could be brothers...and in fact, maybe they are....but right now, our hero Robert Langhorn (Tom Hanks, as we now know him from the film of Davinci...) is being run through a new gauntlet of secrets, symbolic scribblings and life-or-death tasks to perform before people will be safe again....
.........it's clear that TIME is of utmost importance to Dan Brown's formula of writing, because he never gives his protagonists enough of it, and all the action in his books takes place within terribly brief brackets of clock-ticking....you can almost hear the minutes pass, every one is in such a rush to rescue something or someone or other....it's amusing all by itself, and thoroughly exhausting. But, obviously, right in tune with the tempo of American readers because Dan Brown is what you call a publishing cash cow. People buy his books. And by tapping into the American speed gestalt, I think he has found a (dare I say it) secret code of success. I am breathless and my legs hurt just from trying to keep up with his folks, as they scurry from one crisis to another, all seemingly in the space of 24-hours! You feel you've gone thousands of miles across vast spaces of dangerous landscape...but it's usually all in one building and within one day...or night...truly a feat of writerly skill, I'd say.
So - off to the printers to put together a small book of my poems for the final meeting of our workshop tomorrow night....glad to have an occasion to show some of them to some people....we each must take our 15 minutes of fame, as Adair calls it, tomorrow...and we can fill it with anything we want to fill it with...I'd like to share some of my poetry, get away from the essay form for a night....and take some good food for them to nibble....we all must bring some food...
Today I also must get my cardio workout in, and will go to the Bay location of my gym, so I can breath in some nice fresh air on the terrace they have for stretching....I collapsed over the weekend and could not seem to stop sleeping deeply whenever I go tnear a surface that would let me lay down...i slept and slept....must have needed it. COme to think of it, maybe I still do!
More soon, comrades....be well.
Much to say about those small bookshelves sitting by the dependable dryers in our LR, but for now let me say this: I have been lost in the arms of cheap and appealing FICTION all weekend and I am not ashamed to admit it. I took a large load of laundry down on Saturday morning - with Peter working full time, it's the very least I can do, to become the housewife I was always meant to be - and I left the LR with two marvelous books, by two of the bestselling American writers of the decade: John Grisham and Dan Brown.....in recompense, I took down a few things I can easily do without, literarily speaking, and there must be someone with the same tastes I have because I know that the next time I go down there, my contributions will be gone! So glad someone else gets pleasure from this lending / exchange thing.
ANYWAY: I spent all of Saturday in the embrace of THE TESTAMENT by John Grisham and while reading, I sat back, figuratively, and let myself be awed by his detailed account of travels in the rain forests of Brazil...because the story is marvelous and filled with lovely characters you adore to hate, as well as the shift of the major character from hopeless drunk to seriously aspiring spiritual man - but the real fun, the the real meat of the read is in those adventures he puts the main guy through in the heavily forested regions of a part of Brazil very few white men go to....
..........a plane crash (how the hell did he know how to write about that without being in one?)....malaria attacks, snakes, bugs, heat....true deathly illnesses, tribes of exoteric and hard-to reach indians...did Grisham go there and do all this? I was awed! and i enjoyed the mean, venal family he invented who are all snapping at the edges of the multi-billion dollar fortune at risk....the word "billions" creates such pleasurable fun these days...untold wealth...and the goods he fills pages with his nasty family members buying....great fun...so the contrast to the journey of attempting to find the romantic, religious central heir to the fortune is all the more delightful in its horrors, poverty, meager way of living and existing, etc.....extremes beautifully portrayed, so you feel the full impact of both as a reader....I just gobbled through that one at a prodigious rate!
And then I flung it back into the laundry basket to take down next weekend for more! Next I cracked open a paperback of THE LOST SYMBOL by Dan Brown, our country's most beloved meta-physical fiction writer! This one is yet again all about deeply mysterious things that are right in front of our faces...and right now, having plowed through 50 percent of it, I am deep underneath the Nation's Capitol and looking for nasty little secret objects, while the life of our heroine is at dire risk at the hands of a tatooed-ugly-maniacal, Believer of the worst sort....reminds me of right wing Evangelicals I know....but he is tall, rich, well-built, intriguing in his sadistic focus and utterly in line with the albino from Davinci Code....they could be brothers...and in fact, maybe they are....but right now, our hero Robert Langhorn (Tom Hanks, as we now know him from the film of Davinci...) is being run through a new gauntlet of secrets, symbolic scribblings and life-or-death tasks to perform before people will be safe again....
.........it's clear that TIME is of utmost importance to Dan Brown's formula of writing, because he never gives his protagonists enough of it, and all the action in his books takes place within terribly brief brackets of clock-ticking....you can almost hear the minutes pass, every one is in such a rush to rescue something or someone or other....it's amusing all by itself, and thoroughly exhausting. But, obviously, right in tune with the tempo of American readers because Dan Brown is what you call a publishing cash cow. People buy his books. And by tapping into the American speed gestalt, I think he has found a (dare I say it) secret code of success. I am breathless and my legs hurt just from trying to keep up with his folks, as they scurry from one crisis to another, all seemingly in the space of 24-hours! You feel you've gone thousands of miles across vast spaces of dangerous landscape...but it's usually all in one building and within one day...or night...truly a feat of writerly skill, I'd say.
So - off to the printers to put together a small book of my poems for the final meeting of our workshop tomorrow night....glad to have an occasion to show some of them to some people....we each must take our 15 minutes of fame, as Adair calls it, tomorrow...and we can fill it with anything we want to fill it with...I'd like to share some of my poetry, get away from the essay form for a night....and take some good food for them to nibble....we all must bring some food...
Today I also must get my cardio workout in, and will go to the Bay location of my gym, so I can breath in some nice fresh air on the terrace they have for stretching....I collapsed over the weekend and could not seem to stop sleeping deeply whenever I go tnear a surface that would let me lay down...i slept and slept....must have needed it. COme to think of it, maybe I still do!
More soon, comrades....be well.
Labels: SF Domestic Life
Saturday, March 19, 2011
Piano Tuning on a Rainy Day
After the move to Abingdon, Virginia, and now the move across this entire country, our dear old and still fabulous grand piano is due a good, long, caring check-up by a piano doctor! And this day, David Gordon, a recommended piano tuner, is at her side, paying close attention! David was suggested to us by a friend who has a gorgeous home in Noe Valley, Doug C.
It is pretty awful that we have not had her tuned or looked at in over 4 years, but by the time we let her settle into the Virginia living room, we had gotten so busy at our jobs that we totally forgot to look after her properly, barely having even the time to sit down and play her. But now, with already more actual playing going on, I will go no further until she is tuned and happy again. Peter is ecstatic. And I can almost hear the shiny ebony beauty purring!
I wrote a very long piece for my Writing Workshop about this piano, and am in the middle of deciding what to do with it...whether to send it out (not sure to where) or to post it here....but it is a bit of an homage, a rhapsody, if you'd like, about this traveling companion of mine, through all the years and the miles. It talks about all she has been witness to in my life, all she has gone through with me. All the drama, the fun, the music, the students she has helped....and now, she is in the piano "spa" being taken care of, and she deserves it. Looks like David Gordon is being very nice to her and doing all the important things to check her out....i've not heard any tuning going on yet...too much other stuff to check first, I imagine.
Peter's at the gym....it is another rainy SF day and I am sitting at my long writing table by my bedroom window......Lombard Street, ever the tourist mecca, seems deserted today, probably due to rain, yet, every now and then I see a determined tourist or two, heads covered in plastic rain hats, umbrellas aloft, trudging up our part of the hill, aiming for the summit, where the "crookedest street in the world" begins going down....at about where our wonderful apartment building is you can turn left onto Polk and descend down to Fisherman's Wharf, and the marvelous Ghirardelli Square, where such gorgeous chocolates live! All in all, our location is a perfect one. Interesting places all around us to walk to ....stunning scenery to see everywhere we look...and the view from the rood of this building is "killer" ...nearly 360 degrees of Bay, Bridge and sky...fabulous!
Later this evening we go to The Razz Room to hear jazz singer Amanda McBroom, and dinner before hand with pals at our favorite vegetarian Chinese place: The Golden Era on O'Farrell....another fine San Francisco evening! Even when we've had time to have some fun evenings, in the past few years, we were always too tired from work to go out ....and now we take as full advantage as we can of our schedules and our resources here....with gratitude.
So - the world goes 'round and Japan is beleaguered by its earthquake/tsunami/nuclear reactor problems that sadden us all....war looms between the USA and Libya and evil world leaders continue in their inexplicable ways toward more evil, and why that is ...well....the world goes 'round....i just live in it. Wish I had more answers, but for now, I don't, and so I'll have to get the joy where I can get it....
One place I definitely do get it is from writing, so...now that I am back on these pages....expect more from this little corner of the spinning globe.
xxev
It is pretty awful that we have not had her tuned or looked at in over 4 years, but by the time we let her settle into the Virginia living room, we had gotten so busy at our jobs that we totally forgot to look after her properly, barely having even the time to sit down and play her. But now, with already more actual playing going on, I will go no further until she is tuned and happy again. Peter is ecstatic. And I can almost hear the shiny ebony beauty purring!
I wrote a very long piece for my Writing Workshop about this piano, and am in the middle of deciding what to do with it...whether to send it out (not sure to where) or to post it here....but it is a bit of an homage, a rhapsody, if you'd like, about this traveling companion of mine, through all the years and the miles. It talks about all she has been witness to in my life, all she has gone through with me. All the drama, the fun, the music, the students she has helped....and now, she is in the piano "spa" being taken care of, and she deserves it. Looks like David Gordon is being very nice to her and doing all the important things to check her out....i've not heard any tuning going on yet...too much other stuff to check first, I imagine.
Peter's at the gym....it is another rainy SF day and I am sitting at my long writing table by my bedroom window......Lombard Street, ever the tourist mecca, seems deserted today, probably due to rain, yet, every now and then I see a determined tourist or two, heads covered in plastic rain hats, umbrellas aloft, trudging up our part of the hill, aiming for the summit, where the "crookedest street in the world" begins going down....at about where our wonderful apartment building is you can turn left onto Polk and descend down to Fisherman's Wharf, and the marvelous Ghirardelli Square, where such gorgeous chocolates live! All in all, our location is a perfect one. Interesting places all around us to walk to ....stunning scenery to see everywhere we look...and the view from the rood of this building is "killer" ...nearly 360 degrees of Bay, Bridge and sky...fabulous!
Later this evening we go to The Razz Room to hear jazz singer Amanda McBroom, and dinner before hand with pals at our favorite vegetarian Chinese place: The Golden Era on O'Farrell....another fine San Francisco evening! Even when we've had time to have some fun evenings, in the past few years, we were always too tired from work to go out ....and now we take as full advantage as we can of our schedules and our resources here....with gratitude.
So - the world goes 'round and Japan is beleaguered by its earthquake/tsunami/nuclear reactor problems that sadden us all....war looms between the USA and Libya and evil world leaders continue in their inexplicable ways toward more evil, and why that is ...well....the world goes 'round....i just live in it. Wish I had more answers, but for now, I don't, and so I'll have to get the joy where I can get it....
One place I definitely do get it is from writing, so...now that I am back on these pages....expect more from this little corner of the spinning globe.
xxev
Labels: SF Domestic Life
