a somewhat hibernate-y saturday

[fflo]

well i did dash out to get to the library before it was locked up. but it's been a lazy, time-slighting course through this rotation of the planet.

a quick jot-down on "glad" and "grateful": the former more (and enviably) in your own skin; the latter somehow like the (said to be universally desired) not alone in your skin. god as a substitute for other people, cuz god is & does whatever we want or say he or she or it is & does. can be counted on that way, at least philosophically, unlike other people. or is that only true for some. and it is only some true, anyway.

today's "this american life" had this guy talking about realizing, all of a sudden, that the assumptions he'd made about how all his friends thought of him as an asshole were off. that they weren't kidding. got me to thinking about how the boys used to kid kid kid each other when we were teenagers & young collegians. and then all of a sudden (they so noticably weren't laughing and) i figured out that what i'd thought was just companionable kidding was actually joking around around a lot of very serious, and sometimes hard, feelings. on both their parts. though more sensitively on one of theirs.

it was a change of world view for me. brought about vicariously, laughably enough.

so.

opened a piece of mail from st. joe's that says i have to go back for a follow-up mammogram. it was accompanied by the piece of literature they put in with such requests to keep the recipient from freaking out too much. with (among other things, i'm sure; i didn't read it all) statistics on these routine follow-ups that indicate that the area of concern ---i'm pretty sure they take care not even to use "concern"--- is very probably nothing. i didn't read through cuz i didn't want to see how many (count 'em) ways they are reassuring, so's not to have to feel compelled to conclude, if there are quite a few, that they protest too much. i take my comfort largely from confidence that life isn't always as predictable as bad art, as in "The L Word," whose shotgun-over-the-fireplace breast cancer set-up episode i've seen, and so i know (Drama 101) (or, hell--- Remedial Drama) that the character in question's a goner, even though i'll have another several episodes with her, and at least one or two before she figures out what we know.

i have also already visited in my mind briefly more than once how there's no breast cancer in my family, that i know of. and i've observed mentally how big breasts and lots of caffeine work well as pigeonholes into which to stick, whenever it blows out and into my face again, the memo of inevitable "geez i sure hope not" i now have to live with for some unknown number of days henceforth.

i think maybe it is a good night to play records.

the overcast and chilly not-quite-spring outdoors, with dampness hanging in the air, fits. a fire in a fireplace would be nice, too. especially if there were someone to curl up with, and with whom i'd like to curl up, feeling like sitting in that trite scene with me, wordless, staring peacefully into the dancing flames.

Comments

[peteralway.livejournal.com]

Good luck to you. Scary breast news seems to be making the rounds on my flist.

I hope you enjoy something trite and flamey.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

thanks, Peter. nothing trite or flamey on the immediate horizon, i reckon. and i'll do my best not to join the people up and dying on you, as i hope your other flist people will, too!

[peteralway.livejournal.com]

Nobody on my flist seems to be in immediate danger, fortunately.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

this is good. another thing to think i've thought is that aggressive follow-up is probably the thing to do these days. if only for liability reasons.

oh how the cynic comes out at the drop of a hat!

[peteralway.livejournal.com]

At least two people on my friends lists did some aggressive follow-up and it turned out to be nothing.

Being cynical about the medical profession isn't so bad. Being cynical about your thoughts of a happy way to spend the evening, thinking it trite, is probably not so good, as it might interfere with the happy evening coming to pass.

Not that I know anything about that. I'm not so cynical about what I want, but as you pointed out before, I'm so certain that what I want is impossible, I don't dare admit hoping for it.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

oh, but you just did... admit to it. in that cagey "just-dying-to" oblique lj way i know so well myself.

and of course it may be possible and it may not be possible but, regardless, if you decide it's impossible---and as long as you maintain it's impossible---it ain't gonna happen.

whatever it is.

but of course i out with rosey shit like that, cuz i'm all rosey floaty sublime at this very moment, for right here with me i've got ella, singing bluesy songs in her so very not bluesy way, and i love it love it love it love it. 'zaz if she don't get around much anymore and so what? isn't this the most amazingly heart-liftingly fun thing, the way we're not getting around much anymore, with this beat, and these vibrations of these vocal chords, and this gentle sway, and this easy syncopation, and ---fuck me it's the bee's knees, peter alway, chet & humph, not to mention (just now) ben webster handing it over to the guy with, of all things, the violin . . .

along with everything else, so often you can just feel with no doubt about it, none of that stuff even in your world, how those players absolutely loved her, and her them back. you even feel it in real time. like you're right there with 'em, in the room; on the stage; in the n^th-dimensional space all the sounds they're making bounce your very soul around in.

tonight it's made me don my fedora to dress up my sweatshirt even though i'm just hangin' about the house

[peteralway.livejournal.com]

Maybe I should be listening to more music by total strangers again. So you can feel the love, and get infatuated with voices without a real friendship getting in the way, without knowing that the hot singer is Mary Poppins sweet, with a really nice guy for a husband, and loved your lego dulcimer.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

oh, goodness, P! that's a dramatic situation of a dramatic situation.

mary poppins, though, has kind of a dominatrix sweet, don't you think? ;)

[peteralway.livejournal.com]

I think I must have overstated the drama in the name of interesting writing. If every passing "hey, she's kinda cute" that went through a het guys head constituted drama, the world would set Shakespeare's head spinning every ten milliseconds.

(OK, I'm predicting that you are litty enough to claim that it actually did)

(I've been noticing that "drama" has been changing meaning. Literally it means prosthetic human experience, and people keep using it to mean actual human experience. I'm assuming you are using "drama" in the hip, new way.)

Naw, the only drama here is the very literal drama that a good performer invokes in the music, constructed of notes and words and the subtleties of voice of human and instrument.

[shmizla.livejournal.com]

somehow i don't see that cancer as your disease. plus, you've been hormonal a lot lately and those things will create messy pictures.

also, i'm companionable and hold hands very well, when occasion requires it.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

i don't see that cancer as your disease

ha --- one laughs, and laughs again to think of what you might see as hers, imagining ailments of character, or, more likely, of affect, and thus revealing what leaps into the mind of one when hunching what might seem, to other and (respectively) self, to be one's disease proclivity.

not that i think i'm exactly diseased in those ways now.

i did joke recently that, should i have to lose a breast, losing the right one would make me a better pool player. :) but ty for the mention of the skills i don't hunch i'll be availing myself of in this particular set of circumstances. knock on somethin'.

maybe "hunch" doesn't work so well as a verb. new experiment here, today.

so you gonna tell me what the canadian conference is? and with what you'll be dazzling 'em? (as if they walk around open to dazzling, even if it's right in front of 'em...!) (hey, that reminds me, i was going to show you this article lee ann fwded me.)

[shmizla.livejournal.com]

i'd be more vigilant and worried about that cholesterol, methinks, because that one is hard to catch before it hurts you. and somehow it just doesn't sound right for you to have anything going on otherwise. regardless of the family history; or, more precisely, i'm thinking the *other* family history may be yours perhaps a bit more. can't say why.

the conference is something about women reading and writing, and edmonton seems to be a place where they have this whole project going with some database of women's writing and other interesting research, so i'm thinking it may be a good opportunity to meet someone (anyone! by now) interesting. as long as they don't say austen is like the bible, i'm happy.

nice article :) one wonders about the powers of recognition (visual and otherwise)

[sprig5.livejournal.com]

I read that about Joshua Bell as well. It'd be interesting to do the same thing in NY and see if results are different. I don't know that I would have recognized Joshua Bell if I had gone through the metro station that morning, also having been a violinist, I think the music would have made me stop. But I do know how, esp in the morning, people are in a hurry-- and have their routes and timing down to a science, down to the second, in this town.

I actually saw Joshua Bell play in 1986 or so. He came to the university where I was a student. We were all wowed-- he was our age, and very accomplished and cute. I saw something on 60 Minutes about him in the 80s too, I think.

[shmizla.livejournal.com]

i like the point is made that he is almost 40 and single AND straight, "a fact that is not lost" on his young and female audience members. he does look nice. he's aging well.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

aging well, schmaging schmell. bah. phooey! let us now praise the aging "poor"ly!

[shmizla.livejournal.com]

what i mean is, he doesn't look like he'd spent the past twenty years in pain and suffering. you wouldn't have to be handsome for that, just have some sort of joy on your face. you can be wrinkled but look good. you can't look angry and resentful and look good.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

ahh.... oops. chortle. or chortle lite.

[shmizla.livejournal.com]

ya know. the man did bust his ass over the past 25 years. and it did pay off, obviously [unless you count being invisible to the masses], but it's paid off for others, too, and they look like shit . he kinda looks like he's a happy man, which i generally appreciate.