Sailing: An Odd Essay

Enough is Enough!

Time for a one week booze hiatus. I mean, jeez, the whole month of December is full of excuses to drink: retail stress from both sides of the counter, Christmas parties for work, Christmas eve celebrations, eggnog before and after Christmas dinner and wine during, visits from school friends home for vacation, and New Year's eve. (If we actually get off our butts and find something to do tonight I'll allow myself one whiskey in appreciation of the New Year--just one, mind you!)

No wonder I haven't made much progress with the copy of Vice City D bought me for Christmas. I've spent all my leisure time too wasted to simultaneously paw a controller and focus on the screen. There are some games, such as Halo, where alcohol improves your performance. (Or maybe it's just that when you're drinking with friends, you're all just getting worse at the same rate.) As Vice City is 75% driving, it is not one of these games.

Ah, alcoholism! At least I've admitted I have the problem. That's the hardest step, they say--and I've already gotten it out of the way!

In related news, Knob Creek whiskey (on the rocks, and opened up with just a splash of water) is rapidly gaining on Jack Daniel's (on the rocks) for my vote of best beveredge ever.

Yours,
Nate

Tap on the Glass. It Disturbs the Animals.

Five posts in, and now that I'm becoming a bit of a contributor to this weblog phenomenon I'm beginning to wonder if there's anything "creepy" about the way I've been following the lives of my predecessors for the last year or so. The blogs I find most compelling are the ones most clearly written by individuals who not only have something to say, but who also are not afraid to share telling details of their personal lives.

Straight diaries might hold me for a few posts, but I'll rarely return. And straight political or culture commentary blogs are good for an intellectual binge when I'm in the mood, but they're not the blogs I check in with on a daily basis. What I really enjoy is hearing Emma talk about the problems she's working on in philosophy, and then telling us about donning old goth garb and going out on the town. Or Jane, who is elevating videogame scholarship to the levels it deserves, but who also shares with us news of her breakup and experiences with a new masturbation toy. (I'd love to be a woman for a day to try that!) Gabe and Tycho make a living from their internet endeavors, which seems heroic enough, but to then turn around and raise over $125,000 in donations for sick kids--how can you not visit their website every time it's updated? I like knowing about Michael's experiences with yoga and Friedrich's struggle to lose weight. These people become friends, and that makes me all the more interested to know what they have to say about French Impressionism, Neitzsche, Prince of Persia, Manhunt, or Patrick O' Brian. As I continue to read them, I begin to feel I know them. And then, there is that little thrill when one of their opinions surprises me.

Still, all of this goes on while the bloggers have no (or almost no, if they have comments enabled--and why on earth wouldn't they?) awareness of my existence. I feel a bit like a stalker, except, of course, that every blogger invites me in and wants my traffic.

Of course, virtual and long distance relationships are always surreal and different from "the real thing." Have any of you ever had a borderline friend-acquaintance who you never really hit it off with suddenly move away, and for some reason you start writing and discover that, in letters, they become one of the most intelligent and vivacious people you've ever known? Or the reverse (I imagine it must happen all the time now, with online dating) where casual emailing turns intense, interesting, and passionate, but when you finally meet in person you find nothing to say to each other? My experience was the first, with a girlfriend with whom I was fond, but the relationship had no spark and ended blandly after only a month. We drifted apart after I completed high school, but when she decided to spend a year as an exchange student in Hungary we started writing in earnest and have never stopped. She now lives in North Carolina, and as distant pen pals we are closer than ever.

Still, despite the long-distance and epistolary nature of this relationship, it's reciprocal. Reading these blogs, and hearing personal confessions and revelations from them--well, it's a little like hiding in the bushes under the bay window and peeking in. It's nighttime, I guess, so I can see in, while to the writers the glass is mirrored.

I'm probably just going crazy from being on the Cape too long, while all our "real" friends ("in the flesh" friends? "brick and mortar" friends?) have scattered out to cities and "done something with themselves." D & I are a little desperate for interesting people to converse with, and as we can't move anytime soon, all these folks on the internet seem a fair target for our affections. Meanwhile, I'll set myself up in my own glass house, with the shades up and the lights on.

Post a comment or send an email, if you like. Tap on the glass.

Yours,
Nate

Saturday at the Coolidge

We've been making a few more trips than usual into the city recently. Every time we do, I'm left wondering why we don't go more often. There's a world of activity and culture only 90 minutes from us, but we're well into the advanced stages of Cape Cod Disease, where even a fifteen minute drive to two towns over seems a pilgramage of biblical proportions.

Our first trip was to the flower market for D to pick out flowers for a special funeral. An early morning trip, with the heart of the city rising just before us, only so we could load up on flowers and turn our backs on it to return to our jobs. Saturday, though, for our day off together, we tooled in to Boston like we owned the place, parked in Brookline, and did something so decadent I only conceived of it on the drive up: watched two art films in the same day.

I have never watched two movies in the same day before.

The Triplets of Belleville: This was the reason for our trip, and it more than repaid my hopes and expectations.

My enjoyment of a movie, at the highest levels, is measured by its ability to choke up my throat and make me cry. I'm not sure why this happens. It's not always during a sad passage. It happened to me a bit during the first Lord of the Rings movie (and not so much, for some reason, in the second two); the end of American Beauty hit me with it, and the movie adaptation of Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five was perhaps the first time this reaction floored me. I think it's when the film does something genuine, when a line of dialog or a gesture communicates something we've all experienced but never put into words, when you feel you're not being sold a product, or wowed with special effects for their own sake, that this happens.

I loved that the heroes of Triplets were four ugly old women and an overweight dog, and that the love of a woman for her grandson was so strong that she rented a paddle-boat with her last sou and used it to cross the atlantic. This is tall tale and fable stuff, of course, but it makes some of the noblest and most beautiful human emotions much larger than life and delivers it directly to me. And all with maybe three lines of dialog. It didn't need dialog. I watch the dog sleeping, or the women cooking frogs, or the old man rolling a cigarette, and think, "Yes! Yes! This is the absolute essence of how these things happen! And I'm truly seeing it for the first time!"

Needless to say, I could barely breathe through most of the picture and D thought something was seriously wrong with me.

Lost in Translation was a soft and understated counterpoint to the day's first picture, and while it didn't give me the same extreme reaction that Triplets did, it left me happy and satisfied with carrying out my double-movie plan. All the nice things you've read about Bill Murray's expertise at conveying a wide range of emotions with his face are true and I can't really add anything. But I also like the way the film captured the sense of absurdity we feel when bombarded by all the technological gizmos which try, today, to solve problems nobody has. Do we really need downloadable ring-tones? Or window-blinds that open automatically in the morning? And yet--and yet! Those Japanese arcades look like they're a blast, and maybe Karaoke is more fun than I (who've never tried it) ever realized. I credit Bill Murray for showing bewilderment in technologically dazzling Tokyo, and not a fuddy-duddy condemnation of it. And for conveying also, of course, the desperate need for human contact which arises as we are further and further isolated amidst all this plenty.

Ah, what our world needs is more Saturdays like this!

Yours,
Nate

No Blarney!

Well, we made it through another one. I always get this feeling of elation after the holidays, this natural high that seems to come from being able to do things for myself again, or perhaps from not having to focus such a large percentage of my thoughts and activities around one hyped-up day. I had to work a full day at the smoke shop on the 26th, and took great pleasure in playing an un-christmas selection of music (Bach, Ravel, Nick Drake, and Alice DeeJay), putting away the wrap-table, and obsessively vacuuming while waiting on a sparse procession of customers--none of which had to ask me what they should buy, because they were all shopping for themselves! This is my golden time, the long sleepy stretch between Christmas and Mothers' Day (the Flower Shop Christmas). Time to get cranking on this blog. Time to finally clean out the basement. Time to finish and edit my novel.

Still and all, this was one of the best holidays I can remember. We played it modestly this year, and focused more on having a good time than spending a lot of money. We had a yankee swap Christmas eve at our house with D's side of the family. D & R had decided on a "black and white" theme, spraypainting the tree with a sheen of white and hanging only black or white ornaments. We wore cocktail dresses and thrift store tuxedos, and even the surly brother-in-law participated, and, I think, had a good time. We'd been creative buying our under-$25 collection of gifts, and items such as flashlights, fabulous retro 1950s teacups, watches, a black goldfish in a tank with white gravel, cow mugs, and a book about vampires, were unwrapped. Few people exercized their right to swap, as gifts seemed to reach their appropriate recipients with preternatural specificity. There was also an ample supply of Christian's holiday eggnog, which recipe J has brought to new plateaus of perfection. The secret, you see, is letting it set four days, not three.

(Christian is a lady by the way, and not a reference to our feeble faith. I hope she's still out there somewhere and thriving, and I'd like her to know we think of her each year when it's eggnog time.)

Christmas morning was the usual warm & fuzzy bathrobe-clad goodness with D and R, decaf coffee, and a crackling duraflame log on the hearth. All the marketing and the songs and the expectations of how you're supposed to feel on Christmas: well, for those few hours it really does happen.

Yours,
Nate

Let's Build Our Own Tirith

Well, we ditched the tradition we've had for the last two years of waiting until Christmas day to see the Lord of the Rings film and went on opening night. Bought the tickets three hours early, showed up 45 minutes early and had our choice of seats. The theatre was full by the time it started, but not thronged the way I'd expected. One of the advantages to living in this cultural backwater, perhaps?

Thoroughly engrossing, of course, and I feel finally released and satisfied. I remember seeing a preview for the first movie in a hotel room in January 2001, and thinking that, by golly, I had a sure-fire reason to live to fall back on for the next four years, should the usual reasons vanish. There's nothing in popular culture to motivate me with such force any more, and I feel as though my safety net has been rolled up and stashed away.

Still, I just couldn't feel immersed in this movie the way I had in the others. The New Zealand scenery was breathtaking as always, and Minis Tirith--ah, if there is something I treasure from the third installment it is the visual experience of that city, gleaming white but still gritty and real--Minis Tirith was the real star of the piece. (I'd love to hear what some New Urbanists have to say about the portrayal of that city. Central planning, centuries of tradition, form following function (defense as a primary concern) but on a human scale, growing organically from the landscape, and charmingly ornamented. Hey, it's been imagined and depicted, and at least partially built! So why can't we do that for real? Why can't I live there?)

What distracted me, I think, was the constant jerking of the camera through the war scenes. I know war is chaotic, I know that the people fighting it probably don't know what they're swinging at most of the time, but I'm in the audience. I want to see what's happening. Especially given that midaeval-era combat comprises 70% of the film. Give me more than a split second to register each thing I'm looking at, fer chrissakes!

And the pathetic humor! Why does Gimli always have to be the comic relief guy? Why does it need comic relief? Tolkein himself had admitted he had no sense of humor; perhaps this is why it feels so artifically injected into these otherwise organic films. In my head I'm suddenly out of Middle Earth and in some storyboarding meeting, popping in the requisite elements you need to appeal to each demographic. I realize I'm watching just another big Hollywood picture. The same thing with those stunts Legolas has to pull in each film: pithing an oliphaunt with three arrows and then sliding upright down the trunk makes for good special effects, but it's one of those moments where the movie serves the effects, and not vice versa. The rest of the movies had been so good about this, so refreshingly good, that it was like eating a generous portion of the best tiramisu ever, and then biting down on the broken off corner of the cook's rubber spatula.

But I'm probably just bitter that it's over. I'm still going to see it again.

Yours,
Nate

Sophie's Second Litter

I'm actually a lot more excited about Sophie's second litter than I was about the first, which is funny since this batch was a complete accident. She went into labor around 11 PM on Friday, pacing nervously about the house with the veins in her neck pulsing in a rapidfire intimation of seizures. Then her little quinny swelled up like a peach and there were two paws sticking out of it. D eased it out (apparently breaches expected for 40% of births), Sophie cleaned it off and plugged it into a nipple, and then ate the big red bag of afterbirth in a surreal split second.

D stayed up with her through five puppies, until about 4:30 AM, then came to bed and passed out in her clothes. Half an hour later I woke to more wet suckling noises and D said, "Natego&see howmanypuppies therearethereshouldbe five." But there were six. All of them healthy, active, and wriggling.

Sophie clearly had enough milk for all of them, but my biggest concern was that they wouldn't all find a nipple. I needn't have worried (as she clearly knows what she's doing) but I did worry myself out to the grocery store at 5 AM in search of puppy milk and a tiny bottle. Of course they don't sell this at Stop & Shop, but I got to make an interesting spectacle of myself standing there with my bed-head, one untied shoe, and a grocery basket with pet stain & odor remover, three low-carb bars, and soft dog food. The late night manager actually passed through (probably checking to see if I was a threat) and helped look for puppy milk for me. No luck, though.

But it didn't matter, since, you see, the puppies take turns.

Anyway, I have a print out of some of the pictures at work, and I've been showing them to anyone who will look. Typical proud parent stuff. And these are the perfect children, you know, the kind you can love for a while and then sell.

Yours,
Nate