Thursday, January 11, 2007
Oh-oh-seven
Didn’t this week begin with walking down Eighth Avenue in balsamic lower Manhattan, thinking about how to bake visiting cakes? With my big-filled Xmas belly, and my mom’s copy of the Duino Elegies in hand? Heaving my rollie one block at a time through the chapels of scaffolding, hocking down on the street corner to memorize another line. The Lower West Side is the safest safe haven to do such things. No one cares if you’re muttering about scary angels or the “twisted loyalty of a habit, that took a shine to us, and then stayed and didn’t leave.” [das verzogene Treusein einer Gewohnheit, der es bei uns gefiel, und so blieb sie denn und ging nicht].
One of those habits, for my part, is listening to overteenaged David Grey songs; they remind me of Seattle and my friend Amy’s gorgeous smile. With lines like “This year’s love, it better last,” these soupy songs sway, addle, like a bowling ball in a gutter. But I keep listening, or maybe just swaying. It’s 4 am, and the winds are here—they’re shaking my house! My whole Red Island, flat-out, face-down on Europe’s thawing belly like a stewed pear.
Nothing could augur brighter for a year than to come equipped with its own MI6 code-name. 007 walks into a bar, knows someone within earshot wants to kill him, and orders a martini. No one knows what he’s really about, and never has. You want to believe he does it all for the common good, but you doubt it. You think, “I’ve seen this one before.” Still you’re compelled to watch his every move. Such posture! Just eleven days into 007 and I’m already hooked on the way it crosses a room.
The first thing that happened to me in 007, of course, was Justin Timberlake on YouTube. It was a relief to see verisimilitude already taking a giant step forward so early in the year. And then my friend Donnell came by and gave me my first 007-hug, which set the bar kind of high for future embraces.
What’s going to happen though? Is “America’s War”—as that televangelist from V for Vendetta perversely called it— going to shove the country further into the dark, into the red, into its organic Dorito popping, remote-controlled alexithymia? Will we get saved by a passing golden wing-ship? I’m optimistic. Massachusetts elected Deval Patrick, who is smart and gentle and talks about profoundly suspicious things like civic participation. Plastic action-figure and part-time governor Mit Romney appears not to have been enough of a statesman to show up to his own successor’s inauguration. Maybe he thought that would be a “tar baby” too? Somebody, please find something damaging on that creep and hold on to it until after he’s accepted the Republican nomination. I don’t want to keep having to tell my German students, “No, I didn’t vote for that guy.” Maybe Anne Richards will just barrel down from the heavens in her glistening Licoln Continental at that special moment and drop a big-old, blood-curdling Howard-Dean yaulp into Big Mit's belly, then lean out the window from behind her giant amber sunglasses and holler "Gone, git!"
Since everyone is setting up exploratory committees, I suppose I will too—with seasoned advisers, fax machines, and college kids who get the asiago bagels from down the street. My goal is to do fewer bad things in 007. I figure, if that works, I’ll get to the point of just automatically choosing between good things. What’s that like?
One of those habits, for my part, is listening to overteenaged David Grey songs; they remind me of Seattle and my friend Amy’s gorgeous smile. With lines like “This year’s love, it better last,” these soupy songs sway, addle, like a bowling ball in a gutter. But I keep listening, or maybe just swaying. It’s 4 am, and the winds are here—they’re shaking my house! My whole Red Island, flat-out, face-down on Europe’s thawing belly like a stewed pear.
Nothing could augur brighter for a year than to come equipped with its own MI6 code-name. 007 walks into a bar, knows someone within earshot wants to kill him, and orders a martini. No one knows what he’s really about, and never has. You want to believe he does it all for the common good, but you doubt it. You think, “I’ve seen this one before.” Still you’re compelled to watch his every move. Such posture! Just eleven days into 007 and I’m already hooked on the way it crosses a room.
The first thing that happened to me in 007, of course, was Justin Timberlake on YouTube. It was a relief to see verisimilitude already taking a giant step forward so early in the year. And then my friend Donnell came by and gave me my first 007-hug, which set the bar kind of high for future embraces.
What’s going to happen though? Is “America’s War”—as that televangelist from V for Vendetta perversely called it— going to shove the country further into the dark, into the red, into its organic Dorito popping, remote-controlled alexithymia? Will we get saved by a passing golden wing-ship? I’m optimistic. Massachusetts elected Deval Patrick, who is smart and gentle and talks about profoundly suspicious things like civic participation. Plastic action-figure and part-time governor Mit Romney appears not to have been enough of a statesman to show up to his own successor’s inauguration. Maybe he thought that would be a “tar baby” too? Somebody, please find something damaging on that creep and hold on to it until after he’s accepted the Republican nomination. I don’t want to keep having to tell my German students, “No, I didn’t vote for that guy.” Maybe Anne Richards will just barrel down from the heavens in her glistening Licoln Continental at that special moment and drop a big-old, blood-curdling Howard-Dean yaulp into Big Mit's belly, then lean out the window from behind her giant amber sunglasses and holler "Gone, git!"
Since everyone is setting up exploratory committees, I suppose I will too—with seasoned advisers, fax machines, and college kids who get the asiago bagels from down the street. My goal is to do fewer bad things in 007. I figure, if that works, I’ll get to the point of just automatically choosing between good things. What’s that like?
# posted by David @ 7:17 PM 
