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October 23, 2002
mark thomas I am so tired, and typing here in the dark. I don't get why I'm so tired. I sleep until noon or later every day. A solid 10 hours. I get up, make coffee, make my big old glass of ice water, consume liquid for an hour. Hey, I just got a big 44 oz. plastic insulated mug for my morning ice water needs. It keeps the ice frozen well into the afternoon. I wrote in these pages not long ago that no one was making metal ice cube trays any more. In response to that story, however, I am informed that this is no longer true. This surprises me. None other than Martha Stewart recently lamented the fact that metal ice cube trays are a thing of the past. Well, word on the street is that the Vermont Country Store carries my beloved aluminum ice cube trays. Cheung Kong Metal in Hong Kong appears to have metal ice cube trays. And Practica.com carries a "Retro Metal Ice Cube Tray." I ask you, does the excitement ever end?
I give up on the beard idea. Well, it doesn't look all that bad on my face. But the maintenance issues are what get to me. Yuck, that sounds so corporate. "Maintenance issues." But now that I've accumulated a credible looking batch of a beard I remember the time spent trimming and scrutinizing and detesting the so-called beard I sort of had for a year or so during 1997 and 1998. This time I've reached a slightly more erudite conclusion. I used to think growing a beard was a long-term decision which, once made, had to be lived with for years. Now I'm thinking I'll just let it go as the mood strikes. It doesn't have to be a long-term choice.
OK, blah blah blah. It is dark in here, and I am really drunk. The only thing casting light on this computer keyboard is the light from the monitor,. My arms feel a bit tight from bad posture and too much time spent badly practicing a Rachmaninoff Etude. I can rarely determine what, precisely, Rachmaninoff's Etudes are studies of. Chopin Op. 10 #1, that's a study in arpeggios. Op. 10 #2, that's obviously a study in chromatic scales. #3, that's a study in melody. But these Rachmaninoff studies, all I can ever come up with is that these pieces are just meant to be really hard to play. I've been thrashing away at the E-Flat Minor Etude-Tableux, and have at least determined that it's a study in playing a big luscious sweeping apocalyptic melody almost entirely with your fifth finger. That's a really hard task, and worthy of the Etude name.
It is already Wednesday. Sunday, October 20th, 12 noon, was the 12th anniversary of the day I left Tampa to live in New York. I still remember the anniversary, but am beginning to feel disconnected from my past and from the thick emotions that filled my head during the days I announced I was leaving and the day I actually left. I don't think this disconnection is necessarily a good thing, but it's been a natural evolution and not any kind of emphatic shift that I brag about. I don't trust people who brag about their life. It seems as if people brag the hardest about things which make them least secure. Conversely, people are very selective about the vices that they single out for scorn. I was talking to a friend yesterday, and somehow or other the topic turned to Mayor Bloomberg's proposed ban on smoking in all bars and pubs in New York. My friend actually said "Smoking is good for you, man, smoking doesn't kill anybody. Quit yer whining." I had not been whining. I did not even bring up the subject of smoking or human vices. The "smoking is good for you" announcement came in the middle of a 10 minute stream-of-consciousness monologue that started with me asking if the Redskins had won that weekend. My dad has more or less said that smoking is good for him, and I think he actually has a case. He has smoked like a wildfire since he was 16. His smoking skills are only outdone by his drinking capacity. I can live with the nightly 12-pack of Michelob, but the stink of cigarette smoke in his apartment is what made me explore the local motel and hotel scene in his town whenever I visit him. With my dad, though, the case could be made that smoking really is good for him. After his twin brother died from liver and lung cancer my dad went to see a respirational therapist (is that a real profession?), and the respirational therapist said that my dad's lungs were clean as a whistle, but that the worst thing he could would be to stop smoking. The respirational therapist said that if my dad stopped smoking he would stop coughing, and if he stopped coughing his lungs would be covered in mucous and other tasty shit and he would suffocate. My dad coughs a whole hell of a lot. I swear sometimes it sounds like these will be the last coughs ever heaved by the human race. I just talked to him, and man was he coughing up a storm. But you know what? I am starting to think that he is going to live forever, coughing and hacking up a lung like it's his goddam job. « Inappropriate Reactions • sorabji.com • Good-bye, Russian Tea Room »
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