Today is approximately the fiftieth consecutive time that my father has turned twenty-five, which is impressive, because I only did it once and that more than ten years ago.
Though he may not appreciate contemporary verse, he cooks a mean chocolate milk mashed potatoes.
I had some fairly major surgery on February 2nd. While the first week afterwards was more than a little scary and frustrating, it’s been amazing how much better I feel. I need less sleep, I don’t feel tired all the time. One of my favorite diversions is walking. Not necessarily for exercise, but as more of a meditative activity. Before the surgery, I was still walking but not more than half a mile a day. Now, I’m walking two miles more on a regular basis. And even though I get tired after walking a particularly long ways (more than five miles on one day – though not all during the same outing), it’s a different kind of tired. Before, I would feel a kind of bone tired, numbing exhaustion. Now, it’s the normal muscle fatigue. The difference may sound academic, but doesn’t feel that way to me.
A benefit more relevant to this blog is that I am able to read and write again. While ill and early in my recovery, it was impossible to concentrate long enough to read more than a few pages at time. Similarly, I was almost completely unable to write poetry or fiction. Now, the both these favored activities are slowly returning to me.
Did you know that Crate & Barrel used to have a “Poet Chair
?” Yes. You could buy a chair for poetry (writing or reading it, I wonder?) at a reasonably upscale (in a Restoration Hardware kind of way) chain store.
My guess is for reading, because there is no way you could pull this thing up to a desk and write comfortably. And I’m not sure why poetry would be this particular shade of persimmon.
The sad part of all this is… the chair is no longer available.
If Crate & Barrel has no room for poet’s anymore, what hope have we to loved and appreciated? Oh well, I suppose I shall just have to buy my bohemian cred elsewhere. Maybe at Pier One Imports?
At least I still have cool desk for writing poetry.
Agnotology: the study of culturally-induced ignorance or doubt.
The concept was developed Stanford University professors of the history of science, Professors Robert Proctor and Londa Schiebinger (who are married, by the way).
NPR recently ran a piece about the decline of the “cultural omnivore,” though the title was more hopefully entitled In Praise of Cultural Omnivores.
The premise is that so-called high art (ballet, classical music, literary fiction) is declining in popularity not because the number of people who prefer “highbrow” cultural declined, but because the number of people straddling the middle declined. People who watch reality television and listen to top 40 radio, but also make not entirely infrequent appearances to listen to their local symphony or some other example of highbrow culture.
I’m not entirely sure where I fall. I suppose I am an omnivore – I love my genre fiction (fantasy and sci-fi) and popular television (Castle, Family Guy). Though I wonder if I don’t fall a little closer to the highbrow side. I also wonder if it’s not the case that I want to fall closer to the highbrow side and so view myself through that lens without necessarily being correct in that assumption. Do I really prefer classical and jazz, densely written literature and poetry, opera and foreign fills – do I really prefer them more than pop music, genre fiction, and summer blockbusters?
It can be hard to distinguish image from reality, even in one’s self.
Just came across the most lovely neologism – “hauntology.” What beautiful word to be able to use to demonstrate the melancholy within certain philosophies and cultural criticisms.
The word is redolent of Jacques Derrida’s mournful spectres.
One our way back from an early appointment, we stopped at Denny’s for breakfast. I don’t think I’d been to a Denny’s in several years. For your information, I had a veggie cheese omelette and coffee.
The coffee struck a chord with me. The familiar, thick Denny’s mugs. I remembered so many afternoon and late night trips to the Denny’s by the corner of U.S. 19 and Main Street/580 in Dunedin, Florida. How many times did I sit down there with Matt or Damian or Scott or Jeremy and pretend it was the Left Bank in Paris in the 1920s? Discussing our still nascent understanding of philosophy, literature, politics, and art?
Across from that particular Denny’s was a now defunct bookstore called Bookstop. Bookstop was (I believe) a subsidiary of B. Dalton (which was bought up by Barnes and Noble). Bookstop was the first bookstore near my home that was more than just your run of the mill, shopping mall based, Waldenbooks or B. Dalton, with their collection of bestsellers and tripe. This one had poetry and philosophy and literature in translation and hosted readings by authors. It blew my mind.
It’s gone now. And, if I could travel back in time, I wonder how it would compare to the bookstores I love now. But, based on personal history alone, Bookstop has to be considered one of my favorite bookstores.
I used to be addicted to coffee. A hardcore addiction. In high school, one of my teachers let me use his coffeemaker as long as I brought my own coffee and filters, so I started having that second cup (after my morning cup at home, before driving to school) in the afternoon everyday. But sometimes, we would run out supplies and I would forget to bring more. On those days, I would get the shakes and sweats, I would get terrible migraines (as if there’s any other kind), and would even vomit. Eventually, I made the connection between these two things. After that, I rarely missed my second cup.
This need became part of the image I projected both to myself and others and I had no desire to quit.
But quit I did, but entirely accidentally.
After my kidney transplant, I was on an IV for both nutrition (which is to say, a steady drip of sugar water) and pain. So, during the several days when I would normally be going through withdrawal hell, my doctor was keeping me on painkillers.
So here we are, more than a month after my surgery, and I no longer need coffee or caffeine to get through the day. None at all.
The thing is, I kind of miss it. I was such a huge part of life. As I mentioned, it was part of my self-image, but it was also a structure to my day.
I am not so foolish as to deliberately get my addiction back, but I am starting to make an effort to drink more coffee (mostly from one of two coffeehouses near my apartment – Peregrine Espresso and Port City Java – the first one is where I go for the best coffee, the second for when I want to bring my laptop, a book, or a journal and relax in a comfy chair).
For those of you who haven’t heard, Rob Bell is the charismatic pastor of a Michigan megachurch with a national following. Like most megachurches, it began as part of a conservative, evangelical tradition. Certainly, it appears that Bell was raised (theologically speaking) in that tradition. But he now appears to be going the way of many religious minded young people, who take a far more progressive view of politics and religion (the best covered issue from this trend is the movement towards an evangelically oriented environmentalism – which is causing something of a schism with the older generation, who fear that an attachment with environmentalists will damage their close relationship to the Republican Party and the political right).
Rob Bell’s fame has skyrocketed with his latest book (due to be published in March 15), Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived. The book is accused of flirting with the concept of universalism – the idea that everyone will eventually be saved.
American evangelicals tend towards a far more limited and deterministic view of salvation.
Pope John Paul II once wrote that it is possible that there is no one in hell and that there is not necessarily a reason to believe that there is anyone there. This was no written ex cathedra (from the seat), so it does not carry the weight of papal infallibility. That said, when I read that, it was one the concepts that led me to the Roman Catholic Church.
The Church views hell not so much as a Dante-esque place, with fires and demons. Rather, hell is the state of being completely removed from God. Taken from this point, hell requires God to be willing to deny his light to one of his children. Personally, I have difficulty seeing a truly merciful and loving God being able to so deny his love to anyone. I base this on the belief that though I have no children, I also have trouble imagining anything my child could do that would cause me to stop loving him or her. I could be disappointed or angry. I could even hate would they had done and support their punishment (though I follow the Church’s teachings on capital punishment). But deny my child my love?
If you believe in God, do you believe he could deny his love to one his children.
Where do you want to write?
Is it a cabin the woods?
A garret in Paris?
A ramshackle shack on the beach with a hammock and view of poetic sunsets over the water?
Or a small college town, surrounded by the bright lights of academe?
Or the big lights of New York, with parties in the Village?
Is it a being a San Francisco artiste surrounded by the trappings of Lang-Po and the Beats?
An Italianate villa with views olive trees and grape vines?
Are you alone with your thoughts or surrounded by your peers? Do you use a typewriter, a pencil, a quill, a computer or an iPad?
the coffee philosopher 