Sunday Night, Muggy

It's been (again) too long since I've posted, and just posting now at twenty past eleven on a Sunday night to say all's quiet, all is well.

More later, mes amis, more later.

Return, Goings On

Fresh, returned from a vacation spent mostly on the burgundy couch and battering Harvest Golden tiles off a bathroom wall, ready to speak to the joys of doing nothing for an extended period, of morning coffee in a Philadelphia café, how my girlfriend related how relaxed I looked, how relaxing, how relaxing.

Instead came to unbusy office on a muggy Tuesday morning and read that American soldiers intentionally laid waste to civilians in Iraq, the military covered it up, a Louisiana democrat was caught with $90,000 in his freezer during a bribery investigation, there’s a Left Behind video game in the works. This is where we’ve heading, the nadir, here but for the grace of God.

Philadelphia was beautiful.

Finnish Ditty

Derrier planted on the burgundy couch, twenty past midnight on a rainy Thursday, slightly rancid from tonight's men's league game, watching the last period of the Anaheim Mighty Ducks/Colorado Avalanche game with the sound turned down, not for the benefit of sleeping neighbors (I don't even think they're home), but so I can listen, incessantly, to Loituma, a Finnish vocal quartet that, thanks to a posting on a message board I frequent, has bored into my skull. Shared pain is lessened, shared joy increased.

If you prefer, there's an equally catchy dance remix and, should you like, a video.

Don't say I didn't warn you.

Post Scriptum. I very nearly forgot to congradulate Ed and Linda on their excellent news. Here's to the three of you.

Looking Up

Spent the early afternoon at work, but not working, looking up the files I'd sent myself to post here in some form or another, and stumbled over

I'm sorry but I don't want to be an Emperor—that's not my business—I don't want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible: Jew, gentile, black man, white. We all want to help one another, human beings are like that. We all want to live by each other's happiness, not by each other's misery. We don't want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone, and the earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful. But we have lost the way. Greed has poisoned men's souls—has barricaded the world with hate; has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed but we have shut ourselves in: Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical, our cleverness hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little: More than machinery we need humanity; more than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost. The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men, cries out for universal brotherhood for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world, millions of despairing men, women and little children, victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people. To those who can hear me I say, 'Do not despair.' The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress: The hate of men will pass and dictators die and the power they took from the people will return to the people, and so long as men die liberty will never perish. Soldiers—don't give yourselves to brutes, men who despise you and enslave you—who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel, who drill you, diet you, treat you as cattle, as cannon fodder. Don't give yourselves to these unnatural men, machine men, with machine minds and machine hearts. You are not machines. You are not cattle. You are men. You have the love of humanity in your hearts. You don't hate—only the unloved hate. Only the unloved and the unnatural. Soldiers—don't fight for slavery, fight for liberty. In the 17th chapter of St. Luke it is written "the kingdom of God is within man"—not one man, nor a group of men—but in all men—in you, the people.
You the people have the power, the power to create machines, the power to create happiness. You the people have the power to make life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure. Then in the name of democracy let's use that power—let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give you the future and old age and security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power, but they lie. They do not fulfill their promise: they never will. Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people. Now let us fight to fulfill that promise. Let us fight to free the world, to do away with national barriers, do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men's happiness. Soldiers—in the name of democracy, let us all unite! Look up! Look up! The clouds are lifting—the sun is breaking through. We are coming out of the darkness into the light. We are coming into a new world. A kind new world where men will rise above their hate and brutality. The soul of man has been given wings—and at last he is beginning to fly. He is flying into the rainbow—into the light of hope—into the future, that glorious future that belongs to you, to me and to all of us. Look up. Look up.

Sadly, not a Robertus original, but from a movie written some thirty-seven years before I was born, a film that seems, somehow, prescient.
A small thought about a long block quote while sitting on the burgundy couch, quiet spring evening, the breeze fluttering through the curtains, a motorcycle roaring past in the night.

Hey Little Bird

And the Barnes and Noble Cafe, half a state away, next to some guy in a pink tie chattering on a cellular phone, and so it goes. I have half an hour to get to there, across an intersection to Red Brick Station, to meet (again, for the first time) Dawn and Meredyth.

White Marsh is no Fells Point, but she is not without her characters, the child stoops slowly to pick up a rolling bottlecap, coordinating joints he's just learning how to bend, the woman munching on a meatball sub from the Italian place up the street, the street draped in neon and the false halogen moonlight, Ladysmith Black Mambazo singing the South African National Anthem over the soundsystem, the reverend sipping mocachino waiting for the nearly newlyweds
Rumors have started that you are in love again
Rumors that are completely unsubstantiatedThe platinum countergirl is no Polly Harvey, but she'll do in a pinch.

After all, I've half an hour to get from here to there, to meet Dawn and Mere, sadly emptyhanded after all these months, that month it's been since Mad City, on about noon.

No Polly Harvey there to speak of, only Mark (or maybe Mike), who's owned the place since I lived there, very nearly a decade ago, and he's as bald as he was then, though I doubt it is intentional now (the scalp exceeds the shave), bu my hair's receeded since then, so I've no room to talk.

And no time to talk, to speak of, spent the last fifteen digging through coat pockets for a Day-Quil, a temporary fix for a sinus infection. It looks like I've been crying all day, though I've not shed a tear in a year.

Coffee Shop Ramble

Sitting in the Mad City Cafe, the old Columbia stamping ground, the first former Riverside, beneath Salvador Dali exclaiming the lone difference between he and a madman (he is not mad) and the neon Open sign. Two high school girs practice French, sounding American (like I did when I was their age, like I would, could I speak French), a man plugs in the ubiquitous laptop (is any coffee shop scene complete sans laptop? Perhaps that's the last bastion of a forgotten age, the wireless cafe), a cell phone rings. The door swings open, a blast of fresh and bitter January, a man pours unsteeped, steaming tea into a trash can, he did say room for cream. I've read Baltimore's Alternative Weekly (City Paper) cover to cover, waiting for my phone to ring.

Baking Flags

Sat back in the black office chair this afternoon, having just read that Hilary Clinton signed a bill to ban flag burning, marveling at how the mighty fall.

Now back on the home front, straight up drinking a glass of milk, relistening to Danger Doom and the claxon oven timer alarm. Pause a moment to throw another batch on the baking stone, take a fresh thirteen minutes to sit back and reread that first sentence, to wonder why people are as worked up as they are, to ruminate that a flag is a flag is a flag.

I've heard it said that the American flag is a symbol of Freedom. The oft forgotten truth is that Freedom is not a thing of cloth and thread, nevermind nylon or automobile magnets, but a grand abstract that couldn't be burned with the brightest match.

As eloquently put by Justice William Brennan in his ruling on flag burning, "We do not consecrate the flag by punishing its desecration, for in doing so we dilute the freedom that this cherished emblem represents."

Beginning to Look a Little Like Christmas

Sitting on the just dusted hardwood floor, Danger Doom on the b-Pod (ask him could he bark on the beat and spark calli/villain not the cat you want to meet in a dark alley), gazing up at the pale pink lights strung around the Charlie Brown tree (only now noticing that half the string is dead, but who besides pets doesn't neglect the bottom of the fake fir, far from the angels and the stars). Images flash silently across the television set, I should just turn it off but the distraction is a crutch, better used for balance than illumination. And just like that, I pack my hockey bag and head out to my men's league game, half past nine on a biting Tuesday night.

Soon, Josephine

And so follows stony silence, and Robertus sits in the blue barka lounger, wired for the first time in years (or thereabouts) watching Jimmy Carter on the Daily Show, wondering what could have been.

There will be more, mes amis, I promise.

Tonight, Josephine

Sitting on the burgundy couch in the early autumn air, a month and change since last I posted, watching the New York Football Giants score a touchdown to pull within two touchdowns of San Diego, twenty past ten on a random Sunday night.

Since then we've witnessed the governments (federal and otherwise) flounder in the face of a disaster that they'd seen coming (billions to rebuild, untold hundreds dead), the continuance of a far away war that seems endless from this vantage point, late September two thousand and five, the sudden start of an unwarranted war at home

So strange, victory.
Twelve hundred spires,
the only sound, Moscow burning

Mon amie, I grew tired of being angry, so tired of being angry, and so instead grew silent, sitting on the burgundy couch, empty as the Tuileries, without so much as a peep from the Sublime Idealist, much to my detriment, much to my dismay.

In the last extremity
to advance or not to advance
I hear you laughing

Until now, ten past ten on September twenty-fifth, when it occurs to me that there will be time enough for stunned and stony silence, and not enough to shout.

Iucundi Acti Labores

Tonight I'm sitting in the bumblebee office, having enjoyed a frosty pint, meat loaf, and some Colcannon, listening to Simon & Garfunkel

The last train is nearly due
the Underground is closing soon
and in the dark, deserted station
restless in anticipation
a man waits in the shadows

feeling the last kinks from moving Jacob and Kate (and Charlotte Siobhan) on a stifling Sunday afternoon seep out of my body, replaced by the hazy glaze of drunkedness and the pleasantly springlike air

His restless eyes leap and scratch
at all that they can touch or catch
hidden deep within his pocket
safe within its silent socket
he holds a colored crayon

It was a simple enough move, as moves go, no trouble filling the truck or scratching the mattresses past the exposed brick stairwell, piloting the freight elevator two flights up, emptying a Bank Street rowhome into a Charles Village apartment, half a dozen men and two women, sweating to high Heaven in the back of a 10-foot U-Haul truck

Now from the tunnel's stony womb,
The carriage rides to meet the groom,
And opens wide the welcome doors,
But he hesitates, then withdraws
Deeper in the shadows

and at the end of the day, exhausted and sore, sat down on the scattered furniture eating sandwiches, drinking root beer, planning a route out of the city I'm not nearly familiar with. Citing stadium traffic, Kate's sister and I leave, sharing a ride on the rickety elevator and a brief walk down the sweltering Charm City sidewalk.

Now from his pocket quick he flashes,
The crayon on the wall he slashes,
Deep upon the advertising,
A single-worded poem comprising
Four letters

Fortyfive minutes later, sitting down in the bumblebee office beside the frosted air conditioning vent, drinking a glass of water and listening to Simon & Garfunkel, I found myself thinking of Cicero, whom I'd just read in a relic of my bookselling days, Vulgo enim dicitur: iucundi acti labores: It is commonly said: hard tasks are pleasant, when they are finished.

And his heart is laughing, screaming, pounding,
The poem across the tracks resounding,
Shadowed by the exit light

Fortyeight hours later, find myself sitting back in the bumblebee office, the metamorphosis from sore to tight complete, happy to be done with moving for at least another year, to feel the pleasantly springlike breeze through the cracked window

His legs take their ascending flight
To seek the breast of darkness and be suckled by the night

That's Good Enough for Me

It amazes me what one can make by combining a pair of eggs with sugar and flower, baking soda and salt, chocolate chips or raisins. Combine with Three hundred and fifty degree heat for fifteen minutes, just like that, a batch of cookies, or, in different proportions, brownies, chocolate cake.

More amazing still the messes you notice when sitting in a silent room, waiting for the cookies to bake -- the cobweb in the top corner above the refrigerator, the onion leaf that fell behind the trash can, a coupon clipped and long forgotten, a hidden drink coaster thought lost, a fresh splash of milk on the countertop from the last batch.

From the last batch I discovered that I only burned myself twice is both a boast and an admission. The dishtowel didn't quite cover the handle of the baking stone, and so palm met metal, and, flinching back, the inner wall of the oven, a little sting, a little swear, a little cold water and all is well. After all, I could have burned the house down.

Half past ten now, and back on the burgandy couch watching the Karate Kid (Elizabeth Shue, the people you notice some times), belly full of cookies and milk, and life is good.
-R.

Nocturne

Sitting in the wheeled black office chair in the bumblebee office, ten past ten, listening to Sicut cervus on the Music Match Jukebox, avoiding reading Sicut Cervus too closely, lest I bring my blood to boil at this hour of the night, nearly bedtime, ordinary Tuesday, early August, the air hanging like cotton, silent but for the spinning ceiling fan and sicut cervus desiderat ad fontes aquarum, ita anima mea desiderat ad te, deus, as the deer desireth the springs, so my soul desires you, O Lord.

New Address

As you may have noticed, I've moved the site from there to here. Thanks to everyone who made the move with me, and to any new readers who have stumbled on this site and may be inclined to stick with it.

More later.

-R.

Updates Come

I warned you yesterday, friends and strangers, of changes to come. Gone the blaring white and blue background, the dead link to Melanie's old blog, gone the amateurish look of the old template and tumbleweed between postings (and the Red Sox assured win, the Devil Rays have tied it in the 7^th)

Welcome to the new Sublime Idealist, where you can e-mail posts or post comments, find links to functioning blogs (currently Eric Alterman, my friend John Sears and some guy named Ed, and a hope for more to come), and more to come, and more to come, and more.

Nine fortyfive now, exhausted and sweaty from yoga in the basement, time for a shower in the garret, and sleep.

[post scriptum: Went back and titled the old posts and cleaned up some of the detritus. Quarter past ten, tie game in the 9^th, but it's the Red Sox and Devil Rays, so I really shouldn't care, Mets fan, I.]

Updates Forthcoming

Ah, mes amis, time as slowly slipped away, but now I'm back on the burgundy couch (watching baseball, middle July) and have too much to say. Now, too drunk on Cabernet Sauvignon to type, but soon, but soon.

[Post scriptum: Suffice it to say, between the War, the bombings, the ever potential Constitutional Amendment Against Gay Marriage, the return of the National Hockey League, and that she and I are no longer Us, you and I have a lot of catching up to do. Tomorrow, tomorrow]

Hunter Thompson, Friday Fives

Hunter S. Thompson

There will be countless leaves and website entries dedicated to the death of the Good Doctor, dead yesterday by his own hand (so they say). To tell the truth (as always we must endeavor), I didn't read much Thompson, aside from a few pages of Fear and Loathing and some ESPN.com columns, but still, the writer is gone, and I fear the world a darker place for his passing.

If you don't read another word of Hunter Thomspon, read this column*, written September 12th, stunningly prophetic now, February 21st, half a forever later.

Friday Fives

Stolen from Delicious Placebo, who stole it from this guy, who wrote of Hunter Thompson on the event of his passing.


If you could freeze time at the very second in your past that you wanted to LAST forever, so that you can hold that moment for eternity, what would that moment be?

I can think of a few, but this is a family-friendly blog, after all, and so I'd say catching an autumn catnap on the couch, with the breeze blowing in through the screen door, in countless apartments I've lived in (and my parents' home before that, now that I think of it).

Have you ever finished in LAST place, whether during a race, a contest, a competition, an exam, or something else?

Personally, no, but as a team, ah yes (there is no "us" in team, after all). When I was a kid, my hockey team went 8-0 through the Christmas break, and one of the parents, who wrote for the Howard County Times, ran a story titled "Ho Ho Ho, Were 8 and Oh," and we proceeded to lose every single game for the rest of the season. The lesson is, naturally, stay out of the papers.

Who's the LAST person you talked with on the phone? E-mailed? Received an e-mail from? Hugged? Went out to lunch with? Thought about? Made something for? Made plans with? IM-ed?

Spoke with an author on the telephone not long ago, last e-mailed an author, last received an e-mail from a referee, last hugged Melanie, last lunched with Melanie, Chris, and Chris' roomate Josh (though technically that may have been breakfast, even though it was noon)


When's the LAST time that you did something nice just for yourself? What was it?

Good question...

What do you think you'll be doing on the LAST day of this month (February 28)? If you could choose a month and have it LAST forever (in other words, it would be July all the time from now on), which month would you choose and why?

February 28th is a Monday, god bless, so I'll likely be sitting on the burgandy couch, watching a History channel show about Otzi the Iceman, dead some 5,000 years, and thinking about the paper I edited two years ago about the very same guy. This is how close I've come to fame.

But c'est la vie, now, mon amie. It's five past ten now, Eastern standard time, eyelids at half mast, eyeing the staircase up to the bedroom, and sleep.

-R.

[*Post Scriptum, Tuesday, 26 July 2005: The good folks at ESPN have moved this article to their Insider section, meaning that you have to pay for access to the content. This being the internet, though, I'm sure someone has it up for free somewhere. Anywhere.... I know you're out there, I can hear you breathe.]

Epiphany

A convenient change of scenery, sitting now in the bumblebee office in the black swivel chair with my feet propped up, listening to Ombra Ma Fui, off the collection given to me by my Melanie for Christmas, a freight train howls in the distance, a car door in the parking lot, ears perk up, an epiphany, I realize that this is the same song (more or less) I listened to on about two years ago, when I sprawled across the off-white apartment carpet in Cockeysville with a cheap glass of white zinfandel (is there any other kind?) to write August, to Briana, the day before my first creative writing class. This must be some kind of omen under the drum machine and acoustic guitar.

<>Briana’s gone now, a lawyer, moved to Brooklyn to live with her boyfriend, a businessman, in a one bedroom behind a brownstone on North Bedford Avenue, on about a dozen blocks from Stickball, give or take a few. She’s jobless still, five months in to this great experiment, living off savings in a city that doesn’t sleep, starving, but happy nonetheless.

(I exaggerate – Melanie calls me a drama queen, and in a way I suppose she’s right – Briana is far from starving, the businessman boyfriend has family in Brooklyn, so she’ll always be safe, and fed, at least, beneath the orange street lights of my home)

<>
-R.

Post Scriptum: This has simply gotten out of hand, mon amie, November 19 to Now. It’s been far to long.

Television Fridge

Sitting on the burgundy couch sipping a Beaujolais and watching television, my fiancée turns to me and swears that the End of the World is upon us – they (whoever they may be) make a refrigerator with an ice maker & water dispenser in one door, and a television set mounted in the other, apparently so that you, the consumer, can watch television without having to leave the cold comfort of your kitchen floor.

To be honest, I think that the signs of the Apocalypse are far more subtle than the inevitable television set/refrigerator hybrid (was anyone surprised by this development?) – for example. This very afternoon, driving home from a trip to the liquor store to pick up the aforementioned Beaujolais (in a fancy bottle, no less), I had to stop at a light on U.S. Route 40. Now, those of you familiar with Route 40 know of the countless panhandlers that stroll the median strips, seeking donations (firefighters are common, Vietnam Veterans (or not) more so). This afternoon a young man crushed the broken glass wearing a sandwich board sign that said:

Please Help

send me to

audition

for American Idol

and I would have given him a dollar, if I hadn’t just blown my last Hamilton on booze.

Incidentally, writing “if I hadn’t just blown my last Reagan on booze” doesn’t have the same ring. This is the same kind of reactionary thought that brought us a motion on the floor of the House of Representatives to rename French Fries freedom fries; the same kind of reactionary thought that makes liberal intellectual snobs like me lose faith our elected (or not) leaders.

Speaking of leaders, lastly, I’ve been playing a lot of EA Sports NHL 2004 of late. The game is flawed, sure enough (passing is difficult, checking near impossible – I am a purist, I enjoy being able to obliterate anyone on the ice with anyone on the ice at any time. Call me sadistic. It’s a video game), but things get interesting once you get two or three seasons in. The artificial intelligence (or not) starts swapping players between teams, so Mark Messier winds up in Calgary, Rick DiPietro in Buffalo. At this late hour, with half a bottle of wine gone, it makes me sad that this may be the closest to NHL action we’ll see this season, and as stars shoot across the horizon, I find myself wishing that the players and owners would sit down and be non-reactionary, and understand that, in the end, they’ll all get their Hamiltons. Or their Reagans.

-R.

Semper Ubi, Sub Ubi

Over the past few years, I have been to weddings Catholic and Protestant, Evangelical and Jewish, Orthodox and Atheist. I have attended weddings both long and short, in grand old cathedrals in New York City and outdoors next to a cattle pen in Tucson, Arizona. I have slept on the couches of straight couples and gay couples, I have broken bread with boy scouts and gender benders, I have slept beside saints and transsexuals. And though I’m no Catholic, all I can think is ubi caritas et amor, deus ibi est, where there is charity and love, God is there.

I pray that you remember that when you hear the President of the United States speak of marriage.