Weekend Notes

I'm pondering Garrison Keillor's (creator and host of A Prairie Home Companion) analogy of marriage, upon being asked about his second one: "The rules for marriage are the same as those for lifeboat passengers: stay in your place, no sudden moves, and keep all disastrous thoughts to yourself. And if one lifeboat sinks, then you find another one." I think he's pretty much right.

Just so you're aware, I know of no more beautiful musical sound than The Canadian Brass playing Pachelbel's Canon (select it from the sound menu). It's absolute distilled wonder and perfectly honed "passion and joy." Which is exactly what music should be.

I bet you didn't know that the name of that ballet pose you always see, the one with one arm straight up and the other extended behind, aligned along an extended leg, all extremities gracefully loose but calculated, is arabesque. It's a beautiful word. I also bet you didn't know that the SR-71 Blackbird spyplane, affectionately dubbed 'The Sled' by its elite pilots, went from St. Louis to Cincinatti in 8 minutes. At Mach 3, the SR-71 flew three times faster than the speed of sound. Faster than a fired 30-06 bullet. What do these things have to do with each other? Nothing, except that they're prime examples of all the things there are to know in the world, and there's just not enough time. So many things to be interested in, and I have to work 40 hours a week. I'm not interested in that at all, because I'm not making a living doing something I love. Be patient with me.

Geminids tonight! And near-perfect viewing conditions. Go without sleep. I see meteor showers as proof of something grand and lucky and brilliant. I plan my wishes on predictable falling stars. Watch flaming bits of Phaeton flash across your sky tonight. You never know if you'll get another chance.

My step-Grandma Rose is having a bit of a hard time. This is her first holiday season without Grandpa in 58 years; he passed away suddenly in May. We spent Saturday with her, just visiting. We took her a centerpiece with red and white roses, carnations, ribbon, pine and lavender, and some amaryllis bulbs to plant. They always grow for her, lovely and graceful and strong. She's the 82-year-old mayor of Pinedale (population 1,200, and incidentally the town in the continental U.S. farthest from a railroad, which is saying something. It's just south of Jackson Hole, Wyoming's Hollywood). That's her on the left, lighting the Town Christmas tree last Friday. She looks pretty happy in the picture. As long as she's busy, and being Mayor keeps her so, I think she'll be fine. I don't know about after that.

The drive up there and back was one of only a few trips the four of us have made all together, both parents and both offspring, in the last ten years or so. Fun, but strange. We used to pile into one of Dad's Jeeps in San Diego on Saturday mornings and drive east into the desert just for fun. We'd stop at the diner in Ocatillo Wells and have burgers, or climb around in the sandstone steps in the hills by an inexplicable stone watchtower. Or we'd go north and stop at the Deer Park winery and car museum, and Mom would magically produce a fabulous picnic out of the humblest edibles. Or we'd find a movie theater somewhere in that long, connected playground of a coastal metropolis, someplace playing a family comedy, and later we'd have chinese food at sunset at some hole-in-the-wall place by the beach. We'd come home after dark, my sister and I wind-beaten, hoarse from singing loudly into the vortex that tore away our words and sometimes breath and tossed them into the sucking, silent wind. An open old Jeep Wrangler is the best way to appreciate the salt ocean spray in the cool night air.

We made Mom and Dad watch the third Lord of the Rings movie this weekend; we had to make a friendly bet about the actor who plays King Theoden of Rohan. Dad swore up and down it was the same guy that played Obi-Wan Kenobi in the original Star Wars. It turned out not to be, but pointed out how remarkably similar the two actors, Bernard Hill and Alec Guinness, are in voice and expression.

I'm always disorganized this time of year. Things are always somewhat composite; nothing's solid and predictable again until Valentine's Day. But I'm somehow more keyed in, more intuitive and far more likely to appreciate the value in something as simple as children singing Oh, Christmas Tree in another language, any language. Especially German. There are quite a few traditional carols that just sound their best in German. I suppose that's their original language.

Friday Morgan and I went to Ogden, UT to Christmas shop. I could have gotten everything in town this year (I try to shop local) except things for one person, and I'll still get most of it here. Sometimes I just like looking at someplace other than Evanston. Someplace with malls and all-night coffee shops and fast food on every corner. Someplace a city, even one with drivers as incredibly rude as Ogden.

I've fallen in love with horseradish sauce, because it makes everything, even ham, taste like my beloved unattainable sushi.

I'm wrapping everything in silver and blue this year. Silver paper with blue ribbon. I never thought of blue as a Christmas color, really, until this year. We're doing the City Christmas party in a blue and white snowflake theme because we're tired of plain old red and green. It's turning out fantastic.

Did you know you can read some Dickens, some Shakespeare, some Flaubert, even some Jane Austen, all at Cliffnotes online? I read Madame Bovary in two hours the other day. I am extremely enlightened now. Except it just cleanly illustrated to me my proclivity for looking for myself in books, seeking traces of my life like faint spice in fresh-baked bread. I look for the lesson in every flavor.