Thursday, October 14, 2010

I and My Life Will Shut Very Beautifully

I'm three years away from being out from under a mortgage barring complete reaming by the coming mortgage clusterfuck, but I'm about to go half-a-mortgage under soon when Planet picks an elitist Liberal Arts school, one of which might be Bowdoin or Connecticut College; we're flying this afternoon to Boston then driving to Brunswick ME for an official interview at Bowdoin Friday morning, then driving to New London CT to interview Saturday morning. (We land at Logan Thursday at 7:00PM, probably get out with the rental by nine, then drive into New Hampshire, get a room, sleep a few hours, get up at six and drive north to Brunswick, interview, turnaround and immediately drive south to New London. Montag, I'll wave hi to and from from the 295 overpass over 309.)

I know this sounds callous and complicitous, but my generation of mes probably won't lack for catfood, it's my daughter's generation that will begin hording catfood, it's my grand-childrens' world that need survive the catfood famines, both natural and man-made, but my only child wants to go to Bowdoin or Hamilton or Carleton or any of seven others, we can afford to send her to a school which will credential her to be in a class of Americans who'll risk exposure to tainted blackmarket catfood almost next to last, and so would you.


I'm still distraught with the certainty I'm leaving my daughter a world shittier than my parents left me, but I fear I've underestimated with my puny hive-mind how many zeroes are multiplying zeroes in cascades of kazillions of totalitarian square-root signs, that my house may be repossessed by square root even after I've paid it off, that my timeline of catfoodery is too optimistic by at least one generation.

  • Stand-up comedy.
  • 5 myths about taxes.
  • Progressive, like the 1980s.
  • Work forever.
  • PSA.
  • Strawpersons
  • Bay Bridge one of world's scariest?
  • MOCO cops taze 65 year old man.
  • I don't know if this was a suicide, but there's a history of people committing suicide by stepping in front of freight trains near Randolph Road.
  • UPDATE! Yesterday I got a lot of hits at the old place from people googling images of Michelle Lissel, the dreamy dominatrix from Fox Soccer Channel who left FSC to take a front office job with Toronto FC and I wondered why. Maybe this had something to do with it.
  • Poster Children is one of the bands in the CD crates found when Elric moved his stuff out of our basement.



    Born 116 years ago today:

    somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond

    E.E. Cummings

    somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
    any experience,your eyes have their silence:
    in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
    or which i cannot touch because they are too near
    
    your slightest look easily will unclose me
    though i have closed myself as fingers,
    you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
    (touching skilfully,mysteriously) her first rose
    
    or if your wish be to close me, i and
    my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
    as when the heart of this flower imagines
    the snow carefully everywhere descending;
    
    nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
    the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
    compels me with the color of its countries,
    rendering death and forever with each breathing
    
    (i do not know what it is about you that closes
    and opens;only something in me understands
    the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
    nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands


    Here's another band in the CD crate found in my basement:

    9 comments:

    1. At first I wondered how long the dry cat food will last before becoming stale, but soylent greens can't be choosers.

      I figure if I can get my kids to be less of a jerk on a macro scale than I am (the right to flip the bird at an individual person or corporate entity must never be forsaken) than I've been moderately successful.

      Well, if I gotta work forever, at least the books will catch most of the drool.

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    2. Don't know. We need to be at Bowdoin by nine Friday morning, it's pouring and storming right now in DC so who knows if the flight is delayed, even if it's on time how long to get the rental in Boston, how long to get out of Boston and up 95, we're planning to drive until we're beat, get as close to Brunswick as possible.

      Planet had a major test this morning or we would have caught a morning flight and saved us the rush. I thought about both you in NH and Montag near Portland, but too much of this trip is out of my control....

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    3. one of these times you'll have to stop on the way through.

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    4. Keep an eye on the weather. You're apparently driving into the fray.

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    5. Well, Bowdoin is one of her top choices, so if she gets in and decides to go, we'll be up there often.

      Last time we were at Connecticut College was the storm this past Spring that flooded Rhode Island. This time I'm bringing extra shoes.

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    6. I like the John Steed. Avenge!

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    7. Good choices for Planet. Listen, give the kids some credit, ok? Not one but both my college kids have reported an interest in something called "Environmental Science". It's like the HOTTEST major now. It didn't even exist when we were coming along.

      Our generation was called on to close the 'generation gap' at home. To stop the cold war nuclear MAD-ness. To reduce global poverty. To link the world, make it smaller via new forms of digital communication. Among other things. Partial credit, but passing grades. En route we succumbed to greed (chiefest among other flaws).

      This generation senses what is needed. Education still has some virtue. They will succeed as far as their humanity allows.

      No generation leaves behind perfection. If so, the next group could do nothing but spoil it.

      Pints on it?

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    8. New England must hate you, dude. Just want you to know I'm not on the committee that decides that.

      By the way, since I've been semi-silent again for a little bit, wanted to say officially that I like the new place--doesn't look like anyone else's I've seen, in a good way. I don't know if the blegrell-overlapping-the-images thing is deliberate but it's a nice effect.

      I've updated my links & my google reader.

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