Well, as I suspected, I've already arrived at a point where I don't really want to write anything in particular.
It's late. I barely slept last night -- Buster the Redheaded Cat decided, at 3 am, that it was imperative for him to paw at the glass door of the clothes closet in the bedroom. It took me fifteen minutes to get him out of the room, because in the dark, he's virtually invisible, at least to me. (In the daylight, he kind of blends in with the color of the floors, as a matter of fact) I ended up sleeping on the sofa in the den, just to keep the cats from bugging John -- he never gets enough sleep, as far as I'm concerned.
With half an eye, I'm watching a strange Spanish movie about... Frankenstein? It's difficult to say. I've seen a blonde girl try to strangle a black cat, and when the cat scratches her tormentor, the girl uses the blood from her wound to paint her lips. Then, in the next scene, she's lying on the floor in her room, apparently dead. There's also an escaped criminal who jumps off a train, and brings a little music box to the blonde girl's little dark-haired sister Anna. Then he gets shot. And there are bees. The outdoor shots seem to underline the acute aridity of Spain -- I can see how Miro arrived at his painting vocabulary. I really love foreign films -- they make me feel slightly idiotic, and remind me, in a way, of being a very young child, when I didn't understand the sounds that people around me were making.
There was a concert at Christ Church yesterday -- a trio with a violinist, a pianist and a cellist. The violinist did most of the playing, but all the pieces were duets. Usually, when I hear live music, it makes me cry, but this didn't have that impact on me. The playing was arresting, and I was amazed at how in sync the violinist and the cellist were, in a difficult piece by Ravel.
But instead of doodling, as I usually find it imperative for me to do, whenever I have to sit still for very long (and I'm not driving a car), I found myself thinking about my character flaws. I started making a list of them, and rounded it out while I was waiting to see my prescribing psychiatrist earlier this evening. Here's what I came up with: I am -- unnecessary; bitter; unpleasant; critical; insincere; dissonant; costly; unentitled; unworthy; slovenly; callous; inconsiderate; lazy; vain; dishonest; careless; self-absorbed; supercilious; impossible to please; and lacking in integrity. I guess that'll do for the time being. And for the most part, I despair of ever amending any of these shortcomings, as I've been aware of many of them for decades, and am still more or less the same.
Oh, Frankenstein finally showed up, in the movie. And I think there was something else about the bees, and some mushrooms too. Anna got lost, and then her father found her. Then there was something else that I didn't see because I was concentrating on this, and the movie was over. So far I've counted imported scenes from 'Fanny and Alexander', 'Road Warrior', 'Frankenstein (of course); 'Pan's Labyrinth' and I'm sure there were some other borrowings too.
And I am actually too tired to make anything like sense any more, so I think I'll just let this be my sorry contribution to the seemingly endless flow of... discourse, at least for the time being.
One final thought, though -- it is possible that, because so many people are talking so much more to so many other people, that the English language will undergo more rapid change than it would have, if we didn't have our constant personal communication systems within reach at all times of the day and night? I was prompted, once again, to think about this while I was getting gas in the van in Millburn -- the station attendant had one of those bluetooth head rigs, and he was rattling away in a tongue I didn't understand -- and once again, I wondered how so many people can have so much to say to each other. As for myself, I hate even to answer the phone, and have only just recently gotten more or less in the habit of having my cell phone in my pocket. But I hate it when it buzzes.
And with that, I will say a bien tot.
© 2013 Walter Zimmerman
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