Saturday, December 17, 2005

Poem for Saturday


Provision
By W.S. Merwin


All morning with dry instruments
The field repeats the sound
Of rain
From memory
And in the wall
The dead increase their invisible honey
It is August
The flocks are beginning to form
I will take with me the emptiness of my hands
What you do not have you find everywhere

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Despite a two-hour school delay due to the ice storm, my younger son had his winter concert, at which they played assorted holiday music and Americana to prerecorded accompaniment, which was a blessing considering that half the violins were bowing up on "My Country Tis Of Thee" while the other half were bowing down. It was creaky but entertaining. Meanwhile my husband was here being told that replacing the timing belt on our dryer was going to run $250. Does this sound plausible to other people? (Please don't tell me how much more cheaply we could do it ourselves, with something that could start a house fire I do not feel safe doing home repairs, just tell me if that number seems outrageously high or about right for parts and labor, since Sears will charge us $60 just for an estimate at which point if it does cost $250 it may be more cost-effective just to buy a new dryer.)

My classic Trek review for the week is quite possibly my absolute favorite episode, "Amok Time". I thought about writing a typical thing about Vulcan psychology and physiology and all that, and then I said fuck that and wrote a review that asked the question upon which the history of organized slash fandom is predicated to a large degree: If Kirk and Spock were stranded on a planet and Spock went into pon farr, would Kirk (who is completely accepting of the idea that he could lose his command -- something I suspect he treasures far more than his heterosexuality -- to save Spock's life in "Amok Time") do whatever it takes to save him? Of course he would. No brainer. End of story. Mwahahaha. Have only gotten one piece of hate mail so far but I have not had time to read the bulletin boards for the flames that are undoubtedly there (not that flames mean much there, as there is a heated discussion going on by people who hate it when the original series is called the original series!)

I had no time to read (and I had gay characters on the brain) because we had Brokeback Mountain tickets in the evening. I need to see it again because I was crying so hard for the last 20 minutes or so that I had to have my glasses off and couldn't see very clearly. The two men sitting next to me were crying just as hard. If Heath Ledger does not win an Oscar I will eat my Entertainment Weekly. Also, I am enormously nostalgic for the Canadian Rockies; the last time I was in Alberta was 1986. (I know it's supposed to be Wyoming but I remember those mountains.) It was very true to the story as I remember it -- I haven't read it in a year or so -- I felt like Jack's story got fleshed out more than Ennis' but I think I paid more attention to Ennis because so much more was from his POV. The story, by the way, is here until someone finds it and it moves again. I can't write any sort of real coherent review because I didn't watch at all critically, my reactions were very emotional; I think Michelle Williams was excellent, really everyone in the cast was superb, but Ledger's the one playing the guy who can't even tell himself what he's feeling and that's one heck of a thing to convey.

: Objects May Be Closer Than They Appear
1. What is the oldest object in the room with you?
I'm not sure but it might be a piece of wood from the original deck of the USS Constellation. I think the Roman coin got put away upstairs when we got the new TV.
2. What is the newest? The Annie Haslam CD I got in the mail today.
3. What is your favorite object in the room with you? At the moment, assuming that my husband and my cat don't count, it's probably this computer.
4. What is the most valuable object? Probably the television in terms of street value; in terms of personal value it's probably the CDs where I have all my photos of my kids burned.
5. What is the ugliest object? The scorpion paperweight that one of my kids got at some science store and left down here.

: What 5 characters would you like to go shopping with and what would you be shopping for?
1. Q
from James Bond for gadgets. (Would be perfectly happy just to sit in his laboratory, so long as I got to take the less violent, more useful ones home with me.)
2. Lucius Malfoy from Harry Potter for cool magical objects. (Okay, really I would be happy to go shopping with anyone from Harry Potter for anything, but I figure Lucius has both exquisite taste and the money to buy whatever he wants...and, you know, I'd be with Lucius!)
3. Jack Aubrey from Patrick O'Brian's books for musical scores. (He discovered Johann Sebastian Bach; I don't need to know anything else.)
4. Emma Peel from The Avengers for clothes. (I would not be trying on the clothes -- I would be watching her pick out and model them.)
5. Kira Nerys from Deep Space Nine for jumja sticks and hasperat. (Actually, while both Bajoran delicacies sound good to me -- the former is sweet and the latter is spicy -- I just want an excuse to hang out with Kira, and I don't see her hanging out at Garak's trying on dresses.)


I just heard on the news that John Spencer died at 58 of the same thing that almost killed Leo McGarry, a heart attack. How terribly sad. A lot of his colleagues had nice things to say about him at CNN. I wonder what will happen to the Santos-McGarry campaign.


The intermediate strings consult before the concert.


Still have sore throat and keep getting sinus headaches but am vastly better than a couple of days ago. I think bawling at the movies helped. Tomorrow, unfortunately, we may be shopping for dryers...

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