By Rainer Maria Rilke
Translated by Stephen Mitchell
We cannot know his legendary head
with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso
is still suffused with brilliance from inside,
like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,
gleams in all its power. Otherwise
the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could
a smile run through the placid hips and thighs
to that dark center where procreation flared.
Otherwise this stone would seem defaced
beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders
and would not glisten like a wild beast's fur:
would not, from all the borders of itself,
burst like a star: for here there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life.
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It was not as warm on Wednesday as on Tuesday but it was still pretty gorgeous. Still, I spent more of the day on my butt in front of the computer, because Yahoo was livestreaming the Les Miserables premiere red carpet from Leicester Square so I spent a two-hour lunchtime very slowly eating a bagel while watching interviews with Russell Crowe, Hugh Jackman, Helena Bonham Carter, Tom Hooper, and lots of other delightful people. I am totally psyched for this movie and will brook no complaints about how so-and-so could have sung the part better; I am quite content with the cast we're getting, and no one's going to make me Colm Wilkinson or Patti LuPone but they're several decades too old for their stage roles.
I had a coupon from the Silver Diner for a free dinner and dessert for my birthday, so since Adam had late tech rehearsal plus dinner at school, Paul and I went out to dinner (I had a feta cheese omelet with home fries and we split a brownie sundae). Afterwards we walked across the parking lot to World Market (where I resisted the fannish Pez dispensers and Christmas Cadbury, but not the peppermint cocoa mix) and Trader Joe's (because we are out of Mediterranean hummus). After retrieving Adam and driving his girlfriend home, we watched this week's Merlin, which was pretty hilariously great, and Nashville, which I like best when it's more music than fictional politics. Here are photos from Garrett Park last weekend, including the historic town hall and the train station:
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