A Single Layer

This weekend, while wandering past the cheetah exhibit at the Living Desert , Martin and I learned some valuable life lessons: 1. 'Life is about experiences, not the things you pick up along the way' (spoken by a father to his five year old son). 2. 'Cheetah's don't cheat!' (spoken by the wife of speaker number one, to their three or four year old son). On top of all this, I have expanded my vocubulary. Almost. That is, I acquired this most fantastic word: ferruginous but have no idea what it means. It described a hawk that we saw - caged but happy - during our dusty tour of the L.D. According to their website, they also have a ferruginous pygmy owl, but this I don't remember coming across. I suppose I also ought to clarify that the image above is of a Harris's Hawk which, though may be many wonderful things besides, is not particularly ferruginous. More to follow.

According to Blogger, my computer is now located in Cathedral City. The change occured on November 13th. Where was I? or should I be asking, where AM I? The room looks the same...

In anticipation of many busy days ahead, I want to write something - anything - for the meanwhile. There is not much to tell at the moment, which is odd, since I feel as though much has happened. Like as not, the feeling is more from the books and movies I've been watching than the actual state of things. Life is decidedly simple. Tomorrow will be my first day working a good number of hours. That is, I might actually be earning enough to feed myself as well as pay off the creditors. Straight after work on Wednesday, I'll be driving to Long Beach to spend about 24 hours with my parents. I don't think I'll be there in time to serve Thanksgiving dinner to the homeless (they're serving it a night early, then a big breakfast the next morning), but there will be volunteers enough for that. Mom and I will wear our cornacopihats while making pumpkin pie and sneaking tastes of cranberry sauce. Were more people coming, I'd make the cranberry sauce Nick made last year in E...

It would seem that I have joined another blog. Sprung from my Edinburgh peeps, you will find it here: http://nwc-wcp.blogspot.com/ I am almost the only person to contribute, but I suppose that comes from the same impulse that makes me sit in the front of classrooms. If you're gonna do a thing, get it over with and do it with all you have. (I apply this impulse inconsistently; note the variation in my habits with regards to floor cleaning and phone calling.) The new blog relates mostly to our reading habits, so it will not steal me away too often, nor should it deflect too many posts from this noble forum (if I may call such a self-centred site a 'forum').

A minor correction and some additions to my previous post on the subject of the McCallum Theatre's choreography competition of last night. The Hero-like ballet which completed the competition was entitled 'Falling Petals', not 'Falling Leaves'. I was in error. There was clearly no connection between the two routines. Leaves, petals, fluttering colours and swishy movement - utterly unrelated. There were other observations that I wanted to make, however, before they slipped my mind. Years hence, no, even now, they may only be of use to jog my own memory of the actual event - of no interest to my readers at all - but I will put them here anyway. To begin with, the first dance (Nicole Haskins's 'Fading Shadows' from the Sacramento Ballet Company, featuring several couples dancing alternately in variations on more or less the same physical/aesthetic theme - forgive me for having no knowledge of the language used to describe or analyse dance as an art) reminde...

My eyes are foggy with sleep and strain - sleep I have not yet taken but need, and strain for vision... as I've just returned from the 10th annual choreography festival at the McCallum Theatre. There is much I could say that I have no will for. Above, I have tried to post a video of clips from the Backhaus Dance Company, whose choreographer - Jennifer Backhaus - arranged my favourite piece of the evening. It was... like life and love in a dance (it is so horribly incomplete to say such a thing!). Two people, interacting with an unseen world, interacting with each other, being one and yet two, acknowledging moments of intimacy in a pattern of distraction and yet never veering far from each other's skin. There were other beautiful dances which I cannot describe or give credit to (the grand prize winner looked remarkably like the falling leaves scene from Hero. it was called Falling Leaves. hmm...) due to the state of my eyes, the fuzz of my brain, and the distance between me and ...

I'm in the mood for lists. Lists of favourites and bests. Here's one, sprung from the moment. Add to it as you please. Favourite places to sit quietly: 1. the living room (not the family room), at the couch where no one can see you but where you can hear everything in the house just enough to know you are escaping it. 2. the tall tables by the windows in the French restaurant, reading Anna Karenina or talking to Tara about Jack. 3. the ledge outside St Giles Cathedral, particularly when escaping the flood and flow of tourists along the Royal Mile - watching them flood and flow, pleased in one's own stillness, with the fortress of Scottish Presbyterianism at one's back. 4. the fox bench at the park, where my Mom and I once fed Luke Carl's Jr. burgers at dusk and where, on a different nightfall, we thought the world was coming to an end. 'It can't be the rapture,' she said, only half-believing herself, 'because you're still here.' 5. underneath...

Things to hope for: 1. A photographic blog-account of the wedding of Tara and Spencer, as much as might be interesting those who were not in attendance, i.e. you. 2. Another somewhat-mindless minimum wage part-time job so that I can buy groceries. 3. My First Things subscription, ordered two months ago and still not arrived. 4. Protestant clarity. 5. The return of Harry the Mailman. Since his absence, I have declared my love for him shamelessly to so many. Come back so that I can return to my silent and sensible self. 6. Ceilidhs and kilts. 7. Finishing one book. Just one. And being able to afford a coffee date to discuss this book with my new friend who is still merely an aquaintance who used to sit behind me in church and whom I silently acknowledged and secretly admired for being one of the marrieds without seeming obnoxious. 8. 26 more pages. 9. Making this list go to ten. 10. Being able to pay my library fine, now at more than six dollars. Things no longer hoped for, but present a...