we live in a six-unit building.
some neighbors are cool. some aren't.
one of those who is not has a small child (as well as others not so small... see earlier entry about motorcyles). tonight, that small child, in the basement, as her guardian (the uncool neighbor) took care of laundry, amused herself by flipping our circuit breakers. just those for our apartment, mind you.
first time, "oh. i thought we tripped the circuit breaker. please don't do that. you're turning off our power."
second time, "please stop. that's pretty inconsiderate."
the response: "don't tell me what to do. you don't understand what it's like. wait till you have kids."
i get it. i know that being a condescending neighbor (that's me, here) doesn't really add to the good side of the world's balance. and, she's right, i don't understand what it's like to have a little kid to keep an eye on as i add fabric softener.
but my god, what the hell? aren't you supposed to apologize for that sort of nonsense? even if we both know that it's not that big a deal? even a clearly faked "sorry 'bout that" would have been nice. i got nothing but "get over it."
maybe it's just the curmudgeon in me, and i might take this post down in the morning, but needed someplace to blow some steam.
when george brought up the sins of backblogging, i thought, well, at least you post every once in a while.
i'm not interested in seeing this thing die off anytime soon, though the evidence seems to indicate otherwise. i'm following other folks' regular entries (all compelling, by the way), and this weird thing is happening. i've actually begun to feel guilty, like (dave e) is a whimpering pet, able to feed itself on a blogroll, but neglected nonetheless. this sensation may very well be familiar to the elder statesmen of the online commentariat, but i'm not excited about its arrival. i have other neglected writing to feel guilty about.
the guilt is, of course, absurd. my fragmented manifesto here was supposed to be about shirking the duty to post, worrying little about being precise, rough-drafting embryonic notions. i seem to recall an extended discussion in which i paraded the idea of confession-free-of-guilt around, insisting that this thing's* imperfection would be its proud banner.
so, is the above some sort of forced confession? an apology to my weblog? good grief.
ok. now i've written and posted something. whew. i feel better.
[warning: wreckless promise about future blog entries ahead:] finished neil sheehan's a bright shining lie: john paul vann in vietnam, the other day. no more books about vietnam for me, thanks. i'd like to write about this one, though. as biographical history, a bright shining lie makes a strong case for vast historical survey in the guise of life-writing. and vice versa. sheehan's method, constructing a very ambitious narrative that rests almost exclusively on biographical supports--almost every major event in the vietnam conflict takes the narrative form of a biography of its central figures--is an epic demonstration of the interdependence of life-writing and history. what is striking is the absence of generic hierarchy between the two; the narrative recognizes that stories of lives and stories of events tell each other. i feel as if i've just read a collective biography of vann, david halberstam, daniel ellsberg, william westmoreland, everyone in vann's family, several generations of vietnamese generals and political leaders, about a hundred u.s. generals, a thousand colonels, and a million lieutenants. a vast book. more later.
finishing joan didion's political fictions. more later, but stumbling on this book was fortunate timing. frankly, i needed someone like didion to remind me to take a step back from the horse race for a little bit.
* strange. "this thing" feels better than "blog."
this morning, on a run, i stopped and turned toward natalie for a second, because i thought i heard her trip. it was still dark, so it took a few seconds to see that she was fine. in a sort of 180-degree pivot to start, i ran into the back of a parked station wagon. turned hard, began to lunge forward, and slammed up against glass and metal. the car, i am happy to report, survived without scar. i bruised the inside of a knee and my pointy hip bone.
just to repeat: i ran into the back of a parked station wagon. that's one of those objects i'm usually able to detect, given my keen senses. perhaps a thoughtful response would point out that, well, at least it was just after six in the morning, so surely there were no people standing around, watching, adding to my embarrasment. unfortunately, the noise that i thought was natalie stumbling was actually the closing door of a guy leaving for work.
one more time: i ran into the back of a parked station wagon. with an audience.
looks like ryan and i aren't the only ones doing this "the greatest band" business. slate's in on it, too. rem? U2? i dunno... you pick!
by the way, i wholeheartedly regret saying publicly that _____ is the greatest band ever.
by the other way, i find it noticeably odd that so much of the so little time i've spent writing to/for/on/through/in (dave e) has lately been devoted to music. music writing intimidates me. that's a really exlusive genre, and it's easy to look pretty uninformed. i think i'll make an effort to avoid it for a while.
[desperately looking for one of those smartass observations about the "usefulness of the internet".]
i stand accused of engaging in over-the-top superlatives around here.
here we go again:
just wanted to mention that tom waits' mule variations, simultaneously ethereal and subterranean, works just fine for me as the Official Soundtrack for october. other waits albums could do the trick, but this one sounds just right for crackly leaves blowing around, leaving creepy dead branches. his broken characters fit nicely in that frame.
other suggestions?
a few weeks ago, ryan rightly (and poignantly) marked a climatalogical reminder.
i'm having one of those today. but mine's not so chilling, just nostalgic.
clear, 58 degrees, a bit windy. today's weather has put my fidgety brain back in an open-air range rover, bumping along the dry road beds around kruger national park in south africa. lucky does not begin to explain my experience. i'll spare any reader a detailed travel narrative; it's been over a year, anyway, so chronology and cohesion are fuzzy, but i do remember moments. waiting for thousands of cape buffalo to open up a space on the road. utterly unnerving eye contact with troop-leading baboon. the superloud growl of a leopard jumping out of the brush a few yards from our range rover. the rumble of a passing elephant at night. jackal noise in the wee hours. the resounding crack of a giraffe femur in the jaws of a snacking lion.
an october day in washington is almost as potent a mental cue for memories of that trip as the visits to photo albums and maps that it stimulates.
yeah, so, with weather like this, in a south african winter, i followed natalie to the southern african wildlife college, where she executed a workshop she had planned. after a week at the college (whose "campus" is a pretty large collection of thatch-roof buildings surrounded by a fence in the midst of an enormous preserve owned by the college -- there is no fence between the college land and kruger), she and i (and a conservationist friend) drove ourselves around kruger for a few days, and the two of us celebrated our first anniversary with a few nights at umlani bushcamp (which, despite all of its "essence of africa" and "yesteryear" rhetoric, immediately became my favorite place on earth), in the timbavati preserve.
i'm fully conscious of the fact that those two days of "africa" at a private reserve were very much a vacationer's packaged view of wildlife, and i heard no end of the fact that our rental-car drive through s africa proper, outside of park fences and private reserves, was a tour of infinitely more "developed" country than any other african nation's population. still, that drive, on a chill morning, past nondescript concrete buildings, roadside trash, and the endless collection of people who seem to just be walking with no destination, is part of my memory, too.
some other time, i'll try to write about my "authentic" african experience, which had to do with a trip to the local bank. the most striking plot elements: a high-powered rifle and my a-c-u-t-e unease with its presence.
i'm not upset about the very recent return of heat in our apartment (whoo!), but i do sort of miss the feeling of cold dry air chilling my ears as i listened to rumbling elephants.