corvus

A Little Company for the Night By: Corvus Alex began: “So this guy checks into an old hotel for the night. It’s empty except for him—and this woman that he sees at night, wandering the floor above his.” Matt nodded, listening. “Yeah, go on.” “So he’s really curious about this woman, but he only sees her in glimpses—and he notices that she wears a really… blue dress. Like, a deep, deep blue.” Matt nodded again as Alex gave a significant pause

Tomasz (a recent college graduate, gay, un-employed) finds it difficult to talk to his mother, even in the last months she has to live.

talk corvus Tomasz split his days caring for his mother, who was dying, and cruising for sex. Caring for his dying mom was the easy part. She refused to go to the hospital, plus they didn't have the money for it. Now that she hadn't gone to work since last September—teaching grade three kids, who every morning politely called her “Mrs. Biddle,” even though she was divorced—and since Tomasz was a good-for-nothing, they had only the money Tomasz's dad sent them. It

It is something of a game changer, imo. Like what Nephylim said, the question is more of what is 'marriage' rather than 'gay marriage.' Marriage as a legal matter independent from religious matters is, of course, correct, but there's no escaping all the connotations and history of that word -- echoes of family, alliances, recognition, etc. There's a huge difference in saying 'I'm a husband' rather than 'I'm a partner,' even if the legal rights are the same.

Wow, speak about mixed feelings. Atlas Shrugged has that kind of egoistic supermanism that I absolutely loathe... but it is very attractive. Oddly, now that I think of it, the book had a very movie-like feel. Maybe it'll catch on -- especially with the Tea Partiers right now.

I think I'm missing the first few days of grad school too -- to vacation with my bf. So go see Jason Mraz.

Happy birthday! :king::ranger: May your birthday day be like the high Eb in the 1951 Mexico Aida, and the rest of your life like the sales of Maria Callas's discography in general. :pickaxe:

I was worried that it was something more serious than lunch! Although lunch is serious too.

Wow, that's a pretty intense dream. I think I'm being quite objective in saying that the language you have there in the end reminds me of the sort of mesmeric fervor of Borges and Garcia Marquez.

I never buy books. It's great -- I never have to feel guilty about a shoddy purchase, and I never feel the need to force myself through a book as a result. And since I can't renew library books indefinitely, I have an excuse for all the books I never finished. Books I never finished include Joyce's Ulysses (I got through 1/5), Eliot's Middlemarch (I got through 1/3), and David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest (I got through 1/2). I'd actually like to finish the last two, but they were long and got recalled/I left the state. But I was very glad to return DeLillo's Mao II. It was such a middle-aged upper-middle-class white American writer's jack off fantasy fantasy. The 200+ pages of crap was basically about a harem of women enthralled with the writer's masculine pen.

A man after my heart. I love anything sung by Maria Callas, b/c I so admire her musicality, even if her timbre was flawed. The bel canto operas have a special place in my heart (Donizetti and Bellini esp), and June Anderson is my favorite living exponent. Singers with good squillo are my favorites. Mozart operas are excellent too, esp Don Giovanni, Le Nozze di Figaro, and Zauberfloete. Wagner can be excellent -- I enjoy both interpretations steeped in the German manner (von Karajan, Furtwangler) and those with faster tempi (Solti). I am a big fan of Bach. Gould is great, as are other interpreters like Tureck, Landowska, Pinnock. His chamber and choral works are great, although I think Gardiner is often too tepid (pity, since everyone, esp libraries, thinks he's great). I also like Vivaldi, CPE Bach, Schubert. Tschaikvosky and Beethoven come in doses. But well, who doesn't? Saint Seans, Debussy, Rimsky Korsakov, Prokofiev. Lately I've been exploring Polish forms, e.g. polonez and mazurka. I'm also exploring Russian contemporary music -- I can say that I solidly enjoy Shostakovich's 5th symphony. Works from the other end of the spectrum, i.e. early music, also fascinates me, particularly Gesualdo. Purcell, Gibbons have a peculiarly plangent English quality. Dunno about Handel (my bf likes him). I am constantly exploring other contemporary composers, though results are mixed. Corigliano has flashes in the pan, as does Barber. Bernstein is fun. Penderecki is mad. Tan Dun has wonderful compositions. Glass can be tedious or very good, as can Einaudi; Adams is all right. Nyman, because it's mainly film scores, is great. (I should say -- I like film scores too, Williams, Horner, Badalamenti, Newton Howard, Poledouris, Shore, Elfman, Patrick Doyle, etc.) I also follow the music of Loreena Mckennitt, Bjork, Enya, Madonna (she's getting worse), Radiohead, and Lady Gaga. I like Simon and Garfunkel, Carpenters (those two are thanks to my parents), Jeff Buckley, the Beatles, and whatever house music my guy forces into my head.

I think that being smart is overrated. Smart is just how well you process data and respond. I'm old fashioned, maybe, and think there're other things that are important in the same way that there are differences between definition and meaning.

Aww. Thanks for the post.

Well, I would say you're very, very fit now... I'm sure you're not stressing your body out harmfully -- so I'm sure it's fine. Anyway, there must be good eye candy on that carousel of yours.

hilarious! and i like the fawlty towers reference

Fascinating, I'd not heard of this before. It's tempting to try to explain it by culture/history, but my half-a..ed attempt doesn't work out. I would've expected "melting pots" to be low context cultures, like the US, but curiously Germany is on the list.* Linguistically, however, German is a language that accrues -- it words can get monstrously long -- so it's possible to be very specific. A language like Chinese, however, in which the words are discrete and almost paratactic, seems almost to necessitate low context. To to original topic (but keeping Mark's post in mind), there are exceptions and trends. Dickens can't be said to be concise. On the other hand, he was a product of a particular time in British history. Hemingway can't be said to be verbose. (He's even quite high context, I think.) My gut feeling is that British prose is characterized by a kind of "wry aside" -- a sort of understated humor or jaunt that runs through Austen, Forster, Rowling... most British authors I've read, I think. I haven't really run into American authors using that sort of humor -- but whether that's reactive or innate, it's hard to tell. I'm reading David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest, which is pretty verbose. * On the other hand Germany is a bit of a melting pot, having gotten unified really quite late, unlike France.

Happy birthday, Vic! I see many lean, white, geeky jocks in your future.

Happy birthday!

Like you, I'm approaching this "keep-in-shape" with an accumulating rather than dwindling perspective... I've a naturally narrow frame anyway, but I'm 140 lb and 5' 11" -- the most I got was about 150 when I worked out 3x a week. But I think I lost that from the stress, last year, of flying places and clubbing+drinking too much+vomiting afterward. Anyway now I fiddle around with two dumbbells at home and gravity, and go swimming. (Incidentally yesterday when I weighed myself I was 141: hallelujah!) Your face is not a mess. And that's more or less what I did to get my man, so based on a sample size of one, it's a good way to go.

Maybe you should try poetry. Most poems are short enough that you can be as perfectionist as you like. Also, IMO, you may have an aptitude -- if it was a conscious choice for you not to capitalize that last "I" in your last sentence, it means you like the sort of tricks/effects that would be worthwhile capitalizing in poesy.

Hey, happy birthday!

The color of my bf's cheeks. Which are a kind of rosy.

Congratulations paya! I'm only speaking for personal experience, but sometimes I think meeting someone virtually -- and going through the difficult task of keeping an ongoing correspondence -- is the best way of doing a courtship. If words are, as I believe, the crowning expression of selfhood, then a fulfilling correspondence is the most valuable interaction possible, more so than sex or physical companionship. Of course, physical things do and will matter, but isn't the soul more important? Then again, my sort of paradigm would only work between two writers or poets or intellectuals. I am also being a bit of a hypocrite. Anyway, I wish you and your friend all the best.

Oi, I know someone like that. He camped in front of my room for literally hours at night when I refused to unlock the door. My sympathies -- but he seems to be out of your life for good.

I used to jog to Mozart's Requiem in D Minor. The Introitus for warming up, and the Kyrie and Dies Irae for really going at it. And when I wanted to cruise, it'd be the Commendatore scene from Don Giovanni, or the mad scene (Il dolce suono... Alfin son tua... Spargi d'amaro pianto) from Lucia -- the 1955 with Callas, von Karajan conducting. Yes, I'm a classical nut. But I also do Bjork (Pagan Poetry, Hyperballad) and Madonna (Secret, Erotica).