At the half in Maryland it is Maryland 42 #21 Syracuse 13!
Saturday, September 07, 2019
End of an Error
The “Raiders” National Concussion League franchise have released all-pro wide receiver Antonio Brown who is free to sign with any team beginning at 4 pm Eastern time today.
Dualities in Garden. "Dark" on virtually every page. Contradictions from one page to another. Strangeness, madness, insanity. Absinthe exacerbates Catherine's mental instability. It does do that. Thujone is a hallucinogen. David knows it makes her more crazy, tries to dissuade her. I don't know yet why Hemingway introduced absinthe.
...she had made the dark magic of the change again and he did not say no when she spoke to him...and he felt the change so that it hurt him all through and when it was finished...she whispered to him, "Now we have done it. Now we really have done it." (20)
...
They went together and swam...
...
"You don't really mind being brothers do you?" (Catherine)
"No." (21)
"You're awfully dark, brother," he said. "You don't know how dark."
"I like it," the girl said. "But I want to be darker."
...
"I'm trying to se such a very good girl," she said. "Truly you don't have to worry darling until night." (22)
...
"The young man [David] put some oil on the palm of his hand and spread it lightly with his fingers over the girl's thighs.
...
"The young man borrowed a pencil...(23)
...
"Is Madame also a writer?"
"No," the girl said not looking up from the clippings. "Madame is a housewife." (24)
...
"Plenty of people would be happy if their damned husbands had good reviews."
"I'm not plenty of people and you're not my damned husband." (25)
...
"...you're my good lovely husband and my brother too. I love you and when we go to Africa I'll be your African girl too." (29)
...
"...I want us to get darker." (Catherine)
"Why do you want to be so dark?"
"I don't know...Doesn't it make you excited to have me getting so dark?"
"Uh-huh. I love it."
"Did you think I could ever be this dark?"
"No, because you're blond."
"...I want every part of me dark and it's getting that way and you'll be darker..."
(Details from Hieronymus Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights, (circa 1500), a major source of inspiration for Hemingway in Garden.)
"What will we be?"
"I don't know. Maybe we'll just be us. Only changed." (30)
...
"...Once we're really dark..." (Catherine)
"How dark are you going to get?"
"As dark as I can...I'm going to be so dark you won't be able to stand it."
...She changes from a girl into a boy and back to a girl carelessly and happily.
...
...he looked at the girl and kissed her cheek very lightly and she did not wake...the next day they would both be darker from the sun and how dark can she become, he thought, and how dark will she ever really be? (31)
...
The two young people in the car (David and Catherine. Margin note: Why is he doing this?)
...
"There's a cafe with tables under the trees," the young man said." (35)
...
In the dark the young man pulled a light blanket up over the sheet...
...
She kissed him and he could feel her hand touching him.
"That's good, she said in the darkness. That's lovely. You're sure you don't want me to change?" (36)
...how strange that the sun on her eyes should not wake her. (42)
..."her dark face..." (43)
...her incredibly darkened face. (44)
...
David moved a chair over and put his hand close on hers...
...
"But I hurt you about the clippings."
"No," he said. "You tried. You didn't make it."
"I'm so sorry, David. Please believe me."
"Everybody has strange things that mean things to them. You couldn't help it."
"No," the girl said and shook her head. (49)
...
"...You're the darkest white girl I've ever seen." (Colonel John Boyle) (63)
...
"Tell me where you got so dark," the Colonel said. "Do you know how dark you are?"
...
"And what are you going to do with it?"
"Wear it," she said. "It's very becoming in bed."
...
..."I don't really wear it. It's me. I really am this dark. The sun just develops it. I wish I was darker." (64)
...
...there would, it seemed to him, be no end to the change. (67)
...
"So that's how it is," he said to himself. "You've done that to your hair and had it cut the same as your girl's and how do you feel?" He asked the mirror. "How do you feel? Say it."
"You like it," he said.
...
"All right. You like it," he said. "Now go through with the rest of it whatever it is and don't ever say anyone tempted you or that anyone bitched you." (84)
He looked at the face that was no longer strange to him at all but was his face now and said,..."You know exactly how you look now and how you are." (85)
Of course he did not know exactly how he was.
...
Two girls who had driven up and parked...came over to the cafe...It was the beauty of the two who took the brandy and soda.
"Who are those two?" Catherine said. "Do you know?"
"I've never seen them."
"I have...I saw them in Nice."
"The one girl's handsome," David said.
"They're sisters," Catherine said. "They're both nice looking really."
"But the one's a beauty." (David)
...
"The one is a damned handsome girl." (David) (89)
The weather was insane now...there was no doubt that the weather was strange. Not only the weather, said Monsieur Aurol, everything was changed and what was not changed was changing fast. It might very well all be for the best and he, for one, did not oppose it." (94)
[Marita] had evidently been to the coiffeur's and her hair had been cropped short the way Catherine's had been at Biarritz." (95)
"I did something I know. But it's gone now."
..."But I wasn't unfaithful. Really David." (118)
...
..."Does she [Marita] feel badly?" (David)
"Only when I did. When I knew I was unfaithful." (119)
...she had made the dark magic of the change again and he did not say no when she spoke to him...and he felt the change so that it hurt him all through and when it was finished...she whispered to him, "Now we have done it. Now we really have done it." (20)
...
They went together and swam...
...
"You don't really mind being brothers do you?" (Catherine)
"No." (21)
"You're awfully dark, brother," he said. "You don't know how dark."
"I like it," the girl said. "But I want to be darker."
...
"I'm trying to se such a very good girl," she said. "Truly you don't have to worry darling until night." (22)
...
"The young man [David] put some oil on the palm of his hand and spread it lightly with his fingers over the girl's thighs.
...
"The young man borrowed a pencil...(23)
...
"Is Madame also a writer?"
"No," the girl said not looking up from the clippings. "Madame is a housewife." (24)
...
"Plenty of people would be happy if their damned husbands had good reviews."
"I'm not plenty of people and you're not my damned husband." (25)
...
"...you're my good lovely husband and my brother too. I love you and when we go to Africa I'll be your African girl too." (29)
...
"...I want us to get darker." (Catherine)
"Why do you want to be so dark?"
"I don't know...Doesn't it make you excited to have me getting so dark?"
"Uh-huh. I love it."
"Did you think I could ever be this dark?"
"No, because you're blond."
"...I want every part of me dark and it's getting that way and you'll be darker..."
(Details from Hieronymus Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights, (circa 1500), a major source of inspiration for Hemingway in Garden.)
"What will we be?"
"I don't know. Maybe we'll just be us. Only changed." (30)
...
"...Once we're really dark..." (Catherine)
"How dark are you going to get?"
"As dark as I can...I'm going to be so dark you won't be able to stand it."
...She changes from a girl into a boy and back to a girl carelessly and happily.
...
...he looked at the girl and kissed her cheek very lightly and she did not wake...the next day they would both be darker from the sun and how dark can she become, he thought, and how dark will she ever really be? (31)
...
The two young people in the car (David and Catherine. Margin note: Why is he doing this?)
...
"There's a cafe with tables under the trees," the young man said." (35)
...
In the dark the young man pulled a light blanket up over the sheet...
...
She kissed him and he could feel her hand touching him.
"That's good, she said in the darkness. That's lovely. You're sure you don't want me to change?" (36)
...how strange that the sun on her eyes should not wake her. (42)
..."her dark face..." (43)
...her incredibly darkened face. (44)
...
David moved a chair over and put his hand close on hers...
...
"But I hurt you about the clippings."
"No," he said. "You tried. You didn't make it."
"I'm so sorry, David. Please believe me."
"Everybody has strange things that mean things to them. You couldn't help it."
"No," the girl said and shook her head. (49)
...
"...You're the darkest white girl I've ever seen." (Colonel John Boyle) (63)
...
"Tell me where you got so dark," the Colonel said. "Do you know how dark you are?"
...
"And what are you going to do with it?"
"Wear it," she said. "It's very becoming in bed."
...
..."I don't really wear it. It's me. I really am this dark. The sun just develops it. I wish I was darker." (64)
...
...there would, it seemed to him, be no end to the change. (67)
...
"So that's how it is," he said to himself. "You've done that to your hair and had it cut the same as your girl's and how do you feel?" He asked the mirror. "How do you feel? Say it."
"You like it," he said.
...
"All right. You like it," he said. "Now go through with the rest of it whatever it is and don't ever say anyone tempted you or that anyone bitched you." (84)
He looked at the face that was no longer strange to him at all but was his face now and said,..."You know exactly how you look now and how you are." (85)
Of course he did not know exactly how he was.
...
Two girls who had driven up and parked...came over to the cafe...It was the beauty of the two who took the brandy and soda.
"Who are those two?" Catherine said. "Do you know?"
"I've never seen them."
"I have...I saw them in Nice."
"The one girl's handsome," David said.
"They're sisters," Catherine said. "They're both nice looking really."
"But the one's a beauty." (David)
...
"The one is a damned handsome girl." (David) (89)
The weather was insane now...there was no doubt that the weather was strange. Not only the weather, said Monsieur Aurol, everything was changed and what was not changed was changing fast. It might very well all be for the best and he, for one, did not oppose it." (94)
[Marita] had evidently been to the coiffeur's and her hair had been cropped short the way Catherine's had been at Biarritz." (95)
"I did something I know. But it's gone now."
..."But I wasn't unfaithful. Really David." (118)
...
..."Does she [Marita] feel badly?" (David)
"Only when I did. When I knew I was unfaithful." (119)
Friday, September 06, 2019
“I know it’s a minor episode, but I hope that doctored map makes its way into the Smithsonian someday. Like Washington’s uniform or Jefferson’s desk, Trump’s bogus map embodies the man.”
-Eugene Robinson
Put it in the Smithsonian. It does seem to me museum worthy. So singular that it should be in a museum. Yes, it is.
Now Pete Buttigieg:
"I feel sorry for the President, and that is not the way we should feel about the most powerful figure in this country...
“No matter how you cut it, this is an unbelievably sad state of affairs for our country.
"...even if we disagree with the President... what we're seeing there is literally pathetic. It makes you feel a kind of pity for everybody involved, and that's not how I want to feel about a president whether it's for my party or the other."
Like you would a defective, feeling sorry for him or her; “pity,” “sad,” “pathetic.” There is a detachment there. We’re looking at it at a remove from politics. As we would look at something in a museum! Pete's reaction is on the same plane as Nancy Pelosi's statement that she was against impeachment because, "He's just not worth it." Not worth it.
By far the most common reaction however has been direct, not detached but direct: derision. Comedians can remake their careers on just this one incident. And that is fine also. I have urged to an audience of tens that making fun of Trump and the Defectives is best. They hate that. The one thing that most gets under Trump's skin is best exemplified here:
He hated when the adults in the room early on said they were the adults in the room. Nobody likes to be laughed at. I will give you a true story to illustrate. The old TV situation comedy All in the Family. That show ranked number one in the Nielsen rankings every year from 1971-1976. In 1974 I met the first unfortunate ex-Mrs. Harris. Her father was a dead ringer attitudinally for Archie Bunker, I mean my God, it was unbelievable. I sheepishly asked the first Unfortunate if her father watched All in the Family. "No, because they laugh at Archie," she said. He knew, you see? He knew that he was a dead ringer for Archie Bunker and when he saw the entire country laughing at Archie he had the self-awareness to know that everybody laughed at him too!
Parsing, one should not make fun of somebody one "feels sorry" for. You don't go into a mental institution and make fun of the patients. The detachment of the reactions of Eugene Robinson, Pete Buttigieg, and Nancy Pelosi versus direct laughing...I do think this is different; there has been so much comedic fodder in this presidency, what's one more thing? But as a Trump Hater I cannot dismiss him as "not worth it," nor take a detached view. I do not feel sorry for him, I do not pity him, I hate him. Whatever works, I can't make up my mind but I lean heavily toward derision. If you made that image into a bumper sticker, is there anything more that need be said? Maybe I'll do that.
By far the most common reaction however has been direct, not detached but direct: derision. Comedians can remake their careers on just this one incident. And that is fine also. I have urged to an audience of tens that making fun of Trump and the Defectives is best. They hate that. The one thing that most gets under Trump's skin is best exemplified here:
Parsing, one should not make fun of somebody one "feels sorry" for. You don't go into a mental institution and make fun of the patients. The detachment of the reactions of Eugene Robinson, Pete Buttigieg, and Nancy Pelosi versus direct laughing...I do think this is different; there has been so much comedic fodder in this presidency, what's one more thing? But as a Trump Hater I cannot dismiss him as "not worth it," nor take a detached view. I do not feel sorry for him, I do not pity him, I hate him. Whatever works, I can't make up my mind but I lean heavily toward derision. If you made that image into a bumper sticker, is there anything more that need be said? Maybe I'll do that.
I had an idea last night after I had shut everything down. I remembered it this morning and jotted it down.
I love flash mobs, I don't love the name, don't even like the name, but love the idea. The wonder of a surprise musical performance, the musicians and singers coming in plain clothes from all directions out of the blue.
Wonder is the highest, uniquely human emotion Rene Descartes believed until he didn't believe it. I think he was right the first time. Another example of wonder would be the reaction to Susan Boyle's initial recital.
My idea was informed also by being in court yesterday. I don't know wh...Ah! I do know why. I walked out of court with my client. I got his case resolved for him in an excellent way and we were both elated. As we walked out of the courthouse with our arms around each other onto the elevated landing that connected to the sidewalk below by steps he paused and handing his phone asked a man on the top step ahead of us if he could take a picture of my client and I together. The man smiled and took the picture. It was such a touching tribute that my client paid me with that photo.
So my idea was a spontaneous tribute, a flash mob tribute if you insist. The idea was informed also by the number of lawyers who have passed in the last few years, who I knew, who were friends, who were not renowned lawyers but had done their jobs well and truly for decades and passed unsung. That made me think of all the people who live lives well and truly and pass away unsung by tributes during life. Like my secretaries. Birthday tributes in my thinking didn't count. The germs of my idea therefore were 1) unsung 2) random 3) work 4) tribute 5) public.
I imagined it playing out like this: On a completely random day a secretary mechanically enters the lobby of her building to take the elevator to her floor and it's all set up just as in a flash mob. Security is in on it and in their regular uniforms are standing by the elevators with yellow out-of-order placards on the floor. Other people, in on it too, are standing around grousing. Suddenly, some men come around a corner wheeling a throne. All the grousers break into "Wind Beneath My Wings" directed at the previously unsung secretary whose eyes are wide and mouth agape with wonder. Two women approach beaming, one carrying a crown, and the other guiding the secretary to the throne while the crown is placed on her head. "Just cuz," one of them explains. "Just cuz you're you." "Did you ever know that you're my hero?" the crowd sings. By now of course the secretary is balling her eyes out. After fifteen minutes we all go back to work.
"For one brief shining moment...there was a fleeting wisp of glory"
I love flash mobs, I don't love the name, don't even like the name, but love the idea. The wonder of a surprise musical performance, the musicians and singers coming in plain clothes from all directions out of the blue.
Wonder is the highest, uniquely human emotion Rene Descartes believed until he didn't believe it. I think he was right the first time. Another example of wonder would be the reaction to Susan Boyle's initial recital.
My idea was informed also by being in court yesterday. I don't know wh...Ah! I do know why. I walked out of court with my client. I got his case resolved for him in an excellent way and we were both elated. As we walked out of the courthouse with our arms around each other onto the elevated landing that connected to the sidewalk below by steps he paused and handing his phone asked a man on the top step ahead of us if he could take a picture of my client and I together. The man smiled and took the picture. It was such a touching tribute that my client paid me with that photo.
So my idea was a spontaneous tribute, a flash mob tribute if you insist. The idea was informed also by the number of lawyers who have passed in the last few years, who I knew, who were friends, who were not renowned lawyers but had done their jobs well and truly for decades and passed unsung. That made me think of all the people who live lives well and truly and pass away unsung by tributes during life. Like my secretaries. Birthday tributes in my thinking didn't count. The germs of my idea therefore were 1) unsung 2) random 3) work 4) tribute 5) public.
I imagined it playing out like this: On a completely random day a secretary mechanically enters the lobby of her building to take the elevator to her floor and it's all set up just as in a flash mob. Security is in on it and in their regular uniforms are standing by the elevators with yellow out-of-order placards on the floor. Other people, in on it too, are standing around grousing. Suddenly, some men come around a corner wheeling a throne. All the grousers break into "Wind Beneath My Wings" directed at the previously unsung secretary whose eyes are wide and mouth agape with wonder. Two women approach beaming, one carrying a crown, and the other guiding the secretary to the throne while the crown is placed on her head. "Just cuz," one of them explains. "Just cuz you're you." "Did you ever know that you're my hero?" the crowd sings. By now of course the secretary is balling her eyes out. After fifteen minutes we all go back to work.
"For one brief shining moment...there was a fleeting wisp of glory"
It is like a dream and I never thought of Hemingway's dreams before until I read a couple of days ago that Scott Fitzgerald said something about Hemingway's dreams and the implication was they were dark or bizarre or on that side and it took me aback thinking for the first time what Hemingway's dreams must have been like but he never wrote about his dreams only about having slept well but he had dreams everyone does especially if they sleep well unless this was one of his dreams. Dreams are real and not real and there are those dualities throughout Garden obviously male-female but others like dark-light, dark-light in everything like dark (bad)-light (good) but also in hair, dark hair-light hair, dark skin-light skin. I read that he was influenced in Garden by Proust by Bosch by Picasso's painting of somebody else's something an engraving I think. The Garden of Eden is like a dream transcribed.
Wednesday, September 04, 2019
Speaking of insanity. I have now completed about 1/3rd of The Garden of Eden. I think I have read everything Hemingway ever wrote, every novel, every short story, at least one biography and to me Garden is the most transcendent thing he ever wrote. It is dense, you feel every word is important and I never felt that way about any other work of fiction by him or another author, and it is complex. I cannot recommend it because it is so disturbing. Hemingway was the most courageous writer in the history of American letters and I know of no more courageous writer anywhere, at any time. I do not know how anyone could write Garden and I don’t know how I am going to get through it with the remnants of my own sanity intact.
18 U.S. Code § 2074. False weather reports
U.S. Code
Whoever knowingly issues or publishes any counterfeit weather forecast or warning of weather conditions falsely representing such forecast or warning to have been issued or published by the Weather Bureau, United States Signal Service, or other branch of the Government service, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ninety days, or both.
The Garden of Eden, Hemingway
Everything I have written, everything I have thought, all has come true in the first nineteen pages of The Garden of Eden.
Last night after finishing and this morning I had Don McLean's "Starry Night," about Van Gogh, stuck in my head. I ran out and bought a copy of The Garden of Eden.
On the second page: "The room they lived in looked like the painting of Van Gogh's room at Arles..." On the ninth: "The girl's clothes were folded on one of the Van Gogh chairs..."
Chapter One is only sixteen pages long. It begins like an ending:
On the third fucking page:
"I'm the destructive type," Catherine, David Bourne's wife. "And I'm going to destroy you.."
He has been married to her three fucking weeks! Why is not that the end of the fucking marriage at least?
Chapter One ends on a note of seeming finality as well. After Catherine has buggered him the first time,
"He held her close and hard and inside himself he said goodbye and then goodbye and goodbye....and his heart said goodbye Catherine goodbye my lovely girl goodbye and good luck and goodbye."
Right? Outta here! But no. Does this marriage really last for 232 more pages? Is this really how Hemingway began this book?
Why did Hemingway make David and Catherine husband and wife? Ah, because in marriage two become one.
Yesterday I could not get Gregory-Gloria Hemingway's police photograph out of my mind.
Ernest and Marcelline, brother and sister, dressed as twin girls in real life.
People thought David and Catherine were brother and sister, rather than husband and wife.
Monday night: "I love you Papa. Whoever and whatever you are, I love you."
"And you love me just the way I am?" "Yes." "Because I'm going to be changed."
After the second time she buggers him, "...he leaned over and said to her but not aloud, 'I'm with you. No matter what else you have in your head I'm with you and I love you.'"
Catherine went to the same coiffeur as did David, "And I said exactly," cut my hair exactly as you did David's.
"I'm a girl. But now I'm a boy too and I can do anything and anything and anything." David refers to her as brother: "What do you want, brother?" (to drink).
"Dave (the nickname, as a brother would refer to his brother), you don't mind if we've gone to the devil, do you?" "No, girl." "Don't call me girl."
Her breasts are "just my dowry." "No leave them. They'll be there. Please love me David the way I am. Please understand and love me."
As she penetrates him for the first time: "Now you can't tell who is who can you?" "No." "You are changing," she said. "Oh you are. You are. Yes you are and you're my girl Catherine. Will you change and be my girl and let me take you?" "You're Catherine." "No. I'm Peter." Please understand. Please know and understand."
Now I understand
What you tried to say to me
And how you suffered for your sanity
...
They would not listen, they did not know how
Yesterday the word that kept coming to mind was "dark."
David Bourne refers to Catherine's buggery of him as "dark magic."
Last night: a thing is dark to us because we do not understand it.
Look out on a summer's day
With eyes that know the darkness in my soul
The morning after the second, full, buggery, "Don't worry, David. I'm your good girl come back again." Oh yeah! Well, good luck with that! "But he was very worried now...you don't feel bad" (he said to himself). Not with the wine you don't feel bad, he told himself, and what will you drink when the wine won't cover for you?" Fucking hemlock!
Last night after finishing and this morning I had Don McLean's "Starry Night," about Van Gogh, stuck in my head. I ran out and bought a copy of The Garden of Eden.
On the second page: "The room they lived in looked like the painting of Van Gogh's room at Arles..." On the ninth: "The girl's clothes were folded on one of the Van Gogh chairs..."
Chapter One is only sixteen pages long. It begins like an ending:
On the third fucking page:
"I'm the destructive type," Catherine, David Bourne's wife. "And I'm going to destroy you.."
He has been married to her three fucking weeks! Why is not that the end of the fucking marriage at least?
Chapter One ends on a note of seeming finality as well. After Catherine has buggered him the first time,
"He held her close and hard and inside himself he said goodbye and then goodbye and goodbye....and his heart said goodbye Catherine goodbye my lovely girl goodbye and good luck and goodbye."
Right? Outta here! But no. Does this marriage really last for 232 more pages? Is this really how Hemingway began this book?
Why did Hemingway make David and Catherine husband and wife? Ah, because in marriage two become one.
Yesterday I could not get Gregory-Gloria Hemingway's police photograph out of my mind.
Ernest and Marcelline, brother and sister, dressed as twin girls in real life.
People thought David and Catherine were brother and sister, rather than husband and wife.
Monday night: "I love you Papa. Whoever and whatever you are, I love you."
"And you love me just the way I am?" "Yes." "Because I'm going to be changed."
After the second time she buggers him, "...he leaned over and said to her but not aloud, 'I'm with you. No matter what else you have in your head I'm with you and I love you.'"
Catherine went to the same coiffeur as did David, "And I said exactly," cut my hair exactly as you did David's.
"I'm a girl. But now I'm a boy too and I can do anything and anything and anything." David refers to her as brother: "What do you want, brother?" (to drink).
"Dave (the nickname, as a brother would refer to his brother), you don't mind if we've gone to the devil, do you?" "No, girl." "Don't call me girl."
Her breasts are "just my dowry." "No leave them. They'll be there. Please love me David the way I am. Please understand and love me."
As she penetrates him for the first time: "Now you can't tell who is who can you?" "No." "You are changing," she said. "Oh you are. You are. Yes you are and you're my girl Catherine. Will you change and be my girl and let me take you?" "You're Catherine." "No. I'm Peter." Please understand. Please know and understand."
Now I understand
What you tried to say to me
And how you suffered for your sanity
...
They would not listen, they did not know how
Yesterday the word that kept coming to mind was "dark."
David Bourne refers to Catherine's buggery of him as "dark magic."
Last night: a thing is dark to us because we do not understand it.
Look out on a summer's day
With eyes that know the darkness in my soul
The morning after the second, full, buggery, "Don't worry, David. I'm your good girl come back again." Oh yeah! Well, good luck with that! "But he was very worried now...you don't feel bad" (he said to himself). Not with the wine you don't feel bad, he told himself, and what will you drink when the wine won't cover for you?" Fucking hemlock!
Hemingway, why "Catherine?" Catherine Barkley, Agnes von Kurowsky in real life, in A Farewell to Arms, now Catherine again.
Hemingway worked on this book, which was left unfinished from 1946 until his suicide.
For they could not love you
But still your love was true
And when no hope was left in sight
On that starry, starry night
You took your life, as lovers often do
Hemingway worked on this book, which was left unfinished from 1946 until his suicide.
For they could not love you
But still your love was true
And when no hope was left in sight
On that starry, starry night
You took your life, as lovers often do
Where can this book go for 230 more pages after that first nineteen? I don't know but nowhere good. Jesus Christ.
A Mad Genius
Some days it went so well that you could make the country so that you could walk into it through the timber to come out into the clearing and work up onto the high ground and see the hills beyond the arm of the lake. A pencil-lead might break off in the conical nose of the pencil sharpener and you would use the small blade of the pen knife to clear it or else sharpen the pencil carefully with the sharp blade and then slip your arm through the sweat-salted leather of your pack strap to lift the pack again, get the other arm through and feel the weight settle on your back and feel the pine needles under your moccasins as you started down for the lake.
Blue underlining from a previous reading. Black underlining, yesterday.
The blue because I paid close attention to the way in which Hemingway worked. I wanted to work as "well and truly" in my law work as he did in his literature. The black was not underlined then because I did not understand it. I saw yesterday that it was Hemingway and his writing merging into one. “Now you can’t tell who is who can you?” “No.” Here he goes a transcendent step further, he merges himself, story, and reader. We become him. He and we walk through the looking glass into his story then back with him to his table where we "sharpen the pencil carefully with the sharp blade and then slip your arm through the sweat-salted leather of your pack strap to lift the pack again...and feel the pine needles under your moccasins as you started down for the lake." With no friction we move with him back and forth from table to country from him to character to us. No other writer has ever done this. Who is who? Who is Hemingway and who is in the story? Who is writing and who is sharpening? Who are we? "Now you can't tell who is who can you?" "No."
Blue underlining from a previous reading. Black underlining, yesterday.
The blue because I paid close attention to the way in which Hemingway worked. I wanted to work as "well and truly" in my law work as he did in his literature. The black was not underlined then because I did not understand it. I saw yesterday that it was Hemingway and his writing merging into one. “Now you can’t tell who is who can you?” “No.” Here he goes a transcendent step further, he merges himself, story, and reader. We become him. He and we walk through the looking glass into his story then back with him to his table where we "sharpen the pencil carefully with the sharp blade and then slip your arm through the sweat-salted leather of your pack strap to lift the pack again...and feel the pine needles under your moccasins as you started down for the lake." With no friction we move with him back and forth from table to country from him to character to us. No other writer has ever done this. Who is who? Who is Hemingway and who is in the story? Who is writing and who is sharpening? Who are we? "Now you can't tell who is who can you?" "No."
Some days it went so well that you could make the country so that you could walk into it through the timber to come out into the clearing and work up onto the high ground and see the hills beyond the arm of the lake. A pencil-lead might break off in the conical nose of the pencil sharpener and you would use the small blade of the pen knife to clear it or else sharpen the pencil carefully with the sharp blade and then slip your arm through the sweat-salted leather of your pack strap to lift the pack again, get the other arm through and feel the weight settle on your back and feel the pine needles under your moccasins as you started down for the lake.
Tuesday, September 03, 2019
I do not feel like lying today, maybe another day, bad luck for you, and I would be lying if I wrote that the photographs of Ernest Hemingway in dresses when little did not disturb me. They do disturb me. That is a truthful sentence. Revisiting a couple of my posts from 2014 increased the disturbance.
I would be lying if I said that it didn't take me all of these hours since that post to get away from the disturbance to my thought. It did. If the dresses had been a one off in Hemingway's life they wouldn't have disturbed me at all. But they were not a one off. They were merely the first data points in a life connected together with other similar data points. So what?, I asked myself for a couple of hours this afternoon. Do you find Papa's writing any less crystalline? No, I don't. Is Papa responsible for how his mother dressed him when young? Of course not. Did he ever lie to you in his writing? No. Then, what are you, a homophobic mother fucker? I had to examine myself on that one. I have never been. But deep down, Barnesboro boy, are you just like them?! I asked myself that. I am not.
As I was writing that post I thought of, ugh, forgive me, the photo taken by Miami police officers when Gregory was arrested. Gloria. Gregory-Gloria. His son. His son had a sex change operation. Bruce-Caitlyn Jenner disturbs me. But here you see, in Papa, in his son, there is the same sexual transference as in The Garden of Eden, the same androgyny as in the dresses, as in other of Hemingway's writing. There seems to have been a genetic predisposition. Papa did not hide it! There were plenty of markers in his other writing! A genetic predisposition to? Yes, androgyny. But what I saw in Gregory-Gloria smiling as he bared her breast for the cops was madness. A genetic predisposition then to madness. How is that to be doubted? It is not. We know that mental illness, like suicide, runs in families. So it does not matter that Papa did not hide his madness because it is madness. Madness is disturbing!
It is dark. That is the thought I kept having between that post and this. This Hemingway madness is just dark. When we are "in the dark" about something it means we don't have the capacity to see and since we are a very ocular species we do not comprehend what we cannot see. I admit to not having the mental wattage nor the acuity in my mind's eye to penetrate this dark madness. It is a darkness that makes me literally queasy in my stomach. I don't want to go any deeper into that darkness. I am afraid of that darkness. Fear: that is what a phobia is. Therefore, I am phobic about whatever the contours of this madness in the dark are.
Those are all truthful sentences up there.
I would be lying if I said that it didn't take me all of these hours since that post to get away from the disturbance to my thought. It did. If the dresses had been a one off in Hemingway's life they wouldn't have disturbed me at all. But they were not a one off. They were merely the first data points in a life connected together with other similar data points. So what?, I asked myself for a couple of hours this afternoon. Do you find Papa's writing any less crystalline? No, I don't. Is Papa responsible for how his mother dressed him when young? Of course not. Did he ever lie to you in his writing? No. Then, what are you, a homophobic mother fucker? I had to examine myself on that one. I have never been. But deep down, Barnesboro boy, are you just like them?! I asked myself that. I am not.
As I was writing that post I thought of, ugh, forgive me, the photo taken by Miami police officers when Gregory was arrested. Gloria. Gregory-Gloria. His son. His son had a sex change operation. Bruce-Caitlyn Jenner disturbs me. But here you see, in Papa, in his son, there is the same sexual transference as in The Garden of Eden, the same androgyny as in the dresses, as in other of Hemingway's writing. There seems to have been a genetic predisposition. Papa did not hide it! There were plenty of markers in his other writing! A genetic predisposition to? Yes, androgyny. But what I saw in Gregory-Gloria smiling as he bared her breast for the cops was madness. A genetic predisposition then to madness. How is that to be doubted? It is not. We know that mental illness, like suicide, runs in families. So it does not matter that Papa did not hide his madness because it is madness. Madness is disturbing!
It is dark. That is the thought I kept having between that post and this. This Hemingway madness is just dark. When we are "in the dark" about something it means we don't have the capacity to see and since we are a very ocular species we do not comprehend what we cannot see. I admit to not having the mental wattage nor the acuity in my mind's eye to penetrate this dark madness. It is a darkness that makes me literally queasy in my stomach. I don't want to go any deeper into that darkness. I am afraid of that darkness. Fear: that is what a phobia is. Therefore, I am phobic about whatever the contours of this madness in the dark are.
Those are all truthful sentences up there.
Man. Mother England just cannot grab her arse with both hands. A Tory MP, Dr. Phillip Lee, defected today, right in the middle of BoJo's speech to the House of Commons. That right there caused BoJo to lose his majority. Parliament is going to vote tomorrow to compel a deal with the EU ahead of Brexit. BoJo has said if they pass that law he will call a snap election, which would be Mother's third in four years.
Of course this all goes back to 2016 and Russia's successful campaign to destabilize 1)America by elevating Alabama meteorologist Donald Trump to president of the former U.S.A., 2) Britain by having Trump's former fellow New Yawkah and current bff BoJo lead and win the Brexit vote in June of that year, 3) Europe necessarily, 4) NATO, 5) the West. The Russians have succeeded spectacularly. The West has not been this weak and fragmented since--1939.
Of course this all goes back to 2016 and Russia's successful campaign to destabilize 1)America by elevating Alabama meteorologist Donald Trump to president of the former U.S.A., 2) Britain by having Trump's former fellow New Yawkah and current bff BoJo lead and win the Brexit vote in June of that year, 3) Europe necessarily, 4) NATO, 5) the West. The Russians have succeeded spectacularly. The West has not been this weak and fragmented since--1939.
I am not going there again, I have posted so many photographs on Hemingway's sexuality previously, but I have never seen this one before.
I have posted, I think, one photograph of Hemingway dressed as a girl by his mother, it was a not uncommon practice I read and, although jarring to my twenty-first century sensibilities, I discounted it, as whoever I read did. And I have posted tons of photographs of Hemingway as an adult doing something with his crotch. I post this one, and I assume there are others of a young Hemingway dressed as a girl, because in this one he's grabbing his dick again. As I argued in 2014, although there is a limited universe of ways in which one can hold one's hands and although they naturally drape to the side at crotch level, and although there are tons more photographs of Hemingway not doing something at his crotch there are just too, too many photographs of him doing something down there--when other men in the same photograph are not--for it not to mean something. And it means he was sexually confused and androgyne all of his life and that is evident in close reading of his writing.
I have posted, I think, one photograph of Hemingway dressed as a girl by his mother, it was a not uncommon practice I read and, although jarring to my twenty-first century sensibilities, I discounted it, as whoever I read did. And I have posted tons of photographs of Hemingway as an adult doing something with his crotch. I post this one, and I assume there are others of a young Hemingway dressed as a girl, because in this one he's grabbing his dick again. As I argued in 2014, although there is a limited universe of ways in which one can hold one's hands and although they naturally drape to the side at crotch level, and although there are tons more photographs of Hemingway not doing something at his crotch there are just too, too many photographs of him doing something down there--when other men in the same photograph are not--for it not to mean something. And it means he was sexually confused and androgyne all of his life and that is evident in close reading of his writing.
I first wrote about Ernest Hemingway's sexuality in, it looks like from previous posts, 2014. I just googled "Ernest Hemingway," looking for that photo of him I have in my mind, and up came this, from 2018. The Queerness of Ernest Hemingway
I love Ernest Hemingway very much, which is unfashionable of me. Hemingway does not pass in my queer, feminist circles.
...
But Hemingway’s writing itself does not fit any straightforwardly heterosexual, masculine mold, and the general perception of him as such is one of the lit world’s most distorted misrepresentations.
...
Hemingway’s biography as a womanizer has blocked many opportunities for queer readings of his work, but I’m not sure that a string of failed marriages precludes queerness. In fact, the queerness in Hemingway’s work is tied to retreat and fear...Shying away from explicit queer content and instead illuminating the paths that fear or convention force you to take was—and is—sometimes the only option available for writers unwilling or unable to acknowledge the queer themes in their work.
...in A Moveable Feast...[q]ueer desire and fear of that queer desire lie intertwined on Hemingway’s pages: writing about F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “delicate long-lipped Irish mouth that, on a girl, would have been the mouth of a beauty”, he adds, “The mouth worried you until you knew him and then it worried you more.”
...His writing uses stand-ins, plays with gender, and ties his physical and romantic attraction to men back to women.
...
When Hemingway turns against men—and he frequently does—he is malicious in undercutting them, as in Fitzgerald’s depiction as a weak hypochondriac in A Moveable Feast.
...
In the posthumously-published Garden of Eden, queer romance is at once more explicit and, like Fitzgerald’s mouth, more worrying. The novel is about newly-married couple David and Catherine Bourne on their extended European honeymoon, spending their days eating, drinking, swimming, and having sex.” And then Catherine comes up with a “wonderful dangerous surprise”: she cuts her hair very short.
“I’m a girl,” Catherine explains. “But now I’m a boy too and I can do anything and anything and anything.” The novel descends into a strange, erotic half-dream where Catherine and David meld and melt into each other. The sex they have changes:
He lay there and felt something and then her hand holding him and searching lower and he helped with his hands and then lay back in the dark and did not think at all and only felt the weight and the strangeness inside and she said, “Now you can’t tell who is who can you?”
“No.”
[I got that wrong to same effect in previous post.]
“You are changing,” she said. “Oh you are. You are. Yes you are and you’re my girl Catherine. Will you change and be my girl and let me take you?”
“You’re Catherine.”
“No. I’m Peter. You’re my wonderful Catherine. You’re my beautiful lovely Catherine. You were so good to change. Oh thank you, Catherine, so much. Please understand. Please know and understand. I’m going to make love to you forever.”
...
...Catherine and David play with gender, they are not just a straight couple wandering into faintly kinky waters. They are transforming, hiding shifting bodies, loves and queerness...
...Hemingway instead allows his characters to become genderqueer, genderfluid, to play with roles and switch sides.
...
It is my hope that one day...Hemingway's fame [will live]...happily-ever-after on the shelves of great queer literature.
I love Ernest Hemingway very much, which is unfashionable of me. Hemingway does not pass in my queer, feminist circles.
...
But Hemingway’s writing itself does not fit any straightforwardly heterosexual, masculine mold, and the general perception of him as such is one of the lit world’s most distorted misrepresentations.
...
Hemingway’s biography as a womanizer has blocked many opportunities for queer readings of his work, but I’m not sure that a string of failed marriages precludes queerness. In fact, the queerness in Hemingway’s work is tied to retreat and fear...Shying away from explicit queer content and instead illuminating the paths that fear or convention force you to take was—and is—sometimes the only option available for writers unwilling or unable to acknowledge the queer themes in their work.
...in A Moveable Feast...[q]ueer desire and fear of that queer desire lie intertwined on Hemingway’s pages: writing about F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “delicate long-lipped Irish mouth that, on a girl, would have been the mouth of a beauty”, he adds, “The mouth worried you until you knew him and then it worried you more.”
...His writing uses stand-ins, plays with gender, and ties his physical and romantic attraction to men back to women.
...
When Hemingway turns against men—and he frequently does—he is malicious in undercutting them, as in Fitzgerald’s depiction as a weak hypochondriac in A Moveable Feast.
...
In the posthumously-published Garden of Eden, queer romance is at once more explicit and, like Fitzgerald’s mouth, more worrying. The novel is about newly-married couple David and Catherine Bourne on their extended European honeymoon, spending their days eating, drinking, swimming, and having sex.” And then Catherine comes up with a “wonderful dangerous surprise”: she cuts her hair very short.
“I’m a girl,” Catherine explains. “But now I’m a boy too and I can do anything and anything and anything.” The novel descends into a strange, erotic half-dream where Catherine and David meld and melt into each other. The sex they have changes:
He lay there and felt something and then her hand holding him and searching lower and he helped with his hands and then lay back in the dark and did not think at all and only felt the weight and the strangeness inside and she said, “Now you can’t tell who is who can you?”
“No.”
[I got that wrong to same effect in previous post.]
“You are changing,” she said. “Oh you are. You are. Yes you are and you’re my girl Catherine. Will you change and be my girl and let me take you?”
“You’re Catherine.”
“No. I’m Peter. You’re my wonderful Catherine. You’re my beautiful lovely Catherine. You were so good to change. Oh thank you, Catherine, so much. Please understand. Please know and understand. I’m going to make love to you forever.”
...
...Catherine and David play with gender, they are not just a straight couple wandering into faintly kinky waters. They are transforming, hiding shifting bodies, loves and queerness...
...Hemingway instead allows his characters to become genderqueer, genderfluid, to play with roles and switch sides.
...
It is my hope that one day...Hemingway's fame [will live]...happily-ever-after on the shelves of great queer literature.
Monday, September 02, 2019
When you read enough of a writer, one who writes realism, even if fiction, but not a pure fictionalist, not Dickens, Hemingway, you read things in the writing that you know to be true because you know the writer's life. I have been reading Hemingway's fiction for over thirty years but it has been only recently, maybe in the last five years, that I read that he had a near photographic memory, and knowing that you can then pick up one of his novels again, A Moveable Feast, and see the character trait. How he could write in 1960 of his Paris days with such accuracy of total recall that there is another book, Hemingway Walks, taken from A Moveable Feast, that is a Baedeker's it is so accurate. You can walk each step Hemingway took from the Luxembourg Gardens to wherever, back to his flat or to Sylvia Beach's or to the La Closerie Des Lilas. I did. With Hemingway Walks in one hand and A Moveable Feast in the other I walked Paris in his footsteps.
Hemingway was a very photogenic man and there are zillions of photographs of him. His "say cheese" smile is the most famous. But that was not the real Hemingway, those were posed photographs. I have never liked posing for photographs nor posed photographs. They tell you little about the subject. It is candid photographs, if they are good, in which you can see the character traits, as well as in the writing. Hemingway was the most truthful writer ever. His goal at the start of every story was to "just write one true sentence, the truest sentence you know" and with those eyes he knew the truth, he forgot nothing, he saw all. The most characteristic photograph I have ever seen of Hemingway is a candid. He is looking down, I think on a bull fight but now I am not sure because I cannot find that photograph except in my mind. In my mind and I believe somewhere in Google images Hemingway is leaning over a rail and his eyes are boring into the scene. He is not there, only his eyes are there and his mind. It is Hemingway's honest boring eyes and his prodigious memory that make more understandable his brutal realism. I do not know why Hemingway bored with those eyes and that memory into some of the most horrific scenes any human has ever seen, the women's factory that was blown up in Italy and Hemingway's job was to collect the pieces of the women's bodies that he could, or the sound of the crack the bicyclist's skull made, like an eggshell, in a racing track accident, or the avalanche victim who had struggled so desperately that when his body was recovered the skin and the muscles were worn away down to the bones of the back of the neck as he struggled beyond pain and in vain to break through suffocating snow to the surface and air. That is what Hemingway saw and that is what he remembered and he wrote truthfully about it. It is Brutalist School architecture in literature. Did he see nothing else or was it human nature to see and to remember in horror all of the details that his mind could not help but sear forever in him? Was his near photographic memory a curse as well as the lodestar of his writing? Both, for he lost his mind and blew off his head which contained his mind and all of those memories of the brutality he had seen.
I have seen this mind in men of science, the medical examiner's that I have spent all of my professional life around. Like them Hemingway's father was a doctor. They have fine minds and work only in brutality. They perform the process of evisceration with the casualness of a face lift. Hemingway was brutally honest with himself. He knew that decades of head injury and alcoholism had caused him to write that which embarrassed him. To the end, in Islands in the Stream, he wrote brutally honestly of being penetrated anally by a female lover. "Now we are the same, do you see?" "Yes." He was not embarrassed to do that nor was he embarrassed to write about that afterwards, nor to destroy that but to let the world read it. Hemingway was as complex as a man could be and he held little or nothing back about his complexity but aside from The Garden of Eden there is no more similar true writing on his sexuality, which I am convinced is the great untold story of Ernest Hemingway's life and the missing key to a complete understanding of the most courageous writer, certainly in all of America's letters, and that I know of in any writer in the world, ever. When you read enough of Hemingway and see enough photographs of him it is there, the sexual ambivalence, the androgyny. He saw it, with those penetrating eyes turned inward as often as outward but perhaps recoiled in confusion. The only thing he wrote as little about was his father's suicide. Perhaps the man who sought and wrote about pain and brutality could just not go there. I love you Papa. Whoever and whatever you were, I love you.
Hemingway was a very photogenic man and there are zillions of photographs of him. His "say cheese" smile is the most famous. But that was not the real Hemingway, those were posed photographs. I have never liked posing for photographs nor posed photographs. They tell you little about the subject. It is candid photographs, if they are good, in which you can see the character traits, as well as in the writing. Hemingway was the most truthful writer ever. His goal at the start of every story was to "just write one true sentence, the truest sentence you know" and with those eyes he knew the truth, he forgot nothing, he saw all. The most characteristic photograph I have ever seen of Hemingway is a candid. He is looking down, I think on a bull fight but now I am not sure because I cannot find that photograph except in my mind. In my mind and I believe somewhere in Google images Hemingway is leaning over a rail and his eyes are boring into the scene. He is not there, only his eyes are there and his mind. It is Hemingway's honest boring eyes and his prodigious memory that make more understandable his brutal realism. I do not know why Hemingway bored with those eyes and that memory into some of the most horrific scenes any human has ever seen, the women's factory that was blown up in Italy and Hemingway's job was to collect the pieces of the women's bodies that he could, or the sound of the crack the bicyclist's skull made, like an eggshell, in a racing track accident, or the avalanche victim who had struggled so desperately that when his body was recovered the skin and the muscles were worn away down to the bones of the back of the neck as he struggled beyond pain and in vain to break through suffocating snow to the surface and air. That is what Hemingway saw and that is what he remembered and he wrote truthfully about it. It is Brutalist School architecture in literature. Did he see nothing else or was it human nature to see and to remember in horror all of the details that his mind could not help but sear forever in him? Was his near photographic memory a curse as well as the lodestar of his writing? Both, for he lost his mind and blew off his head which contained his mind and all of those memories of the brutality he had seen.
I have seen this mind in men of science, the medical examiner's that I have spent all of my professional life around. Like them Hemingway's father was a doctor. They have fine minds and work only in brutality. They perform the process of evisceration with the casualness of a face lift. Hemingway was brutally honest with himself. He knew that decades of head injury and alcoholism had caused him to write that which embarrassed him. To the end, in Islands in the Stream, he wrote brutally honestly of being penetrated anally by a female lover. "Now we are the same, do you see?" "Yes." He was not embarrassed to do that nor was he embarrassed to write about that afterwards, nor to destroy that but to let the world read it. Hemingway was as complex as a man could be and he held little or nothing back about his complexity but aside from The Garden of Eden there is no more similar true writing on his sexuality, which I am convinced is the great untold story of Ernest Hemingway's life and the missing key to a complete understanding of the most courageous writer, certainly in all of America's letters, and that I know of in any writer in the world, ever. When you read enough of Hemingway and see enough photographs of him it is there, the sexual ambivalence, the androgyny. He saw it, with those penetrating eyes turned inward as often as outward but perhaps recoiled in confusion. The only thing he wrote as little about was his father's suicide. Perhaps the man who sought and wrote about pain and brutality could just not go there. I love you Papa. Whoever and whatever you were, I love you.
Break! And I dash. For peoplez who have never been through a hurricane, when the first bands come through you think you’re in the goddamned outer eye it rains and blows so hard. If you’re out in that for a second you’re drenched. But then as quickly and as furiously as it came on it vanishes. Just poof! Then, no telling how long, another band will come through. Obviously the nearer the hurricane gets to you the more quickly the bands come through and the longer their duration until you have the full monty.
One time (oh my God I am such an idiot) in 2004 I went to the beach with my girlfriend in the middle of a Cat 3. Hurricanes are tres dramatic and I weren't skaed a no peepy 3. We walked along the shoreline for a little bit but the wind was blowing so hard that it was making tiny, stinging projectiles of the wet sand. So of course I decided to go for a dip. Just about knocked me over; didn't, but just about. Afterwards I sat with my girlfriend on the sand. Presently, it cleared up. Just poof. Blue sky. "Look at that!" "Oh my God!" Drama over, we left. In the car we looked up and there was like a hole in the sky. A blue hole surrounded by gray clouds. Ah, the eye.
One time (oh my God I am such an idiot) in 2004 I went to the beach with my girlfriend in the middle of a Cat 3. Hurricanes are tres dramatic and I weren't skaed a no peepy 3. We walked along the shoreline for a little bit but the wind was blowing so hard that it was making tiny, stinging projectiles of the wet sand. So of course I decided to go for a dip. Just about knocked me over; didn't, but just about. Afterwards I sat with my girlfriend on the sand. Presently, it cleared up. Just poof. Blue sky. "Look at that!" "Oh my God!" Drama over, we left. In the car we looked up and there was like a hole in the sky. A blue hole surrounded by gray clouds. Ah, the eye.
Sunday, September 01, 2019
Houston, We Have Ignition.
The unranked "Cougars", a Group of Five team under new coach Dana Holgorsen, went into Norman and were somewhat competitive against fourth-ranked Power Five royalty Oklahoma today. 49-31; an 18-point loss is pretty steep but UH was unranked and Norman and the football team that lives there can get you down by a nickel at half time. OU never trailed and UH was never in it but they did score 31. It's something.
11 pm National Hurricane Center,Miami, September 1, 2019
At 1100 PM EDT (0300 UTC), the center of Hurricane Dorian was located near latitude 26.6 North, longitude 77.9 West. Dorian is moving toward the west near 6 mph (9 km/h). A slower westward to west-northwestward motion is forecast during the next day or so, followed by a gradual turn toward the northwest. On this track, the core of extremely dangerous Hurricane Dorian will continue to pound Great Abaco and Grand Bahama islands overnight and through much of Monday. The hurricane will move dangerously close to the Florida east coast late Monday through Tuesday night.
That is accurate and temperate language. Earlier in the day the storm unexpectedly pushed down off its predominately northwest track. You can see that slight swerve in the graphics. That slight dip does bring the storm "dangerously close to the Florida east coast," more dangerously close than the prior forecast track had it. Governor DeSantis was right on in his assessment. With the complexity of these systems a couple people blowing their nose vigorously simultaneously seemingly could alter the course of the storm and guide it west. Miami is still at 5% on the cusp of 10% chance of getting any hurricane force winds but its a close thing. Too close, too, too close for comfort. I will have butterflies in my stomach when I wake tomorrow to the 7 am advisory. Miami will NOT get a direct hit, nothing CLOSE to a direct hit but at this time last night it looked like we were going to get a gentle zephyr. Not it looks reasonably possible that I would be in danger of having my glasses blown off my face if I was FOOL enough to venture out when it arrives, as I did like a FOOL last year. Didn't find my glasses for two fucking days.
Dorian: Cat 5, 185 mph SUSTAINED! Gusts OVER 220!
Look at that thing! Oh God, God keep the people of the Bahamas. That is the apocalypse.
It's a September morn. And it's the morning after for college tackle football fanaticos. Among those waking with a celebratory headache, and those wishing themselves dead drunk:
My beloved Pitt Panthers gave up the first ten points of the game to Virginny, led 14-13 at the half, gave up the first ten points of the second half, and then one TD as icing on the Ketchup Bottle and were routed by the "Cavaliers" 30-13.
Mack Brown. Mack Brown had North Carolina on the cusp of greatness once upon a time, forsook Tobacco Road's drug money for the black gold of Texas, achieved greatness there, grew old and stale and resigned, comme ci comme ca, became a gray eminence in retirement and then (Thirsting relevance again? To prove he still had it?) accepted UNC's offer to come home again. Last night was his first game back. The "Tar Heels" opened against rival South Carolina from the hated SEC. Mack almost showed he didn't have it again; took a knee at midfield with 10 seconds left, you know, to run out the clock; apparently did not know that it was fourth down, that's called a turnover there, a chilled apple turnover, giving the "Gamecocks" one last play but the pass was intercepted and Mack avoided mud on his face. In the on-field interview immediately after the game ol' Mack got something in his eyes and had a frog in his throat he was so moved, or relieved or both, and in the locker room with his scholars celebrated with an adorable old white guy's attempt to dance a dance of his millennials. Here's mud in your eye, Mack.
The SEC had an uneven day. The boat fire turned dumpster fire on old Rocky Top and SC's loss to NC in the pit of that unevenness. But there were peaks. Alabama was still Alabama at Mercedes Benz Stadium in Atlanta, toying with Mack Brown's Tobacco Road cousin Dook, and #16 Auburn came from behind to beat #11 Oregon in Jerry's World in Big D. That was the pits for the PAC 12 whose hopes for relevance now rest on #14 Utah, easy victors over rival BYU who sink further into irrelevance.
B1G #7 Michigan, with a new millennial offense, B1G #5 Ohio State with a new head professor, and B1G #24 Nebraska with a second year head man won seemingly with ease over over-matched opponents imported and paid for the purpose, Middle Tennessee, Florida Atlantic and South Alabama respectively. The undersigned blogger did not follow those games a'tall, the margins of the bottom lines, 40-21, 45-21, and 35-21 were impressive but the undersigned wonders if three touchdowns each by Middle Atlantic South are worthy of celebration in the Big House and the Horseshoe and Faux Pelini's Basement.
The It team of 2018, Iowa State, with the It head coach Matt Campbell, nearly got Bit by them "Panthers" of Northern Iowa. Took the "Cyclops" three OT's, it did, to pen them "Panthers." UNI can bite folk, done it before will do it again and almost did it in Ames yesterday.
Sometimes the morning after Eye Opener doesn't taste as good after a hard night, even a good hard night but no matter how you feel this morn you still feel better than those folk on Rocky Top who get their corn from a jar.
My beloved Pitt Panthers gave up the first ten points of the game to Virginny, led 14-13 at the half, gave up the first ten points of the second half, and then one TD as icing on the Ketchup Bottle and were routed by the "Cavaliers" 30-13.
Mack Brown. Mack Brown had North Carolina on the cusp of greatness once upon a time, forsook Tobacco Road's drug money for the black gold of Texas, achieved greatness there, grew old and stale and resigned, comme ci comme ca, became a gray eminence in retirement and then (Thirsting relevance again? To prove he still had it?) accepted UNC's offer to come home again. Last night was his first game back. The "Tar Heels" opened against rival South Carolina from the hated SEC. Mack almost showed he didn't have it again; took a knee at midfield with 10 seconds left, you know, to run out the clock; apparently did not know that it was fourth down, that's called a turnover there, a chilled apple turnover, giving the "Gamecocks" one last play but the pass was intercepted and Mack avoided mud on his face. In the on-field interview immediately after the game ol' Mack got something in his eyes and had a frog in his throat he was so moved, or relieved or both, and in the locker room with his scholars celebrated with an adorable old white guy's attempt to dance a dance of his millennials. Here's mud in your eye, Mack.
The SEC had an uneven day. The boat fire turned dumpster fire on old Rocky Top and SC's loss to NC in the pit of that unevenness. But there were peaks. Alabama was still Alabama at Mercedes Benz Stadium in Atlanta, toying with Mack Brown's Tobacco Road cousin Dook, and #16 Auburn came from behind to beat #11 Oregon in Jerry's World in Big D. That was the pits for the PAC 12 whose hopes for relevance now rest on #14 Utah, easy victors over rival BYU who sink further into irrelevance.
B1G #7 Michigan, with a new millennial offense, B1G #5 Ohio State with a new head professor, and B1G #24 Nebraska with a second year head man won seemingly with ease over over-matched opponents imported and paid for the purpose, Middle Tennessee, Florida Atlantic and South Alabama respectively. The undersigned blogger did not follow those games a'tall, the margins of the bottom lines, 40-21, 45-21, and 35-21 were impressive but the undersigned wonders if three touchdowns each by Middle Atlantic South are worthy of celebration in the Big House and the Horseshoe and Faux Pelini's Basement.
The It team of 2018, Iowa State, with the It head coach Matt Campbell, nearly got Bit by them "Panthers" of Northern Iowa. Took the "Cyclops" three OT's, it did, to pen them "Panthers." UNI can bite folk, done it before will do it again and almost did it in Ames yesterday.
Sometimes the morning after Eye Opener doesn't taste as good after a hard night, even a good hard night but no matter how you feel this morn you still feel better than those folk on Rocky Top who get their corn from a jar.
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