Subject: Re: On the whole, I'd rather be in ... where was it?
From: Tim O'Connor (oconnort@nyu.edu)
Date: Fri Dec 07 2001 - 08:54:08 GMT
On Fri, Dec 07, 2001 at 09:00:33AM +0000, Scottie Bowman wrote:
> And I.
>
> I do nothinge upon myselfe but stare out through rain-streaming
> windows at the bare trees of the Ursuline Convent while
> the occasional poor sod hurries by with downcast head &
> crushed spirits, hauling irritably at the leash of his wet dog.
>
> And I wish ...
We all want to be anywhere but here and this is the time of the year
we want it most. If that is what you wish, well, I'd be happy to
provide a snug for you, as did you for me when I wasn't outrunning
gardai.
(Historically the traffic on this list dips low, very low, as December
begins its steady climb. And perhaps this is also the time the drunkards
in the Hemingway universe find their collective voices.)
I hope I didn't exaggerate my interest in Vikings, who must have been
a lot of fun in their day but are now rather encased in mud, which is
a place I'd rather not be.
I suggest that you take note special note of the expression on the
face of the "poor sod" in the rain, for it is in the people with the
crushed spirits, at this time of year, that we find the most interesting
snippets of human experience, I suspect.
I have often wondered how many foxholes old Jerry must have stared out of
at this time of year, in this weather. First imagining an America that
was no longer there for him -- if indeed it was ever there in the first
place -- then imagining the earliest stirrings of a boy called Caulfield,
then, in the darker days, finding his grimmest foxhole voice that would
later become Sgt. X. Yes, Scottie, yours is the kind of weather, it
seems, that draws forth the most primal instincts in some of us.
(I've always seen myself dead in the rain, personally.)
(Nope, wrong list for that talk.)
(Is it that snow falling upon all the living and the dead? Nope, wrong
list and wrong weather in New York for that talk, too.)
(I guess it's just foxhole time for a lot of us these days, and as for
me, I'm just catching up from too much time away from home, too little
sleep. Yes, just as in one too many Salinger stories, slipping into
blissful sleep right now would be the finest tonic, though it is
not available to me at present, regrettably, and I'm reduced to
carrying a hungry restless feeling in my gown around town, with one
hand occasionally dipping into a jacket pocket to verify that a stray
10-pound note bearing the poor likeness of James Joyce is still
intact, until I can find a home for it amid the rest of the retired
currency I store somewhere safe from the reaches of the oncoming Euro.)
Keep letting us know what passes your window, Scottie, because I find
it oddly riveting, myself.
--tim
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