Pomegranate: not actually spelled "pomegranite"

Current Music: Johanna, from Sweeny Todd, by Sondheim
Current Juice: pomegranate

This juice has lots of sugar in it, but it's too strong and still really tart: Lakewood 100% Organic Pure Pomegranite. It tastes weird enough that it must be healthy, and there is some "sediment" on the bottom of the bottle.. chunky little pomegranate pieces I guess. Much better-tasting is the Naked Juice version, but it tastes too good to be good for you. Theres's lots of grape juice in this one that makes it more mild.

I have a new favorite music notebook: it's from the Moleskine notebook company.

TO DO: visit the Bloomington Photography Club.

Reaffirmation

Current Music: As Time Goes By
Current Movie: Play It Again, Sam:

"Allen, do you realize what a wonderful thing has happened? Allen, the most beautiful thing in the world has happened, right under our very own noses. We've had a wonderful experience. Doesn't that surprise you? You didn't have to do anything. You didn't have to leave any half-open books lying around. You didn't have to have on the proper mood music. Why, I even saw you in your underwear with the days of the week written on them."

"Linda, we have to call it quits."

"Yes, I know."

"Pardon me?"

"Suddenly everything became very clear. And when I asked myself: 'do I really want to break off my marriage?' the answer was 'no'. I love Dick. And although someone as wonderful as you is very tempting, I can't imagine my life without him."

"You can't?"

"He needs me, Allen, and in some unexplainable way, I need him."

"I know he needs you."

"This is the first time I've ever been affected by anyone besides Dick. I'm already in love with you, and unless I don't stop it now I'll become too deeply involved to be able to go back to him. Oh, I don't regret a moment of what's happened, because what it's done for me is to reaffirm my feelings for Dick."

"Linda, I understand, really."

"You're sure? You're not just saying that to make things easy?"

"No, I'm saying it because it's true. Inside of us we both know you belong to Dick, you're part of his work, the thing that keeps him going. If that plane leaves the ground and you're not on it with him, you'll regret it. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of your life."

"It's beautiful."

"It's from Casablanca. I waited my whole life to say it."

Elegy: We hang our hopes on chandeliers

Current Music: "Ave Maria"
Current Lyrics: "I've Loved these Days", Billy Joel

Now we take our time, so nonchalant
And spend our nights so bon vivant
We dress our days in silken robes
The money comes
The money goes
We know it's all a passing phase

We light our lamps for atmosphere
And hang our hopes on chandeliers
We're going wrong, we're gaining weight
We're sleeping long and far too late
And so it's time to change our ways
But I've loved these days

Now as we indulge in things refined
We hide our hearts from harder times
A string of pearls, a foreign car
Oh we can only go so far
On caviar and cabernet

We drown our doubts in dry champagne
And soothe our souls with fine cocaine
I don't know why I even care
We'll get so high and get nowhere
We'll have to change our jaded ways
But I've loved these days

So before we end and then begin
We'll drink a toast to how it's been
A few more hours to be complete
A few more nights on satin sheets
A few more times that I can say
I've loved these days

Music is my Mistress

Duke Ellington

"I have a mistress. Lovers have come and gone, but only my mistress stays. She is beautiful and gentle. She is a swinger. She has grace. To hear her speak, you can't believe your ears. She is 10,000 years old. She is as modern as tomorrow, a brand new woman every day, and as endless as time mathematics. Living with her is a labyrinth of ramifications. I look forward to her every gesture. Music is my mistress, and she plays second fiddle to none.

Eugene Onegin

Current Music: Over the Rainbow/What a Wonderful World

Pushkin/Hofstadter

But then again, the love of gentle
Young belles tanscends friends' love, and kin's;
In tempests, though they're temperamental,
Your power to sway them always wins.
All this is true -- but fashion forces;
And think of Nature's swerving courses,
The rushing tide of voguish views...
How woman's fickle -- that's no news!
Moreover, any curts'ying lover
Must meet her husband's every whim --
Indulge and spoil and pamper him.
This soon grows old as she'll discover --
And off your faithful dolly darts:
How Satan loves to toy with hearts!

Whom thus to trust? And whom to treasure?
Who'll remain firm and true to form?
Who'll always most politely measure
Word, gest, and deed to meet our norm?
Who'll never slander us, or curse us?
Who with solicitude will nurse us?
Who won't be averse to our vice?
Who won't leave us bored in a trice?
World-weary seeker of some specter,
Whose search drags on and on -- and how! --
Why, he whom you should worship's thou,
Who art my tale's select delector!
What wooers seek to please their heart,
Without a doubt, is that which th'art!

Coups de Foudre

Current music: the rain

Victor Hugo

He fell to the seat, she by his side. There were no more words. The stars were beginning to shine. How was it that their lips met? How is it that the birds sing, that the snow melts, that the rose opens, that May blooms, that the dawn whitens behind the black trees on the shivering summit of the hills?

One kiss, and that was all.

Both trembled, and they looked at each other in the darkness with brilliant eyes.

They felt neither the cool night nor the cold stone nor the damp ground nor the wet grass; they looked at each other, and their hearts were full of thought. They had clasped hands, without knowing it.

She did not ask him; did not even think where and how he had managed to get into the garden. It seemed so natural to her that he should be there.

From time to time Marius's knee touched Cosette's, a touch that thrilled.

At times, Cosette faltered out a word. Her soul trembled on her lips like a drop of dew on a flower.

Gradually they began to talk. Overflow succeeded to silence, which is fullness. The night was serene and glorious above their heads. These two beings, pure as spirits, told each other everything, their dreams, their frenzies, their ecstasies, their chimeras, their despondencies, how they had adored each other from afar, how they had longed for each other, their despair when they had ceased to see each other. They confided to each other in an intimacy of the ideal, which already nothing could have increased, all that was most hidden and most mysterious in themselves. They told each other, with a candid faith in their illusions, all that love, youth, and the remnant of childhood that was theirs, brought to mind. These two hears poured themselves out to each other, so that at the end of an hour, it was the young man who had the young girl's soul and the young girl who had the soul of the young man. They interpenetrated, they enchanted, they dazzled each other.

When they had finished, when they had told each other everything, she laid her head on his shoulder, and asked him; "What is your name?"

"My name is Marius," he said. "And yours?"

"My name is Cosette."

Seattle from Bremerton

Seattle from Bremerton

I travelled to Seattle for a weekend wedding. Although the red-eye flight back Sunday night was awful because I couldn't get to sleep on the plane, the weekend was exteremely pleasant, full of playing music, dancing, and relaxing.

Quince Tree: Sliverdale House

Quince Tree: Silverdale House

They dined on mince, and slices of quince,
Which they ate with a runcible spoon;
And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,
They danced by the light of the moon,
The moon,
The moon,
They danced by the light of the moon.

--Edward Lear's "The Owl and the Pussycat"

Dual Cognitive Systems

I just read a hilarious novel: As She Climbed Across the Table, by Jonathan Lethem. I was laughing out loud on the plane while reading it. Like a Woody Allen film, all the irony and humor seem to contain useful pearls of wisdom, and it cheered me up immensely. There is plenty of unrequited love to go around in the plot, along with a surprising, easy romance offered up in contrast.

At one point a new girl (studying psychology) is trying to start something with the book's protagonist but he needs to get over his "limerent object". He has trouble letting go of his ex and is awkward and resistant towards the new girl, but she is understanding and says

Relax. There's nothing wrong with a slow, awkward beginning. The text for the whole relationship, the sustaining mythos, is built in the first few encounters. The whirl of emotions, the push and pull. So the more of this kind of material we generate, the better.

The same psychologist girl in the novel brings up a fascinating concept that relates to the book's plots involving bad, unbalanced relationships:

In the larger sense my reasearch is into the delusory or subjective worlds that exist in the space between the two halves of any dual cognitive system. It applies to any coupling, from obsessive twins all the way down to a chance momentary encounter in public, between two strangers.