tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-67215853879518312322008-10-04T12:42:18.902-07:00joseph mailanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17173034143303371790noreply@blogger.comBlogger329125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6721585387951831232.post-91584520912473884632008-10-04T11:58:00.001-07:002008-10-04T12:42:18.968-07:00

JM, Lynn, 9.6.08 October 4, 2007 was a sunny day. As Lynn and I were driving down Beverly to Cedars, she said, "Look at all these people on the street just going about their ordinary day." That it would become not just the most exceptional but also the worst day of both of our lives was a possibility, and we were very tense. We were very tense by the time the nurse called her for her surgery

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JM, Instant Karma, San Fernando, 10.1.08 click image to enlarge ~

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JM, Melting Ice Sculpture, Human Ear Music, 9.27.08

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~ Tomorrow I'm kicking off two projects, one journalistic and one fictive, and both are geographic: one is about the success of Paris's petite ceinture, the other set mostly on Virgil Avenue. This has proven to be a highly entertaining presidential election to-date. I think the outcome has already been determined--how else can you explain the nonchalance of one candidate and the desperation and

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JM, Public Transportation, 8.9.08 Found a bike in front of the apartment building at which I lived a dozen years ago, Rodney & Melbourne, with a post-it on the seat: "Gone to New York, please take to good home." Two flat tires, an old Schwinn beach cruiser; a thought like a detective---mmmm, two flat tires, not one, they're probably just tired---filled the tires, they're still full of air, a

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JM, Tilme of Guadalupe, Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, 6.5.08 etween lunch downtown and dancers pouring salt on the stage at REDCAT Thursday, I went to Reference on Lower Level III at the Central Library and explored Crowds and Power (better in German: Macht und Masse) for a few hours. g As I said below, I wanted to read Crowds and Power this summer, but my summer plans have gang aft

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JM, SaMo Shore, 7.19.08 click image to enlarge

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Guillaume Chérel ~ uesday night in Venice (where else?) I crossed paths with Guillaume Chérel, who is writing a blog for Le Libération on his own journeys in America exploring Jack Kerouac this summer. That very day he had posted on the episode in On the Road («Sur la Route») in which the narrator picks up Mexican woman on a bus between LA and Bakersfield, the very passage Rodger Jacobs and I

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I went swimming, only for a few minutes. While I was gone, she sat in the backyard next to the two Moonshadow rose bushes; later I clipped one and gave it to her. We went to dinner on Beverly and she had the pork leg and I had the duck breast; I also had a glass of Barolo. I recognized a face without knowing the name but the people at the next table said it was Sumner Redstone. All day

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JM, Apricot, 6.21.08 JM, Apricot, 3.9.08 JM, Apricot, 2.23.08 We're going to get about nine or ten tarts' worth of fruit this year. That's about one every six weeks until the next bearing. Amazingly slow harvest this year, from the first day of summer through now and probably for a few days longer.

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JM, Gelato in luglio, 7.3.08 Quarto felice; di soggiorno indipendente mai.

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JM, Ojai Lavender Harvest, 6.28.08 lame it partially on Aldine Books. Aldine Books, I found out last week, moved June 15 after about twenty years in the old familiar location. In characteristic Aldine fashion, they left up an illegible map to the new location. I found it anyway. The new location is one block east of Laveta Terrace on Sunset, in a strip mall on the south side of the street.

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JM, Tilme of Guadalupe, Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, 6.5.08 ut I didn't commence Crowds and Power (better in German: Macht und Masse). g As I said below, at Book Expo, my old friend Doug gave me a copy of French Theory, and, like French theory itself, from there the best laid plans of mice and men gang aft agly. g French Theory is a very important book. The chapter on the evolution

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~ hese have been hard-to-characterize days. g A writer's trick: when you find something is hard to characterize, characterize it as hard-to-characterize; the hyphens add character. g Hard-to-characterize: I was asked by a writer to do an intro to a book yesterday, and accepted, gladly; the book, Rodger Jacobs' coming book of Bukowski tales, is an exercise in nomadism and violation of the sanctity

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~ You turtle, you have nothing to do but float. At peace drift from shade to shade pad to pad finding food The dragons fly like spies. They threaten-- we watch as though we were at home. --JM, San Marino, July 1980

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~ The benches here are made of redwood. Pedestrians are always gullible, yet here they were suspecting faces. It's much too cold for June. It doesn't matter which of these words the postmark will obscure or whether I was here at all; without your chaste responses and golden streak of hair I observe nothing, only absence. —JM, Stanford, California, June 1, 1983 ~

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n hot weekends, I retreat to the garden. The garden is out, down, around, down some more, and back. I don't want to make more of it than it is, but it has been a satisfying creation over the years. When we came here, there was nothing but dirt, excepting the walnut tree. g Growing a garden from scratch is the closest activity I know to writing a novel. What luck in life to have been able to

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~ he thoughts about books you have right now, mid May, will likely inform your reading list for the summer. g I am about to commence Elias Canetti's Crowds and Power (better in German: Macht und Masse), a book I've been meaning to read for about thirty years. I began Auto-da-Fé last week. Crowds and Power has always impressed me as a sui generis, as Canetti was himself. I think I will also

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J. Regardie, Lynn at Brunch, 5.4.08

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JM, The Red Balloon, 4.30.08 Yesterday, walking up Scott Street, this red balloon fairly followed me for a block, exactly as in the children's classic of the same name. The red balloon was dying---it had dropped altitude recently---but it still had some life left, enough to follow the wind that carried me up the hill. Today I was a guest on KCRW and having fun. I called in from Forest Lawn

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JM, Tiffany, 4.24.08 Tiffany is one of my favorite roses. A favorite essay: Roland Barthes, Writing Degree Zero. A favorite history: Jacques Barzun, From Dawn to Decadence. A favorite detective show: Inspector Morse. A favorite spy novel: Smiley's People. A favorite sequence of English language novels: The Alexandria Quartet. A favorite collection of essays: Paul Fussell, Abroad. A

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JM, Coral tree, Vermont meridian, Griffith Park, 4.21.08 So I lost my anger, all of it; like a broken heart, it happens suddenly. You wake up one morning and it's healed and you look under your pillow wondering where it went. But it has been a good thing, this anger that has kept me marching for over a year; it made me more observant, more aware, maybe even more alive through times when sorrow

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diagram of our rose garden from my garden journal (click to enlarge) I was a judge at a high school journalism conference on Friday, and I enjoyed doing that, because for me it was a full-circle moment, having participated in so many of them when I was in high school myself. But what I wonder about is why more journalists aren't involved with these. Some advisers (that's what they call the

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Mr. Beebe has shuffled off his mortal coil. Mr. Beebe was a foundling, found near Pico and Arlington in 1990. Do you remember where you were that summer? Beebe soon grew adventurous and mischievous, always maintaining a poker face through his varied nettlesome antics. A calm cat, he rarely seemed surprised at anything, though he could grow quite indignant very suddently. My own relationship

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JM, swordferns, 4.12.08 Roses at their apex. A good week for that. Unseasonably warm with spare spring shade; bagels, lox, cream cheese for breakfast; watching the Masters, in and out of the garden. Where is everybody going? It's still impossible to know; it's always impossible to know. Consciousness is never tedious but sometimes it is a burden, especially when you're obliged to measure it

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