Try, Try
Sunday, May 25, 2008
Thursday was fun. There was a barbeque over at RK's house, with surprise guest the lovely, years-missing D. (the supremely meditational sound you hear is that of water trickling under the bridge). Talking. More hugs.
Yet Friday in Chicago was cold and entropic when I got the word Lydia Davis wouldn't make it to the reading next Thursday. All my Chicagoans were deeply immersed in pre-Memorial day work obligations, which, if I remember my desk job etiquette, means sitting in front of a computer coming up with things to do with your hands while listening to your co-workers sigh about their plans for the surplus weekend. No one could come out to play. I just sort of waited around for my own vacation to end. Plus fought through a hacking cough I blame on my recent penchant for appetite suppression by way of smoking. The Lydia Davis news didn't hit too hard, since the Warsh/Mlinko ticket is still a pretty fierce one. Yet Fred over at the Poetry Foundation seemed pretty bummed out about it, as did St. Mark's when I called and told them to take down the fliers. I took naps. I walked around Chicago for a while poking into shops, and then went up north to Links Hall (no one joined me), where I got the pleasure of seeing John Beer channel Brando in an adaptation of Frank O'Hara's "Try, Try." By this time I realized the entropy had taken a physical dimension: I was sick. Then the phone calls. Finally my Chicagoans were collecting--Simone had organized a dance party of one sort or another over at Danny's--but I just wanted to crawl in bed, on a plane, away. Nonetheless, JW met me for a nightcap and we talked about Orwell. We decided the difference between him and his student, Hitchens, is that, whereas Orwell found ideology absurd, Hitchens seems to be searching for an ideology absurd enough to suit him. Then to bed alone, last night as tonight, back in New York.
posted by Greg Purcell @ 12:05 AM,
