Finished the LeFanu, started in on a short story collection, beginning with Chesterton. It is always a good sign when a short story collection begins with Chesterton.

It seems like I am in a peaceful sort of doldrums. My mind is relatively quiet. This happens when the Squabbler's home sometimes because he takes a lot of my thoughts out into the street with him. Or - wherever it is he goes. I can take a small holiday.

Now, Honore de Balzac died of "mental strain," and on his deathbed he received many visitors, quite a few of them his own fictional characters. The poor fellow died the same year he got married - 1850.

I went to see his grave when I was in Paris.

Why?

Why do people look at other people's graves? It's really rather an odd thing to do. Cemeteries are beautifully peaceful parks. If you think about it their peacefulness may be owing to the fact that they have such a singleness of purpose. You don't use a cemetery for anything other than burying people. A village green or public square, or any other sort of landscaped parkland, can be used for a variety of purposes. But when's the last time you heard of a pop music concert being held in a cemetery? Or a family reunion party? Or a political rally? Or a Fireman's Fair?

Oh yes - the Fireman's Fair. What fun! Oh, we used to wait with baited breath (whatever that means) for such grand and glorious events. It was second only to the Circus in my mind for anticipated events.

Yes, I know I just wrote the phrase "the circus in my mind," and I also know that some of you may be wanting to make something of that. Feel free. I'm not really in the mood to do any revising today. I think after re-writing the story of meeting The White Tornado about five times I've burned-out on revisions.

There are some who would place Balzac in the Gothic camp, but I think that's a stretch. His settings sort of have to be Gothic because he's French and that's what the word means, but he's a Realist. (No, really.)

Well, I was a reader of his stories, and I liked them. I know I wanted to see his grave. My wife wanted to see Jim Morrison's (again) but she pretended it was Chopin who interested her. I suppose that looking at a person's grave was the sort of thing I thought I wanted to do until I did it, and now I realize that wanting to do that is extremely silly.

I like architecture, though. Those monuments are magnificent, some of them. But is it dead people I'm visiting in that case, or is it stones?

No, Jim Morrison was in a band called The Doors. In fact, he was a band called The Doors. (sorry, guys) The Stones are all still alive, which is really quite surprising.

Bad joke, I know.

But my musical tastes never really ran to the wildly popular. I mean, you're hearing a sample of my taste in music now. Nothing except music really has flavor. I think on my deathbed I will sing. I used to sing myself awake each morning, to hear my Mom tell the tale. That's a true story. Mom didn't even exaggerate, much less lie.

(Where on earth is this post going? It's like a game of pick-up-sticks, isn't it?)

It's been that kind of day. That kind of life. I think we put things in their places only with the greatest effort. There is an order; there is a place for everything. But the real order of things - their natural order, if you will - is like the way God moves. We are told, mysteriously. But then there's our order, the one that makes sense to us. And that takes effort. Does that make sense?

What the heck is "mental strain?" and how can a person die of it? Isn't that much too romantic for a Realist? Perhaps Balzac was a Realist, but the medical profession of his day were Romantic. Yes, that equation seems to work. It's balanced on either side of that great equal sign - the word "is."

Or, as another famous Frenchman once wrote, "I am - or, at least I think I am." Of course, it got boggled in translation.

On my deathbed I would sing. I would not entertain visits from The Lady or Sister Midnight, or little Lucy-loo, Sydney Horatio Plumnick or Eric Nemo, or Maisie Dean. I would not wish to have imaginary people coming to my bed side as I lay dying. Not the whole population of Rhubarb Valley, nor of Fenrocia. It's just not on. Those people need to know what their place is. Between fact and fiction there is

Gee, I don't have a word to put after "is."

Of course, Squabbler will be there.    

I am having too much fun just compiling songs this Sunday morning, picking out things that I like at random. Some days I will spend an hour just flipping through my music collection and playing this and that. I used to make cassette tapes for my old Crown Vic. A friend of mine shared the car with me - that is, she would drive it while I worked, because she didn't have a car of her own then. One day I'm somewhere with her, driving, and I hear her singing to herself "Some Velvet Morning," a truly obscure song. There is but a handful of people who know it. And so, she told a few others about my music tapes, and I started getting "orders" for such recordings. It's a good thing. Now I can do the same with CD's, but it's not as good. It's not the same. What I really miss, and what I really want, is two turntables and a microphone.

I'll add to the list as the day goes on, between running here and there - to mass, to the laundromat, to the store, to the moon. But this is the soundtrack for the day. It could be part of it for your day too if you want to keep your blogstream window open. You'll never know what song you've never heard before might next pop up and give you a personality change, a religious experience, or a laugh.

I'm suddenly thinking about my little sister loving it when Captain James T. Kirk would get into a fight. A little trickle of blood would be running down his lip onto his chin which he'd wipe away with the back of his hand holding phaser or communicator, (which would be cell phone for you younger people), and I remember how that was a little disturbing - that she appreciated that so much. His shirt was often torn as well, but that silly collar would stay round his neck while the rest of it hung in tatters. And she loved John Lennon only after he was killed, and Harry Chapin too. Posthumous fandom is a little creepy. But she's OK now. Every day and in every way... It just occurred to me that I have never been in her basement.

It's Bread now - "Everything I Own." This song makes me cry like a little girl, and it makes an interesting seque with the Jorma version of "The Man Comes Around." I'm going to add Bauhaus, just for kicks. Well, the whole thing's for kicks. Rock, Roll, and Remember, Right?   

I posted this fellow's video a few months ago. The bearded one calls himself Scroobius, and it is he who is speaking. I assume the other is Dan Le Sac. I like the attitude of this. I like the way he presents it. I don't understand why he remains sheep-like enough to continue using the word 'fuck' if he is as self-actualized as the lyric suggests. At least he has the 'ho' part figured out.

The Blogstream has the best people on the web. It's here that I can write about anything that pleases me. There's a slight urging to use the site as a social network, but it never overpowers the writing. This is a writers' blog. Well, it's whatever the blogger wants it to be, but it is the one best suited for those who want to write and want their writing to be read.

I've mentioned the one I call The White Tornado, a young woman with supernatural cleaning abilities whom I know that I can call upon from time to time. As summer closes that time draws near. My summer help will disappear in September, though my need for someone's assistance continues until nearly Christmas. So I had been thinking about giving The White Tornado a call.

Well I was down in the grubby little city to the south today - and I will observe for the record that it is a perfect day in regards the climate, a perfect summer day - buying incense in a little shop down there with an odor so indescribably wonderful that it is worth the trip. (OK - I'll give them a plug. It's India Temple manufactured by R. Expo USA). You all know I love smells if you've been here a month or two.

Coming out of the little shop with my purchase in a tiny black plastic bag I saw a petite young woman in a short black dress coming towards me. Not an unusual occurrence on a grubby little city to the south summer day. I thought, Well, that looks like R-, meaning the one I call The White Tornado, but put the thought out of mind as we passed because she looked straight ahead without seeming to recognize me.

For my part, I had never seen her attired in anything other than blue jean short shorts and a tank top. I supposed she had been born that way.

No - now I recall I had also seen her once in fleece sweat pants, (and the name that was written on the back of them was Death, and Hell followed with them. Wrong story.)

Where was I?

Ah yes, the little black dress is what threw me off. But I had been meaning to contact her. She turned into the same little shop that I had so recently come out of, and I thought I might follow her in and say to her, "Are you R-? Because you look like her," and then suffer whatever consequences might result.

So I teetered on a brink of indecision at the corner of the street. An abyss opened up on either side of me. I should explain that not only am I formal in my dealings with other people, but I am also rather shy.

In a moment though - and how did I miss her coming out of the shop again, I wonder? - she herself came by, and this time greeted me with a smile. And now I knew that it was R- because of the not unattractive gaps between her teeth and her distinctive eye lines.

She greeted me warmly, like a friend of long acquaintance, perhaps because we had found in each other a familiar face in the grubby little city to the south, and each of us was out of our rural element (where weeks can go by without meeting a stranger).

I asked her if she was looking for work, and she answered Oh yes, so I spoke of job details, and that I had been planning to call her. And she told me then that she had a new phone number, and if I were to follow to her car she could find a pen and give it me. So we walked together for half a grubby little city block, chatting amicably.

R- opened her car door and leaned in. It was a very small car, low to the ground. When she emerged she suggested in an off-handed way that she had probably 'flashed' somebody - meaning somebody in a car making his way to the traffic light along the street.

Yes, her dress was that small. 

I recalled that she was an easy-going person, quick to laugh. I must have said something like That's OK. It's summertime.

But then she sat down in her low car seat in order to write her telephone number on a scrap of paper for me, raising her knees in order to use them as a writing surface, and I found it necessary to avert my eyes for politeness' sake. I'm not a prude, as you know. The world can go nude for all I care and I would gladly join them on a perfect summer day, but my Mom raised me up to be polite.

Well, we would very soon part company at the corner with my promise that I would call her on my lips, but not until we had chatted a minute or two more. We spoke of the wonders contained within that little shop. I handed her a box of my incense to smell. She said she loved smells.

In fact, the little shop allows you to make your own perfume, she explained. Hers was a blend of patchoulli and some other oil, (the name of which escapes me). And then she leaned back to fully expose her neck and shoulders, inviting me to smell her.

Smell me! she said. Smiling.

In so doing she assumed a pose I thought was only possible for collectable figurines, with arms thrown somewhat backwards in an attitude of total trust, and rolling back upon her feet like a mad woman playfully teetering on the high building's ledge with the crowd below gathered in hope and in horror.

I wondered, How does one politely press his nose into a young lady's neck on a grubby little city street on a perfect summer day with people passing by?

The Squabbler was with me today. He stood silently by. Having a gas mask for a face he doesn't really smell anything anyway.

I was consumed with a sudden passionate desire to embrace her and apply a kiss upon her patchoulli flavored neck to stop all time and traffic. This made the Squabbler laugh at my discomfort to observe it. Sometimes if I am at a wedding I am possessed by a sudden desire to shout out the word "toenails" or something. It is only with the exercise of great restraint that I remain a free man at large in the world today.

I thought her odor was a pleasant one, although getting close enough to detect it was a tad awkward. When he asked me afterwards I was able to say, "Well I don't know that it was indescribably wonderful, but it was worth the trip."

   

 

   

There is a ghostly quality to this Istvan Sandorfi painting, although I think it is not ghosts he intends to convey but more an existential lack of substance. He has depicted the nude female form in the same photo realist way, representing all but her arms, which are absent, like the arms of a broken statue. It is as though he deemed the painting complete before his figure had entirely materialized. In this one his subject softly fades, very like an apparition. As always, he has realized the background in painstaking detail. And as always, it is the interior of his own Paris studio that provides it.