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Jag har ju sett det på målningar och hört det i visorna
Today was apartment post-mortem. With my mother and brother, I drove down to New Haven and packed out the last of the paraphernalia of the past three years—dishes, dried roses, a bookcase, blankets. There were flurries of snow and inexplicably stopped traffic on the way down. Coming back, the sky and the roads were clear. This was the first apartment I've ever moved out of. It didn't look like empty rooms, just before I turned out the lights and locked up: it looked like home I was leaving.
There's no thermostat in the apartment, so my first winter there I'd heavily insulated all the radiators in an effort not to die from the furnace-blast heat; but we had to take off the insulation tonight, so I'd shed my jacket and sweater and shoved up my sleeves and I still felt deliquescent. There was nothing left to move except my laptop, which I'd brought down with me, and a cake pan with three miniature books and a bone panel of![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
erzebet's tucked inside in layers of paper towel. I walked into the bedroom with the lights out and only the streetlight in through the window, which used to fall right across my bed and the space above its head where I had a framed print of John William Waterhouse's A Mermaid, and now only on bare boards. And I wiped off my face with my hands, and with my finger I wrote on the wall, I love you. —Sonya Taaffe. It wasn't a gesture I'd planned. It felt important to the next tenant. And to me, I suppose. I hope there are pleasant memories for whoever lives there next.
I have a lot of boxes to unpack now. These are the dead days.
I did have a good Christmas. For the annual roundup of loot: I am now the proud possessor of the bilingual screenplay of Paul Apak Angilirq and Zacharias Kunuk's Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner (because my parents are book-ordering magicians: I'd tried multiple times for this one since January and more or less come to the conclusion that it could only be purchased in Nunavut), Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest on DVD (because gift certificates are a wonderful thing and so issosostris2012), Tanith Lee's Piratica II: Return to Parrot Island (because I didn't even know a sequel existed until a Barnes & Noble run the day before Christmas), Margaret Atwood's The Penelopeiad (because strange_selkie knows me and myths), Sting and Edin Karamazov's Songs from the Labyrinth (because I don't know what stations my brother listens to, but I'm thankful for them), and a pot of spiced rum butterscotch (because my brother's godparents are made of awesome). I also have a staggering cold, but I don't want to know whose gift that was. fleurdelis28 gave me a Yule Goat, which in accordance with tradition she hid in the house for me to find (I wonder if the Yule Goat and the afikomen ever compare notes) and which was then photographed with the bat in a sort of holiday mashup of impressive cuteness. We made our traditional eggnog and figgy pudding, which this year burned like a volcano and had to be extinguished before it could be eaten; and for the first time, we cooked a Christmas goose. It was a success. Shlomo and fleurdelis28 and I attempted to rot our brains with television, and since we caught the first half-hour of Constantine and the last fifteen minutes of Fantastic Four, I would say we succeeded beyond our wildest expectations. (We did enjoy Tilda Swinton and Michael Chiklis. Keanu Reeves, not so much.) And John Benson has accepted "Perdidit Spolia" for the annual not-Not One of Us one-off, which probably marks the shortest time elapsed between inspiration and acceptance of a piece of mine. None of this hurts.
I could have done without falling down the stairs two days before Christmas, because bits of my back are now unusually unhappy about the packing-out, but that will heal. It seems unfair: I didn't even fall down the whole flight of stairs, I caught myself on the banister about two-thirds of the way down, but I think that's what pulled whatever it is in my back that now twinges each time I breathe in. So much for reflexes.
And lastly, the latest addictive meme:
(Cut for quotable cinema narcissism.)
"You idiot! Someone's stolen our tent!"
A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose, said my good friend Gertrude Stein . . .
. . . nec vitia nostra nec remedia pati possumus.
Lucky Luca Brasi.
"You with your visions and your dreams . . ."
There's no thermostat in the apartment, so my first winter there I'd heavily insulated all the radiators in an effort not to die from the furnace-blast heat; but we had to take off the insulation tonight, so I'd shed my jacket and sweater and shoved up my sleeves and I still felt deliquescent. There was nothing left to move except my laptop, which I'd brought down with me, and a cake pan with three miniature books and a bone panel of
erzebet's tucked inside in layers of paper towel. I walked into the bedroom with the lights out and only the streetlight in through the window, which used to fall right across my bed and the space above its head where I had a framed print of John William Waterhouse's A Mermaid, and now only on bare boards. And I wiped off my face with my hands, and with my finger I wrote on the wall, I love you. —Sonya Taaffe. It wasn't a gesture I'd planned. It felt important to the next tenant. And to me, I suppose. I hope there are pleasant memories for whoever lives there next. I have a lot of boxes to unpack now. These are the dead days.
I did have a good Christmas. For the annual roundup of loot: I am now the proud possessor of the bilingual screenplay of Paul Apak Angilirq and Zacharias Kunuk's Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner (because my parents are book-ordering magicians: I'd tried multiple times for this one since January and more or less come to the conclusion that it could only be purchased in Nunavut), Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest on DVD (because gift certificates are a wonderful thing and so is
sosostris2012), Tanith Lee's Piratica II: Return to Parrot Island (because I didn't even know a sequel existed until a Barnes & Noble run the day before Christmas), Margaret Atwood's The Penelopeiad (because strange_selkie knows me and myths), Sting and Edin Karamazov's Songs from the Labyrinth (because I don't know what stations my brother listens to, but I'm thankful for them), and a pot of spiced rum butterscotch (because my brother's godparents are made of awesome). I also have a staggering cold, but I don't want to know whose gift that was. fleurdelis28 gave me a Yule Goat, which in accordance with tradition she hid in the house for me to find (I wonder if the Yule Goat and the afikomen ever compare notes) and which was then photographed with the bat in a sort of holiday mashup of impressive cuteness. We made our traditional eggnog and figgy pudding, which this year burned like a volcano and had to be extinguished before it could be eaten; and for the first time, we cooked a Christmas goose. It was a success. Shlomo and fleurdelis28 and I attempted to rot our brains with television, and since we caught the first half-hour of Constantine and the last fifteen minutes of Fantastic Four, I would say we succeeded beyond our wildest expectations. (We did enjoy Tilda Swinton and Michael Chiklis. Keanu Reeves, not so much.) And John Benson has accepted "Perdidit Spolia" for the annual not-Not One of Us one-off, which probably marks the shortest time elapsed between inspiration and acceptance of a piece of mine. None of this hurts.I could have done without falling down the stairs two days before Christmas, because bits of my back are now unusually unhappy about the packing-out, but that will heal. It seems unfair: I didn't even fall down the whole flight of stairs, I caught myself on the banister about two-thirds of the way down, but I think that's what pulled whatever it is in my back that now twinges each time I breathe in. So much for reflexes.
And lastly, the latest addictive meme:
If I was a Sovay, a perfect Sovay, how would you know it was really me?
(Cut for quotable cinema narcissism.)
Elementary, my dear Sovay.
"You idiot! Someone's stolen our tent!"
If you are a minority of one, the Sovay is the Sovay.
A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose, said my good friend Gertrude Stein . . .
Oh, what sad times are these when passing ruffians can say 'Sovay' at will to old ladies.
. . . nec vitia nostra nec remedia pati possumus.
It's a Sicilian message. It means Luca Brasi sleeps with the Sovay.
Lucky Luca Brasi.
I met Sovay today. We are playing chess.
"You with your visions and your dreams . . ."
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I still need to see at least an episode of The West Wing. Any number of character actors I like seem to have been involved in that show at some point.