Well, of course we talk. Don't everybody?

I dreamed last night of Alan Turing and Christopher Morcom. (I was helping throw them a party. There was a cake. It was dark chocolate and bright green, from which I conclude one of them had a taste for crème de menthe. Happy Pi Day?)

I woke to an improbable piece of mail that cheered me immensely.

captainbutler had never seen Singin' in the Rain (1951). I got to watch someone see Donald O'Connor run up (and fall through) a wall for the first time.

greygirlbeast was at Pandemonium Books & Games, reading Chapter One of The Drowning Girl (2012). I don't know if there was really spectacular Indian food afterward, but there was discussion of Rift.

I had aguadito de pollo from Machu Picchu with derspatchel, the chicken-and-cilantro soup which the menu mentions is also known as levanta muerto, raise the dead. It actually kind of does what it says on the tin.

(I wound up explaining Gussie Fink-Nottle to ratatosk, but I don't think that was related.)

My poems "The Color of the Ghost" and "A Find at Þingvellir," otherwise known as the Wittgenstein poem and the poem about Mjölnir, have been accepted by Archaeopteryx: The Newman Journal of Ideas.

I gather from all of this that I am not Caesar, but I rather enjoyed the Ides of March.

He seems to be a little hard of hearing, but he knows some wonderful magic tricks

Shaun O'Brien has died. In February, but I didn't see until this morning when I was looking up his husband, Cris Alexander (who didn't outlive him for long). He was my first Drosselmeyer, my strongest memory of The Nutcracker at the New York City Ballet; I was six years old and my god-aunt Susan took me for Christmas. He tinkered for the children, stood apart from the adults at their dance and became an owl on the clock at midnight, a psychopomp from the daylight to the dream worlds. I never saw him in another role. It didn't matter. I was glad to know he was out in the world.

I wouldn't see another production of The Nutcracker until the Boston Ballet's in 2010. Even there, what I was looking for was a good Drosselmeyer. (We had one, fortunately, in Sabi Varga. I still want to see him as Coppélius, another character part O'Brien originated.) I'm sure when strange_selkie asked me to be godmother to her daughter, I had some idea at the back of my head that I should be as properly weird as a Hoffmann character for her. I write things for her, which is something like.

I came home from New York City in 1987 with a small hardcover book, Ellen Switzer's The Nutcracker: A Story of a Ballet (1985). It's sort of a Young Person's Guide to Balanchine: there's an introduction tracking the changes between E.T.A. Hoffmann's "Nussknacker und Mausekönig" and then the ballet as it evolved into its present form, a narrative of Balanchine's version illustrated with photographs from that year's production, and then a series of short statements by the dancers on the characters they play. I shall let O'Brien speak for himself.

( I think of Herr Drosselmeier more in terms of character and personality than in terms of background and occupation. )

There's a line about Drosselmeyer in "The Color of the Ghost," the poem I wrote for my god-daughter. Even though it's mostly about Wittgenstein. Now you know whose fault that was.