Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Panko panko panko panko
I'm sick, but for some reason, all I want in the world are chicken cutlets crusted in Panko.
Actually, it's a Clown
This is a picture of the worst, most surreal nightmare I can ever imagine myself having. It's from the Cathedral of St. John the Divine's newsletter.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
More John Updike
Again, it's long... skip over if you have to. But I love it.
"At the entrance to the Turnpike Neil did a strange thing; he stopped the car and had me take the wheel... We crossed the Susquehanna on a long smooth bridge below Harrisburg, then began climbing toward the Alleghenies. In the mountains there was snow, a dry dusting like sand that waved back and forth on the road surface. Farther along, there had been a fresh fall that night, about two inches, and the plows had not yet cleared all the lanes.
"I was passing a Sunoco truck on a high curve when without warning the scraped section gave out and I realized I might skid into the fence, if not over the edge. The radio was singing 'Carpets of clover, I'll lay right at your feet,' and the speedometer said 81.
"Nothing happened; the car stayed firm in the snow, and Neil slept through the dancer, his face turned skyward and his breath struggling in his nose... We made the long irregular descent toward Pittsburgh.
"There were many reasons for my feeling so happy. We were on our way. I had seen a dawn. This far, Neil could appreciate, I had brought us safely. Ahead, a girl waited who, if I asked, would marry me, but first there was a long trip; many hours and towns interceded btween me and that encounter. There was the quality of the 10 A.M. sunglight as it existed in the air ahead of the windshield, filtered by the thing overcast, blessing irresponsibility - you felt you could slice forever through a cool pure element - and springing, by implying how high these hills had become, a widespreading pride: Pennsylvania, your state - as if you had made your life. And there was knowing that twice since midnight a person had trusted me enough to fall asleep beside me."
"At the entrance to the Turnpike Neil did a strange thing; he stopped the car and had me take the wheel... We crossed the Susquehanna on a long smooth bridge below Harrisburg, then began climbing toward the Alleghenies. In the mountains there was snow, a dry dusting like sand that waved back and forth on the road surface. Farther along, there had been a fresh fall that night, about two inches, and the plows had not yet cleared all the lanes.
"I was passing a Sunoco truck on a high curve when without warning the scraped section gave out and I realized I might skid into the fence, if not over the edge. The radio was singing 'Carpets of clover, I'll lay right at your feet,' and the speedometer said 81.
"Nothing happened; the car stayed firm in the snow, and Neil slept through the dancer, his face turned skyward and his breath struggling in his nose... We made the long irregular descent toward Pittsburgh.
"There were many reasons for my feeling so happy. We were on our way. I had seen a dawn. This far, Neil could appreciate, I had brought us safely. Ahead, a girl waited who, if I asked, would marry me, but first there was a long trip; many hours and towns interceded btween me and that encounter. There was the quality of the 10 A.M. sunglight as it existed in the air ahead of the windshield, filtered by the thing overcast, blessing irresponsibility - you felt you could slice forever through a cool pure element - and springing, by implying how high these hills had become, a widespreading pride: Pennsylvania, your state - as if you had made your life. And there was knowing that twice since midnight a person had trusted me enough to fall asleep beside me."
This is long but worth it
"Two sensations stood out as peculiarly blissful in my childhood... The first has been alluded to: the awareness of things going by, impinging on my consciousness, and then, all beyond my control, sliding away toward their own destination and destiny. The traffic on Philadelphia Avenue was such; the sound of an engine and tires would swell like a guest of wind, the headlight beam would parabolically wheel about the papered walls of my little room, and then the lights and the sound would die, and that dangerous creature of combustion and momentum would be out of my life... Mailing letters, flushing a toilet, reading the last set of proofs - all have this sweetness of riddance.
"The second intimation of deep, cosmic joy, also already hinted at, is really a variation of being out of the rain, but just out. I would lean close to the chilld windowpane to hear the raindrops ticking on the other side; I would huddle under bushes until the rain penetrated; I loved doorways in a shower.
"On our side porch, it was my humble job, when it rained, to turn the wicker furniture with its seats to the wall, and in these porous woven caves I would crouch, happy almost to tears, as the rain drummed on the porch rail and rattled the grape leaves of the arbor and touched my wicker shelter with a mist like the vain assault of an atomic army.
"In both species of delightful experience, the reader my notice, the experiencer is motionless, holding his breath as it were, and the things experienced are morally detached from him: there is nothing he can do, or ought to do, about the flow, the tumult. He is irresponsible, safe, and witnessing: the entire body, for these rapt moments, mimics the position of the essential self in its jungle of physiology, its moldering tangle of inheritance and circumstance.
"Early in his life, the child I once was sensed the guilt in things, inseparable from the pain, the competition: the sparrow dead on the lawn, the flies swatted on the porch, the impervious leer of the bully on the school playground. The burden of activity, of participation, must clearly be shouldered and had its pleasures.
"But they were cruel pleasures. There was nothing ruel about crouching in a shelter and letting phenomena slide by: it was ecstasy. The essential self is innocent, and when it tastes its own innocence knows that it lives forever. If we keep utterly still, we can suffer no wear and tear, and will never die."
John Updike
"The second intimation of deep, cosmic joy, also already hinted at, is really a variation of being out of the rain, but just out. I would lean close to the chilld windowpane to hear the raindrops ticking on the other side; I would huddle under bushes until the rain penetrated; I loved doorways in a shower.
"On our side porch, it was my humble job, when it rained, to turn the wicker furniture with its seats to the wall, and in these porous woven caves I would crouch, happy almost to tears, as the rain drummed on the porch rail and rattled the grape leaves of the arbor and touched my wicker shelter with a mist like the vain assault of an atomic army.
"In both species of delightful experience, the reader my notice, the experiencer is motionless, holding his breath as it were, and the things experienced are morally detached from him: there is nothing he can do, or ought to do, about the flow, the tumult. He is irresponsible, safe, and witnessing: the entire body, for these rapt moments, mimics the position of the essential self in its jungle of physiology, its moldering tangle of inheritance and circumstance.
"Early in his life, the child I once was sensed the guilt in things, inseparable from the pain, the competition: the sparrow dead on the lawn, the flies swatted on the porch, the impervious leer of the bully on the school playground. The burden of activity, of participation, must clearly be shouldered and had its pleasures.
"But they were cruel pleasures. There was nothing ruel about crouching in a shelter and letting phenomena slide by: it was ecstasy. The essential self is innocent, and when it tastes its own innocence knows that it lives forever. If we keep utterly still, we can suffer no wear and tear, and will never die."
John Updike
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