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Feb 24, 2010 12:08

Maybe I will try using this thing again.
I don't feel like leaving that last miserablist post as my final testament here. Maybe I should and shall be writing more. At least trying to.
So, in interest of starting that all, here is some random babbling.


Last night, after slightly awkward dinner (that story arc ends there, I don't really feel like ranting about that sort of thing right now), I journeyed to Harvard Square in hopes of finding Levitt&Pierce still open to replenish my dwindling supply of pipe tobacco and my dwindled supply of neo-cloves. They were not, as expected, and so I wandered my way a block or so down to the Harvard bookstore.
Romps through the remainders section are always entrancing. Discouveries such as "Lil' Abner Meets the Schmoo" (required reading for all persons interested in analysis of certain dominant branches of post-tonal music) and "Psycho", the novel on which Hitchcock based his film, which he bought every copy of the book he could find and the print rights to it so the novel was unreprintable so that no one would be able to know the ending of the film before its release.
The used shelves were what held my treasures that evening. In searching for a miraculous copy of some obscure novel by Hrabal (a hopeless task, but one that must be undertaken religiously), I discouvered, quite by accident, a copy of one of Susannah Kaysen's novels, "Asa, as I Knew Him". Susannah is an absolutely lovely woman, sweet as can be, I love her to pieces. And her gentleman companion is also of fabulous wit and kindness. I dearly wish I could see them far more regularly. Not seeing them was one of my greatest sadnesses in leaving Formaggio Kitchen, where they were almost daily customers (always got a bran muffin and a demi-baguette).
My other treasure was found while searching for something on Audrey Hepburn (don't ask...or do, as you desire) in the film section and came across something I've been searching for for years: Nabokov's own screenplay for Lolita. I now own about 5 forms of Lolita: the two film adaptations, Nabokov's hardly-used screenplay, the novel and a the heavily annotated edition of the novel.
Next stop: Grendel's Den, my effective home in Harvard Square, where I sit firmly ensconced in drink and relative isolation surrounded by the clamor of drunkenness and the din of first dates. It is here, on these tables (usually either tables number 1, 27 or 29...I think...they are all unlabeled, I've just been there long enough to have gathered odd data like that) that I do most of my composition. Fed with hefeweizen and the ringing of my ears drowned out by my fellow pub patrons, I'm am in my perfect world to work. Beatus Vir was written here, the Violin Sonata, most of every one of my pieces written in the last four years was fabricated on those tables. Last night saw the completion of two pieces, one a solo guitar lullaby for Aaron Larget-Caplan and the other a saxophone quartet I just felt like creating. Both of these are my first musical creations in at least four months (due to events readable in a prior entry).
It was reading from my newly acquired books, however, that gave my the greatest joy and plunged me into the most thought. I absolutely squeed when I read Nabokov's monumental prose that sings of verse, and this was only his introduction. In Susannah's writing I found a haiku-beautiful pair of sentences: "Asa's shirts were blue or white. Asa's eyes match his shirts." There usually is one sentence or on phrase in a novel or story that just drags me in, and says to me "this is a beautiful work" and that, with it's odd simplicity, was it for me.
In those moments I recognized what I was feeling. The sensation was the same as that of rare greatest love. The deepest of feelings I've felt for a very reserved number of people; an unquestionable, immovable, inalterable passion that spreads euphoric bliss at but a single flick of memory or caress of thought.
Will I, have I, maybe, perchance, become as Hanta? Will the rest of my life be in solitude with my inanimate beloveds crushing me under their loud weight? Do I want anything else?
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