Allons-y

"I should add that some people who call themselves nationalists would not accept this line of reasoning. Nationalism to them has remained a mere feeling ofbelonging to the nation (in a sociological or cultural sense); they liken it to a dream which inspires the individual and motivates his actions, perhaps irrationally but not necessarily negatively. I cannot, of course, quarrel with people merely because they wish to drain two centuries of history out of a definition. I can only say that it is not about their nationalism that I am writing in this paper; it is only fair to remind them, however, that their 'dreams' are being converted by others into a principle of government."

-Pierre Trudeau (who else?) anticipating the foolishness back in 1964 (!)

Off to the fabulous city of Montreal (doesn't that name just roll off the tongue?) to see one of four Liberals fight their way to the top of the heap and, perchance, the Prime Ministership. Along the way, plenty of celebratory pints and other cocktails to be savoured and elbows to rub with elites and fond old acquaintances alike. Shakespeare quotes and surely other random thoughts from the road. I'll do my best not to call anyone derogatory names, okay?

Oh my, still need to do laundry, pack, and the cab arrives at the door in less than 6 hours. Argh. The price you pay for seats in history's front row...

Yon Pomegranate-Tree

For last eve's American Thanksgiving, I had my first pomegranate. Cutting it open, the juices ran like blood. Straining the seeds through water took time, but what a magnificent taste! I feel that I have started an annual tradition. So it was rather excellent to discover the fine literary history of the pomegranate. Both the fruit of the underworld and the fruit of paradise (aren't they the same? -ed.)

PAROLLES
This is hard and undeserved measure, my lord.

LAFEU
Go to, sir; you were beaten in Italy for picking a
kernel out of a pomegranate; you are a vagabond and
no true traveller: you are more saucy with lords
and honourable personages than the commission of your
birth and virtue gives you heraldry. You are not
worth another word, else I'd call you knave. I leave you.

Exit

PAROLLES
Good, very good; it is so then: good, very good;
let it be concealed awhile.

Rum and Cokes in Moncton tonight with the youngest sister, over her news from Hawaii and the Joel Plaskett CD I've got for her birthday. And then hopefully some amusing randomness into the late night hours. Pray for that, and for Gongshow's Sunday 26 m 385 y in Seattle. I trust he'll have better success than Pheidippides. Just keep thinking: In a little while... this hurt will hurt no more...

The Incredible Mile

"My house in St. Pancras was being demolished. I was being rehoused one mile away in Euston. My furniture left by road with a removals van. I myself decided to make the journey by train.

'You cannot get from St. Pancras to Euston by train,' said the ticket clerk.

'Nonsense,' I said. And made this journey."

The "journey" Harold Elvin goes on to describe takes him from St. Pancras up to Newcastle, across to Bergen, then out to the Pacific via Oslo, Stockholm, Helsinki, "Leningrad", Moscow, Omsk, Ulan Bator, and Nakhodka (next to Vladivostok). The return to Euston goes down through Taskent, Samarkand (naturally), Tbilisi, Odessa, Istanbul, Paris and back to Euston via Bristol and Birmingham. The trip is helpfully mapped out on the book's cover. Incredible mile indeed. All these crazy unknown Brits and their inspired travels.

Bought the book on the way in today, excited by the email reminder from Easyjet that the seat sales to Turkey expires at midnight. On arriving, sad to discover disappointing news from my friend Barat. It appears he will be undertaking his mandatory military service between December and May, and so my flight to Byzantium is likely postponed. And the question remains - Quo Vadimus? Egypt? Malta? Casablanca? Skye? Barcelona? Rome? Krakow? the Lake District? Time will show, I guess.

Hysteria

To sum it all up, if you want to write, if you want to create, you must be the most sublime fool that God ever turned out and sent rambling.

You must write every single day of your life.

You must read dreadful dumb books and glorious books, and let them wrestle in beautiful fights inside your head, vulgar one moment, brilliant the next.

You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads.

I wish you a wrestling match with your Creative Muse that will last a lifetime.

I wish craziness and foolishness and madness upon you.

May you live with hysteria, and out of it make fine stories - science fiction or otherwise.

Which finally means, may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world.

-Ray Bradbury

Wouldn't Take Nothing For My Journey Now

A weekend of recovery - unsurprisingly - followed Friday's flowing of single malt. It was about 1/2 way through the event, when I had a glass refilled with Johnny Blue for the walk across the ballroom to the next station, that I realized the occasion had moved beyond "tasting" to actual "drinking". Then it was Grand Marnier, and then further cocktails, as another Friday merged into the Saturday hours and incoherence.

Trying desperately to get back into a proper Monday frame of mind, and failing miserably. Instead, advertised international seat sales from our national carrier have me asking the vagabond's age-old question: "Quo Vadimus?" The answer, from nowhere, might just be to Byzantium. Constantinople. Istanbul. By any name as glorious, as lonely planet claims.

For I was originally scheming about a flight back to England for 10 days or so in February, to rewalk the favored Thames and rehaunt a few Oxford college bops. That plan still holds, especially as Patrick Stewart will be holding court in the West End as Antony. Still the question remained: what to do in between the celebratory weekends to make the trek that much more worthy of an epic label?

Easyjet quickly supplied the magical 78 pounds all-in option: Luton to Istanbul - Sabiha Gökçen roundtrip. Four nights among its magical bazaars and dervishs, and a first step into Asia prior to the dreamed of Moscow-Samarkand-Beijing odyssey of 2009. A veritably perfect voyage.

So, fired off the email to old flatmate Berat Yardmici to see if he still lives in his favorite city, and googled through a few cheap hostels. Will sleep on it one night before flight bookings tomorrow, but as with the genesis of other truly great traveling ideas, I already sense an inevitability.

"If one had but a single glance to give the world," Alphonse de Lamartine said, "one should gaze on Istanbul." Amazing to think that upon waking this morning I had utterly no plan, thought, real opportunity, or hope of doing so. Now it seems a short three months away.

Every Inordinate Cup

If wine is "bottled poetry" as RLS proclaims, surely GBS is also right in referring to whiskey as "liquid sunshine." Tonight's Scotch tasting, er Scotch drinking, will only serve to drive this point emphatically home. A mere pittance of $45 to attend - a fare to be covered by the firm under the guise of "business development", no less - in exchange for the sampling of a range of products designed to set the mind and soul alight. The hour cannot arrive soon enough.

As we while away the time, Shakespearean Friday thoughts (happy birthday, Dean) turn to poor Cassio's regret over his actions while under the influence of the sinister grape (Act II, scene iii):

Exeunt all but IAGO and CASSIO

IAGO
What, are you hurt, lieutenant?

CASSIO
Ay, past all surgery.

IAGO
Marry, heaven forbid!

CASSIO
Reputation, reputation, reputation! O, I have lost
my reputation! I have lost the immortal part of
myself, and what remains is bestial. My reputation,
Iago, my reputation!

IAGO
As I am an honest man, I thought you had received
some bodily wound; there is more sense in that than
in reputation. Reputation is an idle and most false
imposition: oft got without merit, and lost without
deserving: you have lost no reputation at all,
unless you repute yourself such a loser. What, man!
there are ways to recover the general again: you
are but now cast in his mood, a punishment more in
policy than in malice, even so as one would beat his
offenceless dog to affright an imperious lion: sue
to him again, and he's yours.

CASSIO
I will rather sue to be despised than to deceive so
good a commander with so slight, so drunken, and so
indiscreet an officer. Drunk? and speak parrot?
and squabble? swagger? swear? and discourse
fustian with one's own shadow? O thou invisible
spirit of wine, if thou hast no name to be known by,
let us call thee devil!

IAGO
What was he that you followed with your sword? What
had he done to you?

CASSIO
I know not.

IAGO
Is't possible?

CASSIO
I remember a mass of things, but nothing distinctly;
a quarrel, but nothing wherefore. O God, that men
should put an enemy in their mouths to steal away
their brains! that we should, with joy, pleasance
revel and applause, transform ourselves into beasts!

Heh. Though you'll remember, prior to his quaffing, Cassio confesses to having "very poor and unhappy brains for drinking". Ours are made of sterner stuff, and so we shall embrace the coming cloudy darkness as a warm, enlightening breeze. For what else can "change your ideas and make them run on a different plane like whiskey," as Hemingway said. And there shall even be rums and absinthe on hand as well. O glorious day.

Flashback

May 27, 2005. My sister just into town, skipping out on the last of the tutorial sessions on International Dispute Settlement, I found myself with added moments to spare at an email station near the Oxford Tube station, and so indulged in an email ahead, to the worker destined to begin repayment of those bills being accumulated:

8 minutes left... in the taught course of the Oxford degree, and as Kath strolls through Christ Church we sit here at the computer while grand topics such as Security Council Reform get discussed in your absence at the last IDS tutorial. Following hard on the heels of an extremely lackluster and to-be-ridiculed mock exam for old Adrian Briggs, of Spiliada fame, it is time for a month of cramming. In a few days anyway.

Back in Halifax, hunched over your MC cubicle, I want you to remember this moment though, this past half-hour at the terminal here near Gloucester Green station. Basking in the glow of Liverpool's greatest performance, the happy uncertainties that accompany thoughts of an abiding Beatles tune, anticipation of yet another encounter with the Ahab counterpart in the grandest of cities - this time armed with the good time guide. just after emailing the lovely Anna in Sweden. Oh, for more days like these.

But you are paying for them, and now owe on the return. Abdication from responsibilities must be called home at some point, and if you are reading this back on the Atlantic waterfront, that time is now. The vow is as follows: never go legally unprepared again. to a client meeting. to a partner's office. to the bar exam. and certainly, certainly to court. Strive mightily.

When you are down, dream of the future and of the past. Close your eyes and see the Cliffs of Moher, or Nelson in Trafalgar, or Dudek on the line, or Feste's house. And then the further completed Sagrada, and the canals of Venice, and the graduation ceremony of randoms in Latin many years hence. Dream of the Camino. Life needs its unfinished business. And dreams are just goals with deadlines. I'm thinking of you.

Heh. That bastard. Don't know why thoughts of this email - one sent rather obnoxiously to a future self - struck me to retrieve it this lazy afternoon. But here it is. The whole blogging indulgence remains rewarding even if its only achievement is in allowing similar frames of mind to be so freshly captured and dated for posterity. With the double meanings buried in cryptic postings sure to be forgotten in the shifting haze of time.

Ah, sweet nostalgia. But time to turn forward from the funk, toward the new adventures. This Friday sees the return of the annual Nova Scotia Liquor Commission's absurdly priced Ceilidh, or the "Scotch testing" as dad insists on calling it. A night to savour indeed, and a grand start. Then the Liberal convention at month's end and the fruition of so much of the political musings at the previous address. The delight of Montreal.

Oh, and where to run to then? The joy is in the ability and the uncertainty. Just pick, and say the word.

Alterations to Drapes

It is extraordinary, the multitude of slight white lies that get told or hinted at in the run of certain days. Even where harsh truth is called for, is demanded, and yet a black certainty gets denied in shades of gray. When our minds assess with shocking rapidity just what and what not our fellows, opponents, and bystanders to the piece "need to know". And it is done for ourselves, for peace of mind, to avoid unnecessary questions and complications. As if the constant truth is too bitter a pill for the speaker to mouth into words.

There are no facts, said Nietzsche, just interpretations. He who also snidely noted that a human's pride will always triumph over ugly memory. It has become an accepted, natural thing - to deceive because it is easiest, because it spares the confrontation, the challenge, the shock, the disappointment, a reckoning. And so a world gets structured.

And, so often, everyone knows. For awhile at General Motors, a company overly eager to move employees from office to office on seeming whims, there was a stupid policy that, the sizeable monies for relocation aside, refused to pay for new drapes. Only "alterations" were to be covered. This, of course, invites an obvious solution - when the new drapes are installed, amidst all the other work, the contractor is just to reference "alterations to drapes" and so help the employee recoup the losses.

The fascinating human element of all this is how one might come to actually believe, over time, that the deceptions actually contain more truth than they were meant to hold. How the mind plays tricks, and looking back, how what was clearly couched becomes the belived-in actuality. It did so happen as such. I did too behave and think and feel in such a fashion. There really are five lights. These are my old drapes, altered.

Masters we can be in such self-deception/preservation. Infuriating, vainglorious, heroic at a turn. For what other options are there?

O me, the word 'choose!'

This week, given constant and abundant uncertainties every which way, let's check in with the ever-magical Merchant, as Act I Scene ii opens in Belmont:

A room in PORTIA'S house.
Enter PORTIA and NERISSA

PORTIA
By my troth, Nerissa, my little body is a
weary of this great world.

NERISSA
You would be, sweet madam, if your miseries were in
the same abundance as your good fortunes are: and
yet, for aught I see, they are as sick that surfeit
with too much as they that starve with nothing. It
is no mean happiness therefore, to be seated in the
mean: superfluity comes sooner by white hairs, but
competency lives longer.

PORTIA
Good sentences and well pronounced.

NERISSA
They would be better, if well followed.

PORTIA
If to do were as easy as to know what were good to
do, chapels had been churches and poor men's
cottages princes' palaces. It is a good divine that
follows his own instructions: I can easier teach
twenty what were good to be done, than be one of
the twenty to follow mine own teaching. The brain may
devise laws for the blood, but a hot temper leaps
o'er a cold decree: such a hare is madness the
youth, to skip o'er the meshes of good counsel the
cripple. But this reasoning is not in the fashion to
choose me a husband. O me, the word 'choose!' I may
neither choose whom I would nor refuse whom I
dislike; so is the will of a living daughter curbed
by the will of a dead father. Is it not hard,
Nerissa, that I cannot choose one nor refuse none?

A quiet one tonight after the Horsepower ruckus and hijinks of yesternight, but should be able to find a shot or two of the Crown. You know, looking back, Ackroyd really was worth the trouble, beyond the novelty of the "Blues Brother" persona gracing the garage-style underground stage of a favorite spot. When he closed with "Flip Flop and Fly", spirits soared. Give me one long kiss, hold it a long long time. Yeah baby. That's just good stuff.

Nietzsche's Door

To clarify. I was only accused of drug use in the bathroom stall. Nothing was injested, nor was it ever contemplated. Which made the subsequent removal ("and no arguing, buddy") enjoyable in a surreal kind of way.

And the actual Nietzsche quote (among others) OVER THE DOOR TO MY HOUSE - "I live in my own place, have never copied nobody even half, and at any master who lacks the grace to laugh at himself—I laugh." -La Gaya Scienza, 1882

Alas, Sam Moon, we meet not again

Yet.

Funnier this, that I shouldn't have sent that last american email from the bathroom, lest I be accused of snorting coke there. Which, irony of ironies, I was. Flashbacks to the Brass and other false accusations. As Kerouac noted of Cassidy, this time I was demure (and so no John A's were soiled). But the girl who liked me yet confessed her boyfriend of afar was left to gape in wonder at the turn of events.

So much is random. And this email I will almost have to blog. What else does one say, when the retrieved camera has run out of horsepower?

Tomorrow is Friday. In a word, "yes".

wcsx

There is a lengthy code embedded in that title that is not so serious and yet has to do with the seahorse, swhere.

Waiting for the beloved Dan Ackroyd to get on stage.

...

LATER - the bank machine gambit, but fuck if Prince Igor is not front row centre. Sweet home Chicago, jewish Lindsay, and myself the uncontestable asshole. I had good intentions only, he musters, through the mist. And the rain. And the hilarity.

The chants for Elwood and Egon go out. And I hear that the skinny black guy from the polka-dot door is coming at 3am.

Ha. The world has an infinite capacity to inspire and entertain, shock and surprise, amaze and wonder.

Above Nietsche's door he hung a sign: "At all those who refuse to laugh at themselves, I laugh."

Is there anything else to add?

Like a Diamond in Luster

Adamantine.

Sometimes it is not the individual that proves inexorable, but the relentless circumstances in which he is found. Sometimes the fault (or the credit), dear Brutus, does lie with our stars.

So roll on, winter, roll on.

Perfection

Yesterday, a Quixotic Trek through to Secaucus, New Jersey past the Meadowlands to track down the Yankee battery who combined for the only perfect game in World Series history. Too much paid for the privilege of the signatures, but necessary given the surrealness of the occasion. 50 years ago, my grandparents attend the game. 50 years later, I track down the pair to autograph the stub:


"I grow old . . . I grow old . . . " Prufrock sang, "I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled."

As do we all.
As do we all.

At least, if we are fortunate, the joys of one unforgettable afternoon can be made to last a lifetime.

A very wonderful few days. To think I spoke with Yogi Berra, of all characters, less than two dozen hours ago. And with so much to record, I'll note only that the possibility of a 2009ish move to New York has suddenly become extraordinarily real.

Champagne Makes Me Drowsy

Looking out at the United Nations building from a friend's apartment at 42nd street, and a sparkling sun on the East River. Paid too much for the Drowsy Chaperone ticket last night and it was worth every penny and more. Simply magical. I think I may have to catch Sondheim's Company at the matinee. Far more stories from New York than I have time to write here - suffice it to say that, as with London, I could very easily find myself living here. And I can say that about few places in the world with as much conviction.

Off to Tarrytown in a few moments and what promises to be a bit of a surreal wedding. There shall also be a fair amount of Rum and Cokes - as we have some duty free supplies and the bar might just be open. Bling Bling.

Have you seen Robert Cheruiyot's crazy fall right at the bitter end of the Chicago Marathon? Spectacularly funny in irony's finest sense, although it is also hard not to feel sorry for him.

Here are some closing words from As You Like It for the occasion. More late Sunday.

ROSALIND
I'll have no father, if you be not he:
I'll have no husband, if you be not he:
Nor ne'er wed woman, if you be not she.

HYMEN
Peace, ho! I bar confusion:
'Tis I must make conclusion
Of these most strange events:
Here's eight that must take hands
To join in Hymen's bands,
If truth holds true contents.
You and you no cross shall part:
You and you are heart in heart
You to his love must accord,
Or have a woman to your lord:
You and you are sure together,
As the winter to foul weather.
Whiles a wedlock-hymn we sing,
Feed yourselves with questioning;
That reason wonder may diminish,
How thus we met, and these things finish.

SONG.
Wedding is great Juno's crown:
O blessed bond of board and bed!
'Tis Hymen peoples every town;
High wedlock then be honoured:
Honour, high honour and renown,
To Hymen, god of every town!

The Changing Mind-Set

February - There I found myself, desperately working into the evening hours on a brief for a hearing, before an early flight to Washington, D.C. How many ages ago?

November - Time passes, yet here you find yourself working on an update of the argument for the higher court, having ruefully lost at the first instance and now bringing forward a worthy appeal. Only a few hours until a return to the airport, and this time to NYC. Who says the world hath not a sense of humour and balance?

---

Hilariously, the beautiful old acquaintance from law school who kindly offered to put me up for the non-wedding nights has sent an email as follows: "this is going to sound kind of crazy, but given the current situation in my apt. and trying to prevent the spread of the bed bugs to other locations, you may have to sleep in my bed with me." I was careful to temper my enthusiasm in accepting such excellent conditions.

Indeed. Hopefully to Spam-a-lot or the Drowsy Chaperone tomorrow night on Broadway, and hard to capture the immediacy latent in only one 24 hour revolution. Also already have tickets for the Knicks home opener at the Garden this Saturday. Talk about a place of "great but harsh" events. At least I'll get to join the "fire Isiah chorus" first hand. And on the final day, it is for now an open question whether I can fight my way through the marathon to win a signature from Don Larsen on my grandfather's perfect game ticket of October 8, 1956 that he has kept all these years. Into the presence of Yogi Berra, we ride. Forgive me if I approach the actual purpose of the trip - the wedding of a buddy for all these many years - as if it were a bit of an afterthought.

Still reeling about from the effects of the Halloween escapades, too - of flights of fancy, heart operations, and the strange yet magical confluency of moments. It is marvelous - when the momentum of the universe is unquestionably behind you. "One cannot alter a condition with the same mind-set that created it in the first place," opined the ever-great Albert Einstein. Though he would allow, surely, that such conditions can yet be altered by the randomness of external forces?

As the road and its travelers continuously vary mine. As the next grand pilgrimage commences...