I've had to retrieve Cassady from the back porch. Cat fights in the neighborhood have set her to barking. She did the same thing last night but for a different reason. I went out to quiet her and heard a sound coming from one of the big trees on the other side of our fence. It sounded like a large (larger than a squirrel or cat) animal climbing a tree. Couldn't see a thing. Took a picture of the general direction of the sound with my camera. Maybe something will show up from the flash. And last evening Cynthia was on the deck looking over the side and saw a VERY LARGE cat, which looked up at her, and scurried into the back of that yard. It was probably a raccoon. A big cat would not likely have been afraid of seeing her.
While waiting at the post office for Cynthia's bus to arrive from Watertown early last evening a guy with a Husky like dog came by and stopped to chat. It was a very old, 12 years, and very small sample of that type of dog. He explained that its hip problem had been much better because of a new drug for that problem. From the size it must have been a female. It was certainly not at all maile aggressive. Although the expression and eyes of huskies can give them a fearsome expression. Cassady was not particularly disturbed. So the guy asks something about my living space and explains he's now homeless. The exact reason is unclear. The conversation left me with the impression that he was looking for a place to stay or live. Right now he's camping out. Or maybe the dog was just to get some woman interested in him. Good ploy! And then they left. A guy and his dog.
Getting to sleep this morning was one of those every now and then strange experiences. Cynthia takes about 2-3 seconds. She can say something rational and then, 2-3 seconds later she's snoring. For me its more complicated. My brain seems to shut down in several steps. Sometimes there is a stop where the sleeping/dreaming brain and the waking/thinking brain collide and create an odd sense of confusion and angst. Like feeling myself a brief flicker of light that is visible in the universe, aware of itself, then it flickers out and doesn't know it was there or has disappeared. It is an odd sensation and creates a momentary sort of epileptic fit in the brain where I'm not sure which way is up or even who I am. Then things calm down. Another step, some time passes, and... I'm asleep.
Thinking about the Russians in Kosovo it occurs to me that Yeltsin did it to save his ass and gain some time with the conservative elements in that country. As we used to say at MIT, Russia is Burkina Fasao--with rockets. Its nothing--except for the rockets. It probably makes them feel a little better with almost no cost. They see themselves as having pulled a fast one on the Americans and given a hand up to their murderous Serbian pals.
Over dinner we discussed random numbers and porn collections. Some days ago it was revealed that the former head of the Harvard Divinity School was fired because he used his Harvard Computer for a porn collection. He'd called in the tech people to install a bigger disk--he'd apparently run out of room. Anyway, my collection is only about 27 megabytes. Cynthia wonders how many variations of certain things one can be interested in seeing. I explained that it was a guy thing. You can't see too many, and you certainly can't experience too many. She related having gone to a porn movie once and said it was enough. She didn't need to go back again. And who would you see in those darkened theaters if you went back a number of times, at random, I asked. Men. Men watching every variation of what people might be doing up on the screen. Thousands and thousands of porn movies. And some guys will want to watch every one of them. That's a big difference between men and women, I would claim. Women have the thing that men find hardest to get. Women don't have nearly so much trouble getting it. So, while I'm interested in all the variations, I'm mostly busy working and, as a consequence, have a tiny, relatively, collection.
I forget how we got off on random numbers, but they are very important for modern industrialized society. Lots, millions of things, are produced by industry. We want them to be uniform and unvarying. So how do you know if the one you just produced is similar, or randomly different form the previous unit, or is it varying in some predictable direction? That's where the random numbers come in--and their importance. You want to know if the things you've just made vary in size, shape, etc, randomly, or are they, for example, getting longer, shorter, bigger or smaller in some particular location on the part. So you measure them to see if the variations are random--or fit a pattern. That's why its important to know. Oh, I've just remembered how we got off onto randomness--from porn. I'd asked her if she had any interest in abstract math. No. But there are people who spend their whole lives, one of whom we know, working on these very abstract ideas. And they never quit, give up or take a break--just like some guys never give up on looking at dirty pictures or watching naughty movies.
Running yesterday morning was hard work. High humidity and still quiet warm out. I did it anyway. Walking back, down Orchard Street, I saw a small house for sale sign that wasn't there the day before. It looked like the sort of place we might be able to afford in a year or two.
Its getting on toward 3:36am here and there's work to do before going out for the morning walk/run with Cassady.
It has been cooler and dryer here the last week. With sometimes daily threats of rain, but no more than a few drops. Like the other morning when we were out for our morning dog walk and middle-aged guy try-to-give-the-impression-of-someone-running. About 150 drops and then it stopped. One of the driest springs on record. And that's it for the no weather to speak of report.
What should a person do with their body after dying. Of course, one can't do anything about it--you have to get somebody else to do that. Anyway, that was a thought. Perhaps a medical school. Several years ago there was this rumor that my daughter might be going to medical school. So my idea was to write a book about myself as a corpse on the dissecting table. They start at the feet. That's where my story/book would also start. Something about those sensitive feet and never being able to grow enough of a callous on the bottom to go barefoot in the summer. Cynthia has feet that are tougher than mine. Many children and babies have feet tougher than mine. And that's the way the book would continue. Talk about some part of the anatomy and connect it to my life--which seemed for a long while that she would never know anything about except posthumously. Maybe through my writing. Next would come the ankles, calves, etc. There was even a name for this book: Cadaughter.
The apartment here is quite close to our neighbors house. I've found a peculiar sound coming from the house around 3am or so. Someone, a man, from the sound of it, sort of coughs, gags, like trying to spit up something... and that's it. It happens around three am.
Cassady still has a bit of an ear infection. Its getting better. We give he an antibiotic pill and another that's topical. She sees us preparing to hold her and place the drops in her ear and doesn't want to come near us. My job is to bring her to the center of the kitchen floor and lie down quietly. I hold her still while Cynthia places the drops in the one infected ear. She's taken to snapping at my hand when its time to get her to lie down.
We are waiting for the landscape company to come and do our yard. We've paid them half the money and hope they haven't left the country. They get the rest when the job is finished. No response for several days from their answering machine.
Cynthia has been doing the stairs at Porter Square for exercise. Its very low impact and lots of work. She does three complete cycles of all three sets of stairs. Up and down. But no problem for her knees. She will start with some hand weights soon to improve strength in her arms. She does the stairs about every other day. My regime is to take Cassady out for a walk every morning. About 4:30 every day now. The sun will turn around soon and it will start getting light later. Sunrise here is now 5:07am. Sunset was 8:24pm Friday evening.
Its 4:23am--time to get ready to go. But not before starting a download of my latest Seattle FilmWorks pictures...
Something is clicking. A tiny little click, in this room, that seems to get a bit louder, then softer, and... seems to move inexplicably to different parts of the room. I walk around, a few steps this way, and a few steps the other (its a small room), and it, the clicking sound, seems to move also. Now its behind me. Now its to one side. It seems to move to the other side of the room, suddenly, and without anything appearing to move. A mystery. I look at Cassady. Is she doing something? No perfectly still. Has she become a ventriloquist? Back to my chair. The sound continues to come and go. Something causes me to look up. Its a flying insect bashing into the glass cover of the room light. It starts and stops. It moves around the glass. A tiny click sound comes from each collision of glass and insect. There's more. There are several of them in the room. One has landed on my desk. Its a flying ant. Cassady has enjoyed a number of them. She likes to eat bugs. She snaps at them as they fly through the air. End of mystery.
We are on our way out the door for our morning run. On the brick walk in front of the steps I see tiny silver sparkles that make the surface of the bricks undulate. Thousands of flying ants with their silvery wings. And all around them even tinier ants, in even greater numbers. Beginning of summer, time to flee the nest. They were all gone when we got back from running.
The cutie pie who rides her bike, with really tight spandex and a not quite so tight t-shirt, big curly pony tail trailing behind her, whizzes by me at the Massachusetts Avenue intersection where we are waiting for the light.
When was it, Saturday or Sunday morning? Returning, just after leaving the bike path, a young woman, dressed like a 60's hippie, passes us and says hello. She moved into the street to get around Cassady. Or maybe around me? Must have been some party. It didn't work out, I guess. that was about 4:58am. A few minutes later an older gray-haired woman passes us on a bicycle on Orchard Street. And when was it, a couple of days ago, a man passes us running up Massachusetts Avenue towards Arlington. Yesterday morning one of the local newspaper delivery persons stopped as we reached the intersection of the bike path and Willow Street. He's remarked on what a beautiful dog she is. He walks over, slowly, and extends a hand, slowly and carefully. She sniffs and licks. They are friends. He knows dogs. She's usually much more cautious with strangers.
We got our lawn today. Or our potential lawn. The landscape company we contracted with put down topsoil, evened it out, and seeded it with grass seed. Right now its being watered. Cynthia and went over to TAGS and bought a sprinkler. One of those that goes back and forth and makes it seem like rain falling. Now I'm thinking that maybe they didn't finish the job and will be back tomorrow--and we shouldn't be watering it. Oh well.
We saw the world's worst movie Saturday night. THE MATRIX. Cynthia started struggling with me to get the house key out of my pocket. That was the best part of being in the theater. Anyway, I let her have the key but she decides to stay till the end. She's groaning and rolling her eyes and playing dead with her tongue lolling out of her head. It really is bad. Some 14 year old hackers idea of life as a dream and he hopes he will wake up to save the world and have the gal fall in love with him. There was about 10 minutes of special effects that could have been a... 10 minute movie. The shells from the Gattling gun falling out of the sky, for example.
Sunday I called my father. Father's Day. He was on the phone with Jeff, his other son, and my half-brother. I'll call you back, he said. And he did. In the conversation my mother comes up and how she pronounced some words. That memory must be 50+ years old for him. Pru-uns and panacakes is how he remembers two words. I remember the latter but not the former. A discussion about fishing and crabbing trips when I was 5-8 years old in Maryland's Chesapeake Bay. We have some slightly different memories about the boat and how close to the shore. His wife is still feeling not so good. It might be gall or kidney stones.
We met Maynard, who was once known as just plain James. He gave me a poster he's putting up around the square as an agitation against non-Linux or non-Linux-like software. And we all know who that would be. Saw Paul S for the first time in a long time. He didn't know we'd moved to the city of his youth. His boyhood home is just a couple of blocks from us. He knows our street and things that used to be located here. We met the two of them in the same spot, one of our old haunts, at Au Bon Paine.
Late for me to be up and writing. But one's critics must be answered. Especially when they are right.
There are times when writing becomes tedious, painful, unpleasant even. There are things to write about, but there is no juice to do it. One feels the need, one feels pushed by something to do it. But something else pushes back. Yesterday was one of those days. Today I have the more interesting assignment of saying something about that difficulty. Perhaps I am now finished saying it. But about this sort of thing one can never know until you are dead. Sadly, and often, it is then too late.
There were more flying ants this morning. They started showing up in the house around 3am. An hour later this writer came to the conclusion that closing the wide open back door might stop the onslaught. But the dog had a feast. There seemed to be more of them today. I took a couple of pictures around 4:30am of the ground/bricks in front of the house. It was crawling with the little buggers again. There were many of them on the door and around the porch lights. And, again, they were all gone, except for a few crippled straglers, when Cassady and I got back from our walk/run.
Before coming upstairs we watered the small strip of lawn on the side of the building. Cassady, of course, was my assistant. She dashed off once after a local cat. And on the bike path she nearly caught a squirrel who had the misfortune to need to cross just as we came along.
Sorry to report but there were no unusual or interesting people on our sojourn this morning. Although we did have the pleasure of watching a giant truck drive around Davis Square. There were giant donuts painted on the sides. Duncan Donuts, it proclaimed.
I've proposed to Karma that she and Erica help me make a video/film about a not-too-rare species that lives in this, and many other, towns. Cambridgidian eccentricus. Also known to his friends as "Don". My idea is to tell the story of Don the collector of miscellaneous written materials and things that can be salvaged on garbage pickup day. One begins with a long shot of his front door. Don enters from the side carrying bags of the latest collected goodies. Then a closeup as he enters his place. Our filmmakers ring the bell and get him as he opens the door. Come in, come in, he says enthusiastically, gesturing for us to enter a place that some of us only imagine or have nightmares about. A short wander around the apartment as town attempts to be an hospitable host and offer us some refreshments. Then to the chairs and sitting for a spell. And to ask how things started. And we want to know what compels him to collect. And show of some of your rarest finds. Here, lets dig into this random pile to this random location within the pile...
And so it goes in the anthroplogical excavation of this rare species. Probably an ending with an outing to collect stuff. Where does one go to get all this stuff, the papers, the things, the discards. Perhaps an early morning foraging, treasure hunting expedition!
Now I am noticing my tiredness. The eyes are getting heavy. It is hard to type and stay upright. Oh, I've just called Cassady to come in and get another bug crawling on the floor. She does. Then leaves. Time for me to go.
My nearby-neighbor's cough/gag/sneeze went off at 3:10am today. 3:08am yesterday, exactly 3am still another day. Who knows exactly why then. On the other hand, they seem to come an go like clockwork. A young guy, semi-dressed up, walks out the ground floor door opposite my office window at exactly 6am, every day, except sunday, when he's out the door at 6:30. He puts on a set of earphones right after closing the door and taking a left turn towards the street. Memory doesn't tell me just when he returns home. Another, older man, often leaves the building to drive off in a taxi for which he is the driver on some days when we go out for our run at 4:30. Other days he leaves earlier. We, Cassady and me, have been leaving at 4:30am every day for the last week. Its still light out. In another month the advancing season will leave us in the dark at that hour. Sunrise was 5:08am this morning. We return home at about that time.
Cassady had way lots of fun this morning. We'd returned and were sitting on the front steps. A squirrel runs from somewhere to the sidewalk across the street. Look there, I tell her. She looks at me, I look at her. We look at the squirrel. She looks to me for permission. There are no cars on the street. Go get it, I shout! Pursuit! The squirrel goes under a car. Cassady circles around. Suddenly the squirrel bolts and runs down the middle of the street--Cassady in hot pursuit. She's almost caught it when, with a sudden sharp left turn, and a handy lamppole, its out of reach. Cassady circles again, but seems to recognize that the chase is over. She prances quickly back up the street, tail held high, head up, ears perked, eyes alert and scanning for another. One happy dog.
A friend gets a new computer delivered today. Some kind soul has donated new iMacs to him, and another to his brother and mother in New York. He describes having it as almost a painful experience. Most of his life of being disappointed at not getting things he wanted, or thought he was going to get, have been the source of energy and pleasure in his life. Now, actually getting something significant that someone promised him, has become a strange--and painful experience by default of not knowing the difference between pain and pleasure.
Another odd, indirect, glancing scent/image of my daughter yesterday. Cynthia is working with some people who want to be what I've titled the Boston Media Center. Its an idea to put several media/film related buildings in the same physical space. A new space, a more modern space for these kinds of companies. A woman connected with another local film organization somehow learned of my connection with Ben Affleck--my daughter's former boyfriend, and long-time on-and-off beau. Or maybe Cynthia said I might use my tenuous connection with Affleck to get him to give his imprematur, although that's not exactly the right word. His ok, his checkmark, his approval of the project. His connection with it. Anyway, this woman remarked that she met my daughter and found her to be a very sweet person. It was at a publicity event locally for the opening of CHASING AMY. Maybe 2 years ago, maybe less. So I've asked Cynthia to check and see if any pictures or videos were made of the event. She, my daughter, never did send me the photos that Ben was taking of her just before they broke up.
The coughing neighbor reminds me that nothing has been written here for several days. My West Indian Ocean correspondent has poked me to do some more frequent writing but she now farms tranquilly in the French countryside without a net connection around every corner. In the 1950's farming of my youth there were also no net connections. But then that was Wyoming, like France, a foreign country. That's a paraphrase of my favorite line from DOG DAY AFTERNOON.
Cassady has an exam for her ear infection. Its much better. The doctor says we can stop the pills and don't have to use the topical antibiotic as often. I've mentioned the skunk to the doctor/vet. He asks about the time of day. About 5am. Then its ok, he says. Any other time, later in the day, you would have to worry about it being rabid.
We encounter a baby skunk on the way home from our morning walk/run. It is a very frisky critter, tail straight up in the air, sleek and relatively long legs, rather than dragging its fat bloated belly along the ground like a typical adult. We can sense, with our noses that it has been practicing. It charges us and stops still. Cassady lunges, but I hold her back with the leash. The skunk retreats, then charges again, then stops. We do this several times as we move in a wide arc around it. Finally it disappears into a yard and whereever it will sleep today.