Anyway, these ideas or feelings or ramblings had their satisfactions. They turned the pain of others into memories of one's own. They turned pain, which is natural, enduring, and eternally triumphant, into personal memory, which is human, brief, and eternally elusive. They turned a brutal story of injustice and abuse, an incoherent howl with no beginning or end, into a neatly structured story in which suicide was always held out as a possibility. They turned flight into freedom, even if freedom meant no more than the perpetuation of flight. They turned chaos into order, even if it was at the cost of what is commonly known as sanity.

2666, p. 189

On Agnes Varda

Kiddywinkles

The Days Resemble One Another

7:15 a.m.: Wake up. Put together some ridiculous outfit that will transition easily between work and yoga.

7:35 a.m.: Spicy soy chai.

 

8:00 a.m.: Arrive at Job #1, which today has become Job #1 and 1/2: one of the mother's I work for has asked me to help her neighbors (who have just welcomed premature twins into their fold) for the morning. I've never met them before. I'm shown around the house and briefed on what my duties will be for the next four hours. Seville, their 3 year old, wakes up and immediately begins crying and telling her father that she doesn't want to be my friend.

9:00 a.m.-10:30 a.m.: I fold laundry and make dinner for the family while Seville watches a kid's show about the alphabet. The babies, Oswell and Brickeley, are the tiniest things I've ever seen, and they make creaky choking noises in their sleep. The most developed parts of them are clearly their vocal cords - when they get hungry they scream like nothing I've ever heard.

10:30 a.m.-12:00 a.m.: Skye, the mama, joins me in the living room and breastfeeds her babies while Seville hides from me/kicks me playfully/tells me how much she loves her babies.

12:10 a.m.-3:00 p.m.: I return to Job #1, where I put Avi & Marley down for their naps (it takes about two hours to successfully persuade Avi to surrender), clean the kitchen, sweep, and finish reading the May 6th issue of The New Yorker. Saul Bellow's correspondence, Hilton Als's article on Tyler Perry, and a broad review of books on terrorism/counterterrorism are the most notable pieces.

3:30 p.m.-6:30 p.m.: Job #2: Research/editing.

7:15 p.m.-8:30 p.m.: Yoga class (thank you, thank you, thank you).

9:00 p.m.: Shower.

9:30 p.m.:  Begin another back issue of The New Yorker, which features a piece by the late Roberto Bolano. His posthumously published 2666 sits on my nightstand. I finished The Savage Detectives a week or so ago, and I think about it every day. Bolano is superior.

(This post clearly inspired by the Diary work I've been immersed in).

NOX

THIS IS MAGIC

Nucular Aminals

That's right, a band with a misspelled name. I saw them at Slabtown, a bar in NW Portland, a few weeks ago, and I bumped into their keyboardist at the bank a few days later. Their show was great and their keyboardist is a slow-talking lovely lady. Listen to them on that socialist music site MySpace. I particularly like their song "Ooooh Kill Ooooh." Sexy.