It's a Christmas tradition ("Holidays, we celebrate them all at Marlinspike Hall!") that some intimate and integral bit of The Manor shall fail right when we believe ourselves through the punishing gauntlet for the year.
Christmas 2011 will be remembered as the year we sent all the plumber's children to college.
Fred and I will be installing one final faucet and mopping up the standing water later today, then we are off to the Lone Alp Outlet Malls to partake of last-minute bargains. If only people in our social circle would accept my invitation to revise their calendars and set back their clocks, but they don't want to be seen celebrating on December 27, despite the kickass bargains of the day before.
Wusses. There would be plenty of time to normalize settings for the new year; No one would have missed even one drop of celebratory champagne.
We are so awash, here, so bloated by an embarrassment of riches -- that I may cancel today's Lone Alp Outlet run. If there is any need, at present, it is not for stuff. Well, it's more that the stuff we need turns out to be things like washers-of-a-certain-size, replacement cement gargoyles and new copper gutters, an authentic supply of wattle-and-daub for the crumbling wall common to both the heavily ornamented Baroque Ballroom and the more austere Imperial Sauna -- that sort of "stuff."
Packages have come to us from across the wide world. No one but me knows where they have been stashed, unopened and unacknowledged. In my various foul moods, I've tucked a package here, a package there, unless my chocolate detection meter was set off, in which case, good luck ever finding even a trace of cocoa butter from those particular bundles.
The worst case scenario is that I'll have to organize something like an Easter Egg Hunt for our Christmas presents.
One of the packages, though, sits as a bit of ballast for my weird Office Rocking Chair -- the Bent Oak, painted green, that Fred says frightens him. The weight of the package is perfect for keeping the steam-bent runners poised mid-way, mid-rock. My office, my Tao.
It's not a Christmas gift. It came in time for the celebration of Winter Solstice, and it is from Brother-Unit TW. An ugly mix of guilt and regret has kept me from opening it, just as I had hoped to still the passage of time before the downhill side of the axis situation could maliciously make my days fly.
I'm going to go get it now, and we can open it together.
I'll be right back, then.
Whew. It's heavy.
Okay, first: TW, your handwriting is eerily similar to Brother-Unit Grader Boob's tiny écriture. Also, can you hear me channeling the Nana Person: "$14.95 for shipping? Are you meshugana? What’s this mishegas?"
Let me find some scissors -- or a sacrificial pen -- with which to attack the straps of tape. All right, here we are, and I am already choking up, for the first thing I see... is TW.
Trim and healthy-looking, mustachioed and shaded (both with glasses and a hat), nattily dressed, standing beside a tent in what looks to be a field of sleeping Dead Heads, none of whom appear to be conscious, much less dressed and ready for anything. Not like *my* brother!
This is an odd thing to notice... and I cannot defend it with even one descriptor... but TW looks calm, more than anything. Calm. The eye of a sleeping hurricane. Maybe it's just that he is the only put-together human in view, but I get the sense that he is the Go-To-Guy; He's Mr. Dependable.
Next, a handwritten note, in which he is faithful to the tradition we established a few years back, according to which I am the recipient of riches unimagined. The tradition began in the winter of 2009, and started this way: "...thinking it would be a way to save money and be a marvelous gift, I asked my two brother-units for used copies of the two books that had been the most formative to the person they each have become."
From that silly request has come so much delight, delight gathered in heavy boxes, then shipped hundreds of miles, and so, to testify against the silliness of purchased presents. My brother Grader Boob never responded to the challenge; My brother TW has never stopped. For the series of blog posts inspired by TW's gift boxes, enter "gifts" into the search thingy up above the blog title, in the left corner.
Guffaw. Or just CLICK HERE. I am so stupid this morning.
Another photo, a real snap shot, of someone mid-climb, somewhere in the Grand Canyon, TW's backyard playground. I don't think it is him, though. But why would he send an unidentified picture of someone else? ["It's him," said Fred, "No doubt." Well, okay then.]
A beautiful card -- he never, ever forgets Fred, though he insists on calling him "aitch," and we dare not correct him, Lord knows what all those years of brain-baking sun have done to the lad. Anyway, he knows, as does anyone who knows me the least little bit, that Fred is, himself, an indescribable and under-appreciated gift.
Christmas is also Fred's birthday, making it a holy day, in deed.
Alfred Lansing's Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage. Honestly? Fred will love it... and I appreciate that it is "a tale of survival." [Yes, Fred did get the big eyes over it...]
More hand-beaded hippie-chic jewelry, necklaces, medallions: Yay! I love this stuff. Talismans. No... amulets? Handcrafted anything is lovely, the hint of southwestern indian art/artifact, also sweet.
Another woven placemat (this is fast becoming our first private joke), within which is a beautiful slice of stone -- geode -- of a beautiful translucent round brown.
Also: pearly. Definitely pearly.
The Grateful Dead Movie Soundtrack, 5 CDs. Cool.
The Pogues: The Ultimate Collection.
A Grand Canyon patch.
Joni Mitchell: hits.
Ensemble Alcatraz: Danse Royale (songs and dances from the 13th century).
Tom Waits: nighthawks at the diner.
The Folger Consort: A Distant Mirror, Music of the Fourteenth Century and Shakespeare's Music.
Freddie King is a Blues Master.
E.E. Cummings: Collected Poems 1922-1938 -- flipped open to the portentous poem on its page 225:
The Original Soundtrack From the Movie Rockers.
The Seldom Scene: Old Train. Ah, I am precisely in the mood for this.
Seldom Scene on Tommy Hunter Show - "Wait a Minute"
Uploaded by BluegrassLibrary to YouTube on Jul 9, 2008
Itzhak Perlman: Saint-Saens, Sarasate, Chausson, Ravel
Janice Joplin with Big Brother and The Holding Co.: Live at Winterland '68. Oh, wow.
The Chieftains: Celtic Wedding. {unsightly fist-pumping}
One sealed packet of Lilly Miller Leaf Lettuce Seed, Prizehead.
One ceramic Trader Dicks' Easter Island Head-Thingy, closed with a rubber tub stopper, within which were wrapped:
one rubber magic lamp;
one Grand Canyon National Park 75th Anniversary pin;
more beaded hippy jewelry;
a crystal to hang at the embrasure;
a piece of crumbling sandstone upon which there may be the imprint of feathers -- no, fern fronds (much of which is now embedded in my keyboard, grrr.).
Here is the Christmas Brunch *salad* menu at Trader Dick's Restaurante Orozko, which I invite you to peruse while I get the vacuum. Just the salad part, mind you. I'm hungry!
Okay, all better! My keys are now pristine and I swiped a burrito out of the fridge.
Next in the box of gifts:
Neal Stephenson, Quicksilver, A Novel (Volume One of the Baroque Cycle). A Brother-Unit and his historical novels, never enough reality!
Oops, and here is Volume Two -- The Confusion.
Ah, and now I remember that there is a promise of Volume Three in TW's note. That's good, as the frustration of ending a trilogy on its second part might be soul-crushing.
I'm thinking of starting the journey tonight, as I am struggling through a truly nasty novel at the moment.
Another snapshot, TW in front of a nuclear blast site sign. He appears to be in the middle of nowhere. Ummm, and as odd a remark as this is, coming from a sibling, he has gorgeously tanned legs. This was the era of the short short.
One charred toothpick, perhaps a gift, perhaps not.
The Grateful Dead: wake the dead.
Women of the World: Celtic II. From the eighth cut, Pamela Morgan's It Ain't Funny:
Newfoundlanders live in houses not shacks.. we eat fish sometimes but are not all fishermen... hip rubbers are convienient but not a provincial fashion statement... we are smart.. we speak funny, loudly and do so with pride... we are friendly...we are free.. we are amazing .. and we are in Ottawa...still fighting the fight to FREE Newfoundland!]
Dylan's Bootleg Series, Vol. 4: The Royal Albert Hall Concert.
Clannad: Banba.
Kate Wolf, An Evening in Austin.
Cumbia Cumbia: A Selection of Colombian Cumbia Recordings
Orchestra Baobab: Specialist in All Styles.
Sarah Vaughn, This is jazz/20.
The Girl From Ipanema, The Antonio Carlos Jobim Songbook.
The Time-Life Treasury of the Blues.
Les Négresses Vertes, Mlah.
Patrick Bell, Celtic Harp.
The John Renbourn Group: Live in America.
Pietro Mascagni, Cavalleria Rusticana.
One audiocassette recording from 6/22/82, of The Clash at San Francisco Civic Auditorium.
One bit of broken plastic, now further broken, and gone, mostly, after the arrival sur scène of Buddy the Freakishly Large Kitten. I hope we won't be rushing him to the vet... He looks distinctly proud of himself, with that "mine, all mine" look of puissant pussy cat.
Two snapshots, poor quality, excellent subjects. A bird in the hand in front of what looks to be the sea wall at the end of the world, backed by a beautiful rainbow -- and some bushy-headed guy in an Ireland tee shirt.
Okay, so Fred pointed out that it is a bit unusual to have electric wires strung in the middle of the ocean. Another familial holiday gift, the grandfather's glaucoma. I am blind as a bat. Apparently, that snapshot is of the brother-unit and his girl feeling one another up in the desert.
Ha! My world, made of things seen wrong! Thus far in this blind journey, the corrections have all been amusing, if not always instructive.
Good Yule, all, and thank you, TW. I hear rumblings out in the common area. It might be time for me to hold a flashlight and mumble words of encouragement, for I think we've sprung another leak.
The image above is "cropped and cleaned up somewhat from a newly digitised hand-written manuscript, online at Harvard University's Houghton Library: [MS Typ 57] 'La Sphere du Monde..', 1549, by Oronce Fine."
Christmas 2011 will be remembered as the year we sent all the plumber's children to college.
Fred and I will be installing one final faucet and mopping up the standing water later today, then we are off to the Lone Alp Outlet Malls to partake of last-minute bargains. If only people in our social circle would accept my invitation to revise their calendars and set back their clocks, but they don't want to be seen celebrating on December 27, despite the kickass bargains of the day before.
Wusses. There would be plenty of time to normalize settings for the new year; No one would have missed even one drop of celebratory champagne.
We are so awash, here, so bloated by an embarrassment of riches -- that I may cancel today's Lone Alp Outlet run. If there is any need, at present, it is not for stuff. Well, it's more that the stuff we need turns out to be things like washers-of-a-certain-size, replacement cement gargoyles and new copper gutters, an authentic supply of wattle-and-daub for the crumbling wall common to both the heavily ornamented Baroque Ballroom and the more austere Imperial Sauna -- that sort of "stuff."
Packages have come to us from across the wide world. No one but me knows where they have been stashed, unopened and unacknowledged. In my various foul moods, I've tucked a package here, a package there, unless my chocolate detection meter was set off, in which case, good luck ever finding even a trace of cocoa butter from those particular bundles.
The worst case scenario is that I'll have to organize something like an Easter Egg Hunt for our Christmas presents.
One of the packages, though, sits as a bit of ballast for my weird Office Rocking Chair -- the Bent Oak, painted green, that Fred says frightens him. The weight of the package is perfect for keeping the steam-bent runners poised mid-way, mid-rock. My office, my Tao.
It's not a Christmas gift. It came in time for the celebration of Winter Solstice, and it is from Brother-Unit TW. An ugly mix of guilt and regret has kept me from opening it, just as I had hoped to still the passage of time before the downhill side of the axis situation could maliciously make my days fly.
I'm going to go get it now, and we can open it together.
I'll be right back, then.
Whew. It's heavy.
Okay, first: TW, your handwriting is eerily similar to Brother-Unit Grader Boob's tiny écriture. Also, can you hear me channeling the Nana Person: "$14.95 for shipping? Are you meshugana? What’s this mishegas?"
Let me find some scissors -- or a sacrificial pen -- with which to attack the straps of tape. All right, here we are, and I am already choking up, for the first thing I see... is TW.
Trim and healthy-looking, mustachioed and shaded (both with glasses and a hat), nattily dressed, standing beside a tent in what looks to be a field of sleeping Dead Heads, none of whom appear to be conscious, much less dressed and ready for anything. Not like *my* brother!
This is an odd thing to notice... and I cannot defend it with even one descriptor... but TW looks calm, more than anything. Calm. The eye of a sleeping hurricane. Maybe it's just that he is the only put-together human in view, but I get the sense that he is the Go-To-Guy; He's Mr. Dependable.
Next, a handwritten note, in which he is faithful to the tradition we established a few years back, according to which I am the recipient of riches unimagined. The tradition began in the winter of 2009, and started this way: "...thinking it would be a way to save money and be a marvelous gift, I asked my two brother-units for used copies of the two books that had been the most formative to the person they each have become."
From that silly request has come so much delight, delight gathered in heavy boxes, then shipped hundreds of miles, and so, to testify against the silliness of purchased presents. My brother Grader Boob never responded to the challenge; My brother TW has never stopped. For the series of blog posts inspired by TW's gift boxes, enter "gifts" into the search thingy up above the blog title, in the left corner.
Guffaw. Or just CLICK HERE. I am so stupid this morning.
Another photo, a real snap shot, of someone mid-climb, somewhere in the Grand Canyon, TW's backyard playground. I don't think it is him, though. But why would he send an unidentified picture of someone else? ["It's him," said Fred, "No doubt." Well, okay then.]
A beautiful card -- he never, ever forgets Fred, though he insists on calling him "aitch," and we dare not correct him, Lord knows what all those years of brain-baking sun have done to the lad. Anyway, he knows, as does anyone who knows me the least little bit, that Fred is, himself, an indescribable and under-appreciated gift.
Christmas is also Fred's birthday, making it a holy day, in deed.
Alfred Lansing's Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage. Honestly? Fred will love it... and I appreciate that it is "a tale of survival." [Yes, Fred did get the big eyes over it...]
More hand-beaded hippie-chic jewelry, necklaces, medallions: Yay! I love this stuff. Talismans. No... amulets? Handcrafted anything is lovely, the hint of southwestern indian art/artifact, also sweet.
Another woven placemat (this is fast becoming our first private joke), within which is a beautiful slice of stone -- geode -- of a beautiful translucent round brown.
Also: pearly. Definitely pearly.
The Grateful Dead Movie Soundtrack, 5 CDs. Cool.
The Pogues: The Ultimate Collection.
A Grand Canyon patch.
Joni Mitchell: hits.
Ensemble Alcatraz: Danse Royale (songs and dances from the 13th century).
Tom Waits: nighthawks at the diner.
 |
| Nighthawks by Edward Hopper |
The Folger Consort: A Distant Mirror, Music of the Fourteenth Century and Shakespeare's Music.
Freddie King is a Blues Master.
E.E. Cummings: Collected Poems 1922-1938 -- flipped open to the portentous poem on its page 225:
somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near
your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose
or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing
(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands
The Original Soundtrack From the Movie Rockers.
The Seldom Scene: Old Train. Ah, I am precisely in the mood for this.
Seldom Scene on Tommy Hunter Show - "Wait a Minute"
Uploaded by BluegrassLibrary to YouTube on Jul 9, 2008
Wait a minute, did I hear you say
You're goin' far away again?
Try to change it, I can't take
The lonely nights without your love
Do you want the road
To get the music done and move along?
What good does it do
Play your songs for her and hear her say?
Wait a minute, did I hear you say
You're goin' far away again?
Try to change it, I can't take
The lonely nights without your love
Rollin' along and life's been
Good to you but even so
She comes to you, late at night's
The time you hear her say once again
Wait a minute, did I hear you say
You're goin' far away again?
Try to change it, I can't take
The lonely nights without your love
Waitin' for you thirty days
And nights without a rest
I got to hold on, twenty-five to go
And once again or I'll hear her say
Wait a minute, did I hear you say...
Itzhak Perlman: Saint-Saens, Sarasate, Chausson, Ravel
Janice Joplin with Big Brother and The Holding Co.: Live at Winterland '68. Oh, wow.
The Chieftains: Celtic Wedding. {unsightly fist-pumping}
"The concept for the album was to musically recreate a 14th century Breton wedding ceremony, and became the first in the musical voyages tracing the influences of Celtic music around the world."
One sealed packet of Lilly Miller Leaf Lettuce Seed, Prizehead.
One ceramic Trader Dicks' Easter Island Head-Thingy, closed with a rubber tub stopper, within which were wrapped:
one rubber magic lamp;
one Grand Canyon National Park 75th Anniversary pin;
more beaded hippy jewelry;
a crystal to hang at the embrasure;
a piece of crumbling sandstone upon which there may be the imprint of feathers -- no, fern fronds (much of which is now embedded in my keyboard, grrr.).
Here is the Christmas Brunch *salad* menu at Trader Dick's Restaurante Orozko, which I invite you to peruse while I get the vacuum. Just the salad part, mind you. I'm hungry!
Jumbo Prawns Cocktail with Cognac Remoulade
Seared Rare Ahi with Tobiko Aioli
Smoked Salmon & Rainbow Trout
with Condiments and Mini Bagels
Antipasto Platter
Marinated Mushroom & Artichoke Salad
Imported & Domestic Cheese Board
Nugget’s Caesar Salad
Dungeness Crab and Fettuccine Salad
Baby Spinach & Shiitake Salad
with Warm Sesame Ginger Dressing
Field Greens with Dressing Selection
Tomato & Fresh Mozzarella with Balsamic Syrup
Holiday Waldorf Salad
Ambrosia Salad
Crispy Duck Green Bean & Pasta Salad
Okay, all better! My keys are now pristine and I swiped a burrito out of the fridge.
Next in the box of gifts:
Neal Stephenson, Quicksilver, A Novel (Volume One of the Baroque Cycle). A Brother-Unit and his historical novels, never enough reality!
Oops, and here is Volume Two -- The Confusion.
Ah, and now I remember that there is a promise of Volume Three in TW's note. That's good, as the frustration of ending a trilogy on its second part might be soul-crushing.
I'm thinking of starting the journey tonight, as I am struggling through a truly nasty novel at the moment.
Another snapshot, TW in front of a nuclear blast site sign. He appears to be in the middle of nowhere. Ummm, and as odd a remark as this is, coming from a sibling, he has gorgeously tanned legs. This was the era of the short short.
One charred toothpick, perhaps a gift, perhaps not.
The Grateful Dead: wake the dead.
Women of the World: Celtic II. From the eighth cut, Pamela Morgan's It Ain't Funny:
His lullaby, the waves outside his window[From the Newfs in Ottawa Facebook Page:
His father and himself made a wonderful pair
Five hundred years of fishing in his family
Still the government wouldn't listen when he said
"trouble down there"
It ain't funny- it ain't funny no more
Fat cat smirking in the land of plenty
Making jokes about a people from a gentler time
Sanctioned and applauded the whole gang rape of the place
But like any rape they blame the victim for the crime
It ain't funny it ain't funny no more
Now the Newfs are becoming a strain on the Ottawa wallet
There's no need to be nice- what's left is up for sale
And the best small boatsmen in the world are on the dole
Stupid and lazy according to the Globe and Mail
It ain't funny
Nobody's laughing now
It ain't funny
Something has changed somehow
It ain't funny, it ain't funny no more
Newfoundlanders live in houses not shacks.. we eat fish sometimes but are not all fishermen... hip rubbers are convienient but not a provincial fashion statement... we are smart.. we speak funny, loudly and do so with pride... we are friendly...we are free.. we are amazing .. and we are in Ottawa...still fighting the fight to FREE Newfoundland!]
Dylan's Bootleg Series, Vol. 4: The Royal Albert Hall Concert.
Clannad: Banba.
Kate Wolf, An Evening in Austin.
Cumbia Cumbia: A Selection of Colombian Cumbia Recordings
Orchestra Baobab: Specialist in All Styles.
Orchestra Baobab is a Senegalese Afro-Cuban, Son, Wolof and Pachanga band. Organized in 1970, as a multi-ethnic, multi-national club band, Orchestre Baobab adapted the then current craze for Cuban Music (growing out of the Congolese Soukous style) in West Africa to Wolof Griot culture and the Mandinga musical traditions of the Casamance. One of the dominant African bands of the 1970s, they were overshadowed in the 1980s and broke up, only to reform in 2001 after interest in their recordings grew in Europe.Ella Fitzgerald, These are the blues.
Sarah Vaughn, This is jazz/20.
The Girl From Ipanema, The Antonio Carlos Jobim Songbook.
The Time-Life Treasury of the Blues.
Les Négresses Vertes, Mlah.
Patrick Bell, Celtic Harp.
The John Renbourn Group: Live in America.
Pietro Mascagni, Cavalleria Rusticana.
One audiocassette recording from 6/22/82, of The Clash at San Francisco Civic Auditorium.
One bit of broken plastic, now further broken, and gone, mostly, after the arrival sur scène of Buddy the Freakishly Large Kitten. I hope we won't be rushing him to the vet... He looks distinctly proud of himself, with that "mine, all mine" look of puissant pussy cat.
Two snapshots, poor quality, excellent subjects. A bird in the hand in front of what looks to be the sea wall at the end of the world, backed by a beautiful rainbow -- and some bushy-headed guy in an Ireland tee shirt.
Okay, so Fred pointed out that it is a bit unusual to have electric wires strung in the middle of the ocean. Another familial holiday gift, the grandfather's glaucoma. I am blind as a bat. Apparently, that snapshot is of the brother-unit and his girl feeling one another up in the desert.
Ha! My world, made of things seen wrong! Thus far in this blind journey, the corrections have all been amusing, if not always instructive.
Good Yule, all, and thank you, TW. I hear rumblings out in the common area. It might be time for me to hold a flashlight and mumble words of encouragement, for I think we've sprung another leak.
 |
| Geocentric (Ptolemaic) model of the universe from BibliOdyssey: Celestial Mechanics |
contrarywise, thank you, and slightly advance best birthday wishes to fred. (always thought his name was hank)
ReplyDeletealchemically enough, it doesn't seem by half like such a shabby doll giftbox when you gussy it up with such sprightly prose. thank you, as well, for that.
take good care of each other.
--tw
hullo, you.
ReplyDeletei hasten to explain -- and cannot for the life of me figure why it is confusing, he he -- that fred *is* hank, though we won't tell hank that, will we?
"fred" allows me a bit of latitude in the fiction department, were anything i write fiction, of cuss.
i've been appreciating The Box throughout the day as Emilio and i finished the plumbing repairs.
who is emilio? why, sven's second cousin four times removed, natch!
oh great, i just heard hank wondering aloud: "who am i, then, if not fred? and who, sweet jesus, are the dutch?"
troublemaker!
warm hugs, warm wishes, good drink, good cheer to you, my brother!
all my love,
eljay