Jenny Allen - December, 2008

Did someone say something last night about playing bridge today if it rained? I seem to remember the husband in that nice couple who came for dinner suggesting it — it moved me how you could tell that even though he was talking about playing bridge as if he thought it was a campy idea, something our parents might do, he really wanted to do it. And did I say something like “Oh, I don’t know how to play bridge, but I’d love to learn!”? If I did, that’s because I felt sorry for him. Also, I think I was kind of drunk at the time.

I would not love to learn. I would hate to learn. Bridge is unlearnable by me. You have to have a partner and strategy and write things down on little pads of paper and somehow store the previous moves of others in your memory, like a squirrel storing nuts, for use later. It sounds like a job. A job I would get fired from on the first day, before lunch.

The New Yorker

Susan Sontag - September, 2001

The disconnect between last Tuesday's monstrous dose of reality and the self-righteous drivel and outright deceptions being peddled by public figures and TV commentators is startling, depressing. The voices licensed to follow the event seem to have joined together in a campaign to infantilize the public. Where is the acknowledgment that this was not a "cowardly" attack on "civilization" or "liberty" or "humanity" or "the free world" but an attack on the world's self-proclaimed superpower, undertaken as a consequence of specific American alliances and actions? How many citizens are aware of the ongoing American bombing of Iraq? And if the word "cowardly" is to be used, it might be more aptly applied to those who kill from beyond the range of retaliation, high in the sky, than to those willing to die themselves in order to kill others. In the matter of courage (a morally neutral virtue): whatever may be said of the perpetrators of Tuesday's slaughter, they were not cowards.

The New Yorker

Wallace Stevens - 1922 - Let Be Be Finale of Seem

Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

Take from the dresser of deal,
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

The Emperor of Ice-Cream

Robert - April, 1992

Another wacky night doing things I had no intention doing. Mark took me to a party at a woman named Bettina's loft. Big, bright-colored art. Good booze. No people. Except Gianluigi the gadabout and (not surprising for some reason) Victor. He stands too close and gets too earnest. I was looking cute (almost as cute as the Dalmatian puppy with a fondness for crumpled black cocktail napkins). As I said goodbye, Bettina introduced me as "actor" to a boy that looked younger than me, and yet "producer." He started talking about paying his dues, so I had to go...

Zack took Mark and me to Lucky Strike and got progressively odder (about spiritual matters, sex, love, and life) and freer with his hands as the evening wore on. By the end, he was insisting repeatedly that Mark and I acknowledge his love for us. He also kissed me all over my face and gave me his (only okay) tie when I complimented it as a diversionary tactic. I will compliment a Bruce Weber photograph if I'm ever in his apartment again.

Robert - Today - Needless Hugging

There’s the shake and lean; the hug from behind; and, the newest addition, the triple — any combination of three girls and boys hugging at once.

“We’re not afraid, we just get in and hug,” said Danny Schneider, a junior at the school, where hallway hugging began shortly after 7 a.m. on a recent morning as students arrived. “The guy friends, we don’t care. You just get right in there and jump in.”

“If somebody were to not hug someone, to never hug anybody, people might be just a little wary of them and think they are weird or peculiar,” said Gabrielle Brown, a freshman at Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School in Manhattan.

Comforting as the hug may be, principals across the country have clamped down. “Touching and physical contact is very dangerous territory,” said Noreen Hajinlian, the principal of George G. White School, a junior high school in Hillsdale, N.J., who banned hugging two years ago. “It was needless hugging — they are in the hallways before they go to class. It wasn’t a greeting. It was happening all day.”
For this and much, much more, see the paper of record.

Edward Gorey - November 1992

N is for Neville who died of ennui

We all have periods when we're shining very brightly and people are calling us up and wanting to do things and so forth, and then somehow the phases of the moon change and we're hardly visible at all and the phone doesn't ring for days. I just go along with that. I wait for the phone to ring, usually.

-- The New Yorker

Robert - Today

This is one of my dreams: To live in a renovated gas station

Izzy - March 1990

It is sooo big. And how fortunate that there was a photographer on hand the one day of the year you can actually see the mountains.

I still don't like it here (not even a little) -- it's big, dirty, crowded, hostile -- but I've decided to perservere nonetheless. You see, I have an agenda. I have a possible job selling movies to video stores (movies with titles like Cobra II and stars like William Katt) and an interview with an actors' studio this afternoon. This is either just the beginning or the beginning of the end. Either way, I'm terrified, but determined.

Adulation and acclaim -- both in the same semester? I'm impressed, as I am with your TA-ship. Finally, you can mold people in your image. Crew cuts for everyone!

Let's make a deal -- Whoever gets famous first has to take the other along for the ride.

The Return of the Native - 1878/1978

He had been a lad of whom something was expected. Beyond this all had been chaos. That he would be successful in an original way, or that he would go to the dogs in an original way, seemed equally probable. The only absolute certainty about him was that he would not stand still in the circumstances amid which he was born.

1878 - Written by Thomas Hardy; 1978 - First read by Robert

Georgetown Graduation - May 1984

That was a very white shirt, apparently.

Phil - October 1987

I have recently taken up two new hobbies that may interest you. The first one is darts. I purchased a set of good British throwing darts at the Quonset Hut with the help of my employee discount. A friend has since lent me his old dartboard, which I put in my room. I learned that darts were invented by knights in the Middle Ages to kill time between jousting, saving fair maidens, slaying dragons, and other general knightly tasks. The ideas of chivalry and courtesy still exist in the game today and the people who play in the bars around Akron are a fairly amiable group.

My second hobby is Oriental cooking. With the help of my birthday money, I bought a wok from Pier One. Now I can cook bland food in two cultures, instead of just one.

Good Legs - Spring 1982

New York City Wild Posting - 2009

A tourist vainly attempts to shield herself from the horrific power of Lucky cover wild postings

Wild Postings are temporary highly engaging forms of street-level advertising media. Wild Posting initiatives consist of various forms of media such as street posters, sidewalk chalkings, static-cling wild postings, sidewalk decals, magnet wild postings, metro door hangers, and other non-traditional "guerilla media" advertising vehicles.

Laura - May 1985

Monday 29 April 1985 - I received 3 cacti (rather large) from my friend because they were "getting into everything, especially the stereo."

Saturday 4 May 1985 - My housemate had a party.

Sunday 5 May 1985 - #1 cactus in my room where I left it. #2 cactus downstairs by an open window. #3 where? Jumping to conclusions, I decided someone took him because he was so "odd." I hoped whoever got pricked thousand X's. And then inevitably I became disillusioned about this entire world.

One and a half hours later Mary found #3 lying outside the window, having survived the toss incredibly well. I was able to continue with the day.

You may be pleased to know the cactus is resting safely under the bench on which I sit. The bench is white. The sky is blue.

while on the street sometime
watch people swing their arms as they go by
seems as if people can't move without swinging their arms
You'll get such a kick out of it. I just
know you'll start laughing

Robert - May 1989

Behind me, the local agricultural club is discussing the length of the flight. There are various versions of what the French(Belgian?)-accented pilot said. No one has yet attempted the math. What I'm noticing most are smells: fresh moist towlette and stale upholstery and cigarette smoke on people's clothes. Also the man next to me in a lousy light blue suit. Where is the glamor in international travel? The film is Pathfinder -- the English-language version. What?

I am still waiting for excitement to overtake me. Perhaps I am too tired. I am also sitting next to the toilet. Will I look retarded working in my French grammar book? Pathfinder, it turns out, is the story of a boy on "the frozen planes" of Lapland 1000 years ago. It stars Mikkel Gaup and Ingvald Guttorm. I do want to go north. At least as far as Amsterdam. (Okay, I'm getting excited.)

The Sundays - 1990+

The anthem band for thems that don't like anthems. So, on this Sunday:

People I see, weary of me showing my good side
I could see how people look down -- I'm on the outside

Some days he's more than humble. Some days he's cold and mad, mad as hell

As the heavens shudder baby I belong to you
Oh they said you get what you deserve and all they said was true

Oh sometimes, get up a voice inside says, there's no time for breaking down