17th and Irving

Monday, August 27, 2007

Late at Night

There was a lot of flooding here last week, and all weekend breakfast places were closed, streets impassable and the electricity off for a lot of Chicago. Oddly, the house was untouched, the cats lay around with nothing out of the ordinary for them. The weather became beautiful by last night, and tonight is perfect, one forgets our own fingerprints on the earth in this kind of weather, the earth seems so perfectly attuned.

I'm listening to Miles Davis's Ascenseur Pour L'Échafaud, specifically this amazing track that sounds like the perfection of 1950s jazz all by itself, "Générique." A lot of the jazz purists (those not wetting themselves), insist this is not one of Miles's better moments; it's for Louis Malle's first film, and it's actually, I think, pretty perfect. It's amazing how it changes and deepens the movie. So maybe it's not Birth of the Cool or Kind of Blue, but it's amazing and it has this edge to it that kind of sounds like the beginning of the French New Wave to me: that combination of Paris and America in this uncomfortable embrace, all in love with each other but not sure how it's all supposed to fit and what it all means. This is a very imperfect description of it, but regardless, "Générique" I think is required listening for anybody interested in Miles Davis. I seem to be a bit more each year.

Otherwise, my life is still vaguely on hold, which is cool. I wish it wasn't, but I think Billy Bob got at that best in Bad Santa, so whatever works will.

It's hard to worry when the crickets are as beautiful as they are, when the Lake reflects the moon in a million places: one shimmer, and the air is brisk and has, for the first time really, the slightest tastes of autumn about it late at night. No phone, no reason to rush off, and cats lounging and skulking about. In a bit I'll read for just a chapter or two and call it the end of the day, but regardless of what's happening, like so many others, it's a day to store up against other days not so beautiful or perfect.

I read through this book, They Marched Into Sunlight, which really gets at a lot of things that made 1968 much easier to understand for me. It takes place primarily in the autumn of 1967, and looking at the microcosms the way he does really beautifully traced some of the macro-thinking that was going on in Washington, Vietnam and in the Anti-War movement. It's weird to look at all these pictures of Madison, Wisconsin, to see places I've hung out around just totally transformed by belief and conflict. It makes me wonder how people from the 1870s and 1880s would look at Union Square or Tomkins Square Park now.

Off to read and enjoy the way the night feels.

Tuesday, August 14, 2007

Humidity Again

Bro called at eleven and lunch was off. School starts for him tomorrow, meetings only.

So I finished Black Swan Green by David Mitchell and, at some point, turned the air conditioner back on, which I hate to do because I miss the sounds of the cicadas and the crickets. When you have those sounds you should go out of your way for them, but I'll sit outside late tonight, when it's just crickets. Yesterday night felt uneasy, like there were things in it, and then a huge thunderstorm again just before dawn which woke me up. The rain made soothing rushing sounds between the other sounds of the storm.

Right now "Love Athena" by the Olivia Tremor Control just came on, which I love. Happy accident but I had to stop for a minute to listen and lost my place.

This is a good part of the year - so much reading gets done, a lot of thinking - but already it's mid-August and unlike other years I don't feel rested in the least. I wonder if that will make for a more difficult year?

Black Swan Green was full of all sorts of things and nearly perfect. I don't want to prattle on, but I think I respect David Mitchell more than any other writer right now. Just now, I'm thinking of the book, set in 1982, and how Tony Wilson just died, and it does seem (and now the Stone Roses just came on, ironically enough), something of my time should be preserved outside history. The feeling of it. All times deserve that. This book is about that.

Good stuff. Now I have to shower. I'll be lucky if my next book is half as good.

Friday, August 10, 2007

August is a Hum of Crickets


Back from the long wander around the Eastern Half of the United States and wondering where I'll be a month from today:

1) New York?
2) Chicago?
3) San Francisco?

Weird. It runs the whole country again. It's all I think about pretty much, besides ol' Snape and the Chicago Cubs. Oh my Cubs, they looked beautiful today - helped by Garrett Atkins and whoever was playing first for the Rockies - Helton or Baker?

But Lilly looked great again today, his expiration date is much later than I thought it would be - he might be the reason the Cubs are still in on it.

Boston was good - except for getting lost about twice a waking hour and the surprising heat. Swimming in Walden Pond was a definite highlight, as was looking out over the Atlantic and thinking about the 19th century.

Good article this week, or was it last? in the New Yorker about Bush's prisons - I think we're going to need a truth commission after this regime leaves much like the one in South Africa. We should probably learn what's been done in our name. I really have become more convinced over the last few weeks that this will actually be necessary.