He/she’s
gone. This is not the aching wail
of some hermaphroditic Bob Marley.
Rather the spider I’d written the last few days who’d set up an
impressive web out to the left of my desk, between the house and some cedars,
has disappeared. The entire web is
gone as well. I’ve gone over to
the window a few times now, to look for traces, of the construction, hoping to
see his/her hairy muscular concentration making it's way across some pine
needles. When my daughters came
down for breakfast I pointed out his/her departure.
While I don’t think this bodes for a Tony Soprano; the ducks
have left the pool- like inflection point it is a bit of a bummer. “Must have rained,” opined my younger
one. Which is a reasonable
suggestion. But it didn’t. The most obvious thought is that he/she
became bird food for one of the early morning chickadees or late dusk bat. That or the an animal of that size
simply flew into the web and made such a mess of things that he/she declared
the construction a complete ruin went to get a new housing permit. It’s colder outside but nothing like a first frost that might have done the
little critter in. Perhaps he/she
took offence to being blogged about and figured he/she could happily find meals
elsewhere without all the surveillance and exposure.
Lovely brisk, fall day. Yesterday I went downtown to get my hair cut. A friend had introduced me to a French
gent who cut my hair for a while.
A man of few words, 沉默寡言[1],I
usually read during the coiffing.
He split town and I met the owner who was loquacious and had fabulous
stories of living in New York City in the 1970s and growing up in Marseilles,
but then he split town. The new
gent is very nice, but he doesn’t speak much English or Chinese. And, given all Francophilia around my
home of late, I tried to turn it into a French lesson.
I got there and began easily enough with a “Comment ça va?” To which I got the obligatory “bien, et tu?” And here is where I took my first pointless detour. I wanted to say “same as always” with a
grin. The phrase “como siempre” flashed like neon in my forehead. I know the Spanish.
Now, in the milliseconds that remain before things get awkward can I
navigate to the French? “meme”
that's same, right? Meme something. So I began to talk around the problem
with my limited French, (you know the word is like como spiempre in Spanish.
Ah, yes, you don’t speak Spanish. Right, well,”
“Ahh, you want your hair cut the same
as last time.” “No, this has
nothing to do with my hair.” He frowned far more than was necessary. By this time another hairdresser who
spoke French and Chinese was called in, and, explaining what I meant in Chinese
he offered a term or two, until finally we arrived at même, comme toujours which seems accurate, though I don’t know if
it has the condensed, exasperated zing, of como
siempre.
Searching around the Times before I went to bed last night I
caught a more reflective article on Obama’s foreign policy that gave me
pause: “Paths to War Then and Now
Haunt Obama.” I don’t know if I’m
just eating up the copy his press room make available to the world, but reading
about him, being cautious, analytical and self deprecating in the face of the
current panoply of challenges, I feel, as I always have kind of felt,
particularly empathetic with this President, and glad we have such a smart,
grounded individual who is capable of laughing at himself, as he occupies
that most burdensome of stools:
“Oh, it’s a shame when you have a
wan, diffident, professorial president with no foreign policy other than ‘don’t
do stupid things,’ ” guests recalled him saying, sarcastically imitating his
adversaries. “I do not make apologies for being careful in these areas, even if
it doesn’t make for good theater.”
Cool fall day, and I’m exploring the second album now by
this tenor player I’ve stumbled upon with a string of alluring-looking albums from the classic years. Mr. Frank Foster is sporting a big smile on the album entitled “Manhattan Fever”
from 1968, which has him sounding to my ears a bit like Wayne Shorter from a few years
earlier, on this particular cut “Stampede.”
Born in Cincinnati Ohio in 1928, he served in this part of the world, as
a young man in the Korean War.
Coming up in the Basie Orchestra he’s credited with many famous
arrangements and played with folks whose names I recognize like Thad Jones, Wardel
Gray and Jimmy Smith. He
died in Chesapeake Virgina in 2011.
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