Myself The Plunge

Some people binge on television shows and find themselves staying up late to watch episode after episode of what was supposed to be viewed over the course of a year.  I didn’t do that, last evening.  Rather I treated myself to some binge reading.  I was caught up.  Mostly.  Most everything had been shot back to all the people who needed to be shot at.  You see, I have a pile of new books and decided to finally allow myself the plunge.   Critically, somehow, round midnight I’d wound up with a second wind or this would have been a very brief indulgence.

Even as I, per my earlier entry, slowly, slowly, in the moment, finish off some of the Byronic romp that had finally reached Venice and the Bridge of Sighs, my phone kept notifying me that new emails had arrived.  I’d like to say I blew them all off with a steely resolve.  I didn’t   Every time I looked.  Immediate or eventually?  Regardless I’m regularly tapped upon by the U.S. workday traffic when I was supposed to be surrendering to someone’s introduction to Venice.

And when I finished with ‘Childe Harold’, I could turn to Brodsky.  He’s also in Venice.  He looks just like Sergey Brin, the Google founder, when he was young.  He’s also asking tough questions about the place as a foreigner, marveling at the city as a “northern man” from St. Petersburg. He writes, in his nonnative language, so beautifully.  I’m humbled by his description of the people he meets and the late nights he walks around within.  I spent a bit of time on the simple biography that Wiki provides.  I quite liked this quote of his from a his Soviet trial as a 23 year old:

They called him "a pseudo-poet in velveteen trousers" who failed to fulfill his "constitutional duty to work honestly for the good of the motherland". The trial judge asked "Who has recognized you as a poet? Who has enrolled you in the ranks of poets?" – "No one," Brodsky replied, "Who enrolled me in the ranks of the human race?" Brodsky was not yet 24.”

Before I went to bed I started a history text, which is almost a bonbon after reading the essays and poems   We’re back with the Fourth Crusade and the Venetians agenda is to destroy Cairo, to solidify their trading position.  The Crusaders however, thought they were off to liberate the Holy Land.  The boats are being built by the Venetians.  The Venetians will be steering the boats.  A mutinous, manipulation seems certainly pending as we finally set off, out of the Lagoon and into the Adriatic.  Watch out Zara.   

Saturday, 03/11/17