in the hall of mirrors

Cliché

The bathtub is half full; hot, with oil, smelling of mangoes. A glass of spirits (limoncello as it happens – can't quite do the cliché of a whiskey, not the kind of thing I drink – and that tells you something about me).

Today I had to call around to the HIV patient group to get some of them to come to a class, to a public presentation; lots of dates and schedules and yeses and semi-nos. Easy enough, used to do it all the time (since I don't run the group any more, it's about five months since I've done this). In speaking to one of the guys, and doing the so-how-are-you thing, he said he has changed meds – and when he changed them he had a major problem with anger for a couple of weeks. I said, possibly rather invasively, or (translated into UK English) impertinently: well, since Efavirenz tends to release a lot of feeling, does that mean you'd been holding in a lot of anger for a long time? He didn't know.

Lately I've been getting a bit of exercise, waking up a bit, perhaps I'm not quite as out of it as I have been for a long time: the body moving again. It's sort of like waking up, on a broader and vaguer scale: stuff moves, stuff shows up. For me, some anger, but tonight it's sadness: every fragment of various television shows that leads in that direction lands on me, as though it was aimed specifically at me. Perhaps best for my mood was one final episode of Gray's Anatomy, which I love anyway (and that also tells you something about me – probably the same thing, come to think of it). And the line that falls into my memory and resonates, as somebody comes into the bar, to someone they barely know: "You look sad."

The bathtub is half full; hot, with oil. A glass of spirits....

MacNew

Sunny, fresh, active, much going on in what feels like a fast lane. How is it possible to experience renewal and excitement and freshness in January?... ah well, stranger things have happened, I suppose.

I have a new office computer, one of the new iMacs – Intel chip, utterly immense screen, high-resolution, stylish, and fast as the dickens (no, this time I don't mean the Dickens). And a charming little remote control that clings to the side.

It arrived and I set it up in the same few hours that the Net was frantically reporting on Steve Jobs' keynote, where he introduced the iPhone and iTV. The iPhone, though I am not foolish enough to be an early adopter, is astounding and very impressive indeed, if the Net video is to be believed.

As I bought my first Macintosh in 1984 – their first year (though I bought the second model in existence, the 512K) – it is pleasant to me to see the company doing so well, and generating some of the passionately well-made and imaginative technology that they wanted to from the beginning.... I know it's all terribly bourgeois/capitalist, but if you have to make products and money and such, you might as well at least make them well.

In any case, I'm having fun with my new toy.

Being-in-the-world

Still been a bit groggy, and dismayed by the grogginess (though grateful for that extra hour today). Finally forced myself out of the house in midafternoon; walked through the neighborhood, among people doing the things people do (students in couples shopping, a guy with a big smile riding a bike, various children). Mild envy of their involvement in their own lives....

and so did some grocery shopping: not mostly necessities (my pantry's full of those) but luxuries and exotica, having been driven in that direction by reading one of my favorite food blogs. I fell for:

chocolate with nutmeg
soba noodles
smoked peppered mackerel
smoked salmon

(yeah, yeah, but I bought the cheapest one, and hey we're near Scotland so it's sort of local – and therefore really kind of a sensible purchase, yeah okay get off my back)

oat biscuits
Polish rye bread

(there's a massive influx of Polish food in the corner shop, responding to the new Polish immigrants in the neighborhood – although it does recall my year in Berlin, the Polish versions of Mitteleuropäischer foodstuffs are frankly mostly rather boring; and the labels are entirely in Polish, so there's not much that I'm willing to gamble on)

chocolate breakfast cereal
ghee
Greek meatballs, and Greek-style fava beans
Thai curry vegetables
fudge brownie mix (uh, is there a hidden agenda here?)
chorizo

(finally gambling on this once more – although all the chorizo I've bought here has been unappetizingly fatty, this is a new brand, so what the heck)

and
some sort of Chinese fruit

(that I don't recognize, and have no idea what they're going to taste like – hopefully not like lychees, rambutan, or guava, all of which I can't stand – actually they look like they might be custard apples, which are pretty wonderful in the split second between when they're ripe and when they fall apart).

(By the shade of Sei Shonagon, what a list.)

Then afternoon tea (that's the only thing you can really call it) at the café around the corner; meat and potato pie – sort of the prepackaged version of an English Sunday roast, which I rarely have but which was very welcome today. And reading Barthes' Empire of Signs – certainly one of the most self-indulgent things he ever wrote, and one of the most pleasurable to read; a strange and poetic look at the signs of Japan. When the charming (and good-looking) South Asian guy at the corner shop asked what the book was about, I said, well, it was by someone who loved aesthetic and symbolic things – and where would he have more fun, where would he feel as though he were in a more wonderful playground, than Japan?

The pleasure of being out in the world... when I came home, the apartment's air seemed close and without oxygen – that's what happens in winter, I suppose. I opened all the windows....

Luxuries

A bit sleepy/groggy tonight, don't know why. Too much sugar, perhaps?...

Brought back from Spain: turrón, several kinds – egg yolk and sugar, which I love (and which I was told doesn't last, so I bought only one); almond paste and crushed almonds; and chocolate with almonds. Didn't bother with the wafer and egg whites one – had just hacked my way through a whole one that I'd bought in Rome, which was a bit like chewing through stone....

Roasted almonds, roasted hazelnuts (they're better than the ones they sell here). Dried fruit – sounds boring, I know, but these were some French dried fruits that were in the grocery in Sitges that were sort of half-dried and had a very different consistency to the ones I'm used to; the strawberries and apples were especially good (my guests the other night went right through a bowl of them). Buying figs here, at the corner store, reminded me of the much more amazing figs we took off the trees in Crete – G– and K– had become adept at this, watching for certain trees by the side of the road, planning when the green would turn purple. And the herbs there, and the mastikha....

I keep making things a bit more interesting in the kitchen – pesto in the hummus, a cayenne-lemon mixture on the salmon, pistachios in the saffron rice – feta marinated with olives and garlic... That's actually one of the advantages of visiting Mediterranean countries: one relearns that food is supposed to be good, rich and strong-flavored all the time.

One thing I had to leave behind, because it seemed impossible to take liquids through British airports after the Heathrow scare: the chocolate liqueur – not merely chocolate-flavored spirits, but more like pouring chocolate. And they were selling a white chocolate and a vanilla liqueur that were similarly made – ah well, next year....

As I've said, my increased fascination with strong flavors and related luxuries (bath oils, incense) may be associated with living in a northern country (and of course it's turning into autumn). Or a replacement for a sex life (Freud) or distraction from the relative boredom of living alone in a small city... of course, this jars slightly with the Marxist tone of my department: but then I've always been the self-indulgent bourgeois here.

And perhaps I'm just too sleepy to make sense tonight....

Hamam

Home again.

After a hot bath: slow, sensual North African music; lying on the couch, reading ridiculous but fun German gay comics (my beloved Ralf König, who has published some new books since last I looked through amazon.de); a musk incense; late at night; I am unbelievably comfortable... especially after about twelve days of admitted wonders and successes, but also much dislocation. (And sleeping has been annoying all these days – allergies to the stuff they used on the sheets in Spain, and the frankly dirty dorm room in London, had me restless and itching every night... the evaporation of all that has such an impact on my ability to relax.)

Well, this is in line with that tendency to indulge myself that has appeared since I moved to northern England – and of course I would have to admit, rather Freudianly, it's not just a reaction to a cooler climate, it's also a response to a relatively empty sex life. Ah, see, Freud: you don't need sex, just have a nice bath with oils....

Really, it's something to snicker about, but smugly. All fairly ridiculous. But also great fun... here in the seclusion of the hamam (oops, I almost said: seraglio)....

Dithering (Sitges I)

What do I want to do?

Sitges, the little beach town down the coast from Barcelona, is designed for desires: I want to go to the beach, I want to eat dinner. I want muscat grapes, I want fideuá, I want hazelnuts in honey. I want to walk through narrow streets, I want to see the Festa Major, I want to see the fireworks, I want to follow the crowds, I want to get away from the crowds. I want to buy a shirt, I want to buy a book, I want to buy spices, I want to buy expensive chocolates. I want to go out, I want to go out and drink, I want to go out and dance, I want to go out and meet somebody cute. I want to get laid... I want to go to bed, I want to sleep....

The trouble is, my relationship to so many of these desires is either too simple (all right, I’ve bought the grapes, now eat them) or too impossible (I’m just too out of shape to expect getting laid in a major, pretentious, gay holiday destination). As one gets older, certain desires are either too absurdly easy to fulfill (you can just buy what you want, except if you haven’t been very financially sensible like me, that has a limit to it – you can’t buy an apartment in a city you love, you can’t buy a place to live that might, maybe, make you happy) or increasingly impossible (passion, sex, love, change, new adventures, new challenges that haven’t already littered the horizon for years). Desire itself is shown to be mechanical, and you can see that the mechanism is awfully creaky and rather badly designed – the parts wear out, the replacements aren’t very good, and the whole thing clatters along to produce a ridiculously small result.

Yesterday, I finished rereading Angela Carter’s The War of Dreams (it was originally called The Infernal Desire Machines of Dr Hoffman, but I prefer the short title). It was the first book of hers that I ever read, and I still think it’s the best; however, it is many years since I read the whole thing through – which resulted in an eye-opener; there are whole passages I didn’t really understand when I read them first many years ago. In fact, what had once seemed a too-tortuous journey leading to an almost too obvious climax now seems, on the contrary, astoundingly imaginative – and the almost painfully didactic lectures made by Albertina and her mad father now seem, not boring, but perfect illustrations of certain innate aspects of desire. The whole pattern of the book seems in fact to be the exposure of exactly what bothers me tonight – the discovery that desire, carnival, sensual chaos, which may seem at first so fascinating and delightful, barely covers up a machinery that is pathetically dry and lifeless, that in fact sucks the life out of anyone who is caught in it.

I know that a week in Sitges, with Barcelona on the side, always makes me happier and more relaxed. But that is mostly because it gives me a week of being steeped in another culture, one where people are generally more aware of their desires, more willing to fulfill them, and less interested in pseudo-Protestant tangles of conscience when they don’t get fulfilled (or when they do). (Michael N., who specializes in Spanish music, was the first to alert me that, even when you think you’re being completely secular, you might still be responding out of strong Protestant roots – and that those roots carry as much nonsensical baggage as Catholic ones. Even if Protestant baggage seems more innately modern, less dated, it’s still baggage without meaning, ideas and responses that don’t actually make any sense, because they’re responses to things that are not actually present when you’re deciding your way through your life.)

So: what a ‘vacation’ entails, what this vacation entails anyway, is a brief visit to a cultural/geographical locus where I think I would be happier. Good, fine, that’s clear: but then the obvious answer becomes, then why the hell am I not moving heaven and earth [sic?] to move to this place?

Well, because I can’t. Academic jobs aren’t available for me in non-Anglophone countries, at least not for the most part; and I haven’t got the savings or even the lack of debt to save up and someday move to a place like this. Or a place like Barcelona, or Amsterdam, Palermo, Sydney, even San Francisco....

So now it’s three in the morning, the Festa parade is at 6 am, I could go to the Trailer, a rather good gay club, or I could go walking, I could stay here in bed, I could sleep... But what do I want to do?

Through the mazes

I continue to respond to the summer and its work in a rather murky and unsatisfying way. The weather has moved quite firmly from hot to chilly, and gray to boot (not 'grey', it's not that subtle). I have piles of things that need to be done, but plenty of time to do them – and unfortunately my tendency in those circumstances is to avoid everything now, in favor of some (ultimately nonexistent) later. Marking papers, meetings, going to the gym... all can be indefinitely delayed....

Indulgence: sometimes a good thing, sometimes a bad – I made a biryani last night (first time ever, rather fun and quite good too); and the cleanliness of the apartment, the use of skin oils and incense, relaxation on the couch with soft cotton blankets (one I bought in Cyprus, and I'd love to be there, the other one that my mother bought from a Pennsylvania Dutch store). The sensuality of things helps my mood.

And there are cheesier indulgences – late night 'adult' cartoons (not pornographic, just charmingly, cynically obnoxious) on television led me to locate and download the complete Venture Brothers series (now about twenty twenty-three minute segments, all floating around on Gnutella). They're absurdly funny, and, well, incredibly gay – although clearly written by straight men: somewhat like the Rammstein videos I found on the web a few weeks ago, and the slightly older Spy Groove series, they suggest new contemporary trends in queer culture – how peculiar it must be for straight men who don't define themselves entirely traditionally to exist in a space adjacent to all of us gay, lesbian, transgender types. You can see the impact of the queer world in the tangled ambivalence of the contemporary Regular Guy's imagination – even when being satirical or revolted, they make no more fun of us than of their own foibles. And they can't help but take advantage of the possibilities – all the sexuality, all the ambivalence, that they have gotten used to in queer culture ends up extending their own playing field, and they can't resist it.

Anyway, Venture Brothers is ridiculously funny. Such talent... maybe, if my career had gone differently, I would be associated with a studio producing such stuff.

Dismissal: colleagues' discussions of postmodernism have not made me feel as though I want to argue, but more as though it is worthless to discuss anything – as so often my colleagues seem to already know what they think, and they all seem to be in an agreement too close to allow for my opinions, my past, my experiences. This is what is so exasperating about leaving the Pacific behind, with all its freedom: it truly is another world... but of course this is also the best direction for me to follow in general: sometimes it seems as thoughengagement with almost anyone in my local environment merely leads me in small circles. Therefore disengaging is probably a good idea.

I've also lost some interest in applying for the current London job – it really has so many things wrong with it, and the probability that they would interview me seems low enough – does it really seem worth writing the letter?... well, of course, my advice to John was that it is always worth applying for jobs, but perhaps in this case a conservation of energy is better.

Of course, all of this egocentric interest in the minutiae of my life and thoughts is happening under the great arch of war, terror, violence, all of it happening far away. The threats of British air flight reduce, for me, to: can I take my computer when I go to Spain next week? It reminds me of the obliquely bitter subtitle to one of Dorothy Parker's most hilarious monologue-stories, 'From the Diary of a New York Lady', with its recurrent refrain of "Damn Miss Rose" – that subtitle, which takes the whole egotistical mess to an entirely different level, reminds us that it is also happening "During Days of Horror, Despair, and World Change". Ah well, if I'm living in my small world, perhaps that's not such a surprise – living abroad always makes one feel like keeping one's head down, and avoiding being seen; it has occurred to me that if conflicts were to eventually make it difficult to stay in the UK, I might have to make some unappetizing choices.

As for now: it would probably be best for me to cancel that trip to Spain completely – except that I suspect that I would lose about £500 without any refunds if I did. And, rather obviously from all of the above smokes and fogs, I need to clear my head – and a week in a hot beach town, with Susan to talk to, is probably ideal for that.

Living badly

Yesterday: left the apartment so that the cleaner could take over; had lunch at a nearby Italian restaurant. Ended up eating too much, eating wrong, feeling terrible – exhausted at the end of the day.

The patterns: bad eating, no exercise, television, Internet – by the time I woke this morning I was so angry at myself. I thought of the old seminar rubric, which is approximately: the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result – exactly what I am these days: letting myself slide into a dull and sullen old age, earlier than necessary, and hoping that it will all change, that I will get different results, different experiences – but without bothering to change my own behavior, my own habits.

Madness. Of course on the other side is an instrumentalized care of the self; having come from California, that is acutely familiar in all its many forms. But when the self isn't cared for, it becomes, well, such a mess; any illusion that a teleological approach to one's self is 'bad' is immediately countered by the utter lack of choice, of existence, of experience, that follows upon letting oneself slide.

Being furious at myself is so appropriate: really, I have such an easy life – all the tools for taking care of myself, physically, mentally, and in terms of creativity or fulfillment, are so easily available – and I just leave them there....

Really, really angry.

Temptations

Dinner with P– on Friday – tapas and two (!) pitchers of sangria.

That's not as dramatic as it sounds – this sangria wasn't very strong; normally one good glass of sangria can have me giggling and inept, but I suspect this was only the wine, juice and fruit, with no brandy slipped into it. Ah well, it was the tapas restaurant near the river, which has a fine and stylish outside location, but rather second-rate food. I've also noticed that none of the waiters seem to be from Spain – although, when I asked whether our friendly, pleasant-looking, wide-mouthed waiter was Italian (as so many of the restaurant's employees are), he was annoyed with me. He tangled me in a guessing game in which I did very badly – "I'm from the only place between two continents" – I thought Malta? or maybe something Baltic, or somewhere in the tangle of Oceanic islands? No, he meant Istanbul – which, for some reason, he called Constantinople. I felt a bit silly – of course, the Turks like to point out that their country, and capital, are split between Europe and Asia. Come to think of it, I should have talked to him more about being Greek – why else would someone from Istanbul say he was from Constantinople, unless he was of Greek parentage?

Oh, and: the whole also heavily colored by the hot day, pleasurably moving into a light evening, outside near the river; and I've just had a haircut (very short), and am wearing pirates (those Spanish short jeans - yo ho ho) and sneakers, and generally feeling light, cheerful, young. Ish.

But enough context. That's not what this entry is about. At some point the conversation turned to upcoming travel, vacations, Spain, Barcelona Sitges. I started telling P– about my plan for a few August days visiting Susan and Rob during their annual August-in-Sitges vacation. Ended up waxing very lyrical – and trying to be very convincing: as P– has never been in Spain, I thought he would enjoy Sitges a lot – especially because it has such a strong context of relaxed, self-respecting, cheerful sensuality, which I think P– could afford to experience more in his life. Well that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

In my attempt to convince, I started to catalogue the beauties of Barcelona and Sitges: the dramatic, stylish beauty – someone once said that, although it's a much smaller city, Barcelona could give Paris a run for its money. The fun and warmth of it all: I– always tells me that I should visit Madrid, because it's much livelier – by Spanish standards, Barcelona is considered haughty and cold – but let's face it, that's in a Spanish context. Compared to northern England (heck, compared to anywhere in northern Europe, or North America for that matter, including Mexico), practically anywhere in Spain is livelier and more fun.

I can prove it's more fun – on my first visit to Sitges, which came after I had spent a lot more time in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Belgium, there came a night when, at about 4 am, we were arguing over which wine to drink with dinner. In a café, about twenty yards from the ocean. And I thought: wow... this is lots more fun than Basel. And I also thought: what a shame I didn't specialize in Spanish music....

I told him how dramatic and stylish the local gay communities are; how fun, how really enjoyable (as opposed to the rather beer-soaked, shabby approach in provincial Britain, but I didn't say that of course). The casual beach life, the sunny streets... there are so many beauties, so many temptations, to the whole experience. And last year, for the first time, I stayed in Sitges and visited Barcelona, rather than the reverse, and discovered that it was just as much fun, and vastly more relaxing.

Well, the upshot was: I talked myself into it. If there was any question about whether I was going to go myself, it's been decided.

As for P–, who knows?...

Indulgences

No, not Catholic ones. (Always amusing to note: although my father was brought up Catholic, and my mother Orthodox, they got married and became Presbyterian – which here, close to Scotland, is a tale that brings in a lot of incredulous looks. I suspect they want to know: why on earth would one become Presbyterian if one didn't have to? And didn't care about predestination?...)

[LATER ADDENDUM: My eldest sister checked some of the stories I told below, when she was at a cousin's wedding – seems that there are some inaccuracies in what I was told about who changed religions and when – more details later.]

I'm finally recovering from feeling overwhelmed over the past few weeks, although I know there's a mass of research and administration waiting for me; today I was reading an e-book (Emma Bull's Bone Dance, which was pretty good from the beginning, and is getting markedly more interesting in the middle); then went out for a relaxed antipasto with Tess, while discussing plans for a writing workshop (which didn't require that much discussion, but she wanted reassurance that we were on the same page; and we had fun, flirting with Italian waiters). Then went to a movie with P– (Pirates 2, of course – fun if rather gloopy – there's an amazing amount of slime in it, I hope I don't dream of squids and such). Then we went for a pint (really three drinks, but knowing me the middle one was mango juice) to the Head of Steam, which is always a nice compromise among bars/pubs – not really gay but with gay guys casually dotted here and there, and many surprisingly cute straight ones; sort of alternative but not aggressively so; and they have Belgian Frambozenbier, which is a big plus. Although I still get fairly bored by the bars of northern England, P– could convince me (with my admitted collusion) to stay for two hours – just the prospect of looking at cheerful lads, and talking to My Buddy, seemed enough. Lots of indulgences....

P– was talking about Angela Carter's short stories, which he's been reading; some he doesn't like at all. I was defending them, generically and without specifics, which is of course a pretty weak position to take; but I suspect P–'s scientific background is causing him to miss the interesting bits of some of her more experimental stories, or at least not to enjoy them as they're meant to be enjoyed. They may be a bit edgy and formalist, but that makes sense – it's of a piece with British experimentation of the 1960s and 1970s; from my angle they would compare to, say, early Maxwell Davies, when he did all those short pieces with aggressively traditional roots and equally aggressively experimental surface textures. I'm not thinking so much of Eight Songs for a Mad King, or Vesalii icones, although those are exactly in this style/genre; but instead of the short choral works that are so utterly startling – that ruthless Ave Maria that is made up of unadulterated medieval monody, served straight up, but then set in an almost unbelievably intense a capella texture of major sevenths and minor seconds. The piece is made even more beautifully, artistically edgy by being notated almost entirely in sharps, in a way that is both hard to sightread and very clear in intention – there's no way it can soften into something casual or unproblematic; it always feels like a knife dance, and one that needs to be carefully negotiated if the singers are to reach the end without wounds.

And that reminds me of Mr Punch: my post on Gaiman's comic reminded me of what is still my favorite piece by Birtwistle, also written when he was young (and, I think, a close friend and colleague of Maxwell Davies – a Brit composer was gossiping to me last week on the train about when they split up, and how they refused to talk to each other after a certain point, but I'm pretty sure it was after this). It's the opera Punch and Judy (1967), which, like those Maxwell Davies pieces, is constructed in short, easily (structurally) graspable pieces, which are nevertheless so, well, sharp-edged, that in grasping them you cut yourself (and how's that for a bizarrely extended metaphor). Amazingly shrill and savage, but all in short, easy-to-hear pseudo-traditional quatrains and such; it's a remarkably powerful work. Unlike the Gaiman comic, which refers atmospherically to children's memories of Mr Punch, it actually creates those emotions, and in adults – the length (hmm, according to my CDs it's about... uh, I'm adding in my head here... an hour and three quarters) with the rapid repetitions of short phrases, plus the shrill, familiar-but-twisted instrumentation, make it a powerful, almost a psychotic experience. And in an unexpected way, too: one doesn't get any impression that the composer is psychotic, but that in a strange way the music itself is psychotic – as, of course, is Mr Punch.

(Afterthought: does this compare to that cynicism that I so dislike in a lot of British postwar novels? – Martin Amis, or even those Byatt novels with miserable endings... no, this seems different to me: it's more formal, more self-consciously artistic – which saves it, as far as I'm concerned: so much elegant artifice  implies that something is worth doing, unlike the trashier approach of Amis and such.)

Hmm, maybe, despite its second paragraph, this post isn't about indulgences: it's about indulgences and flagellations – since that is sort of what these works are like.... How very Catholic.

Or maybe I'm just dithering – not a surprise, after two beers (and a juice). Hey, don't sneer! – one of them was a Belgian beer – higher alcohol content... it's a relief to get rid of this shirt, though, which smells of bar smoke....