R.I.P.
“If you stuff yourself full of poems, essays, plays, stories, novels, films, comic strips, magazines, music, you automatically explode every morning like Old Faithful. I have never had a dry spell in my life, mainly because I feed myself well, to the point of bursting. I wake early and hear my morning voices leaping around in my head like jumping beans. I get out of bed to trap them before they escape.”
Ray Bradbury
Another epigram from Tomis (Constanta, Romania) Marea Negra (Black Sea)
Beltane Garlic Moon
Another day, another sandwich bag. Back to bagging apples. Glad I exist to do it.
Look here for Roman funerary epigrams from Tomis, now Constanta, Romania. They had it going on. An example below.
Beltane Garlic Moon
Back. Difficult journey. Flight to Minneapolis canceled without notification. Rebooked. Ran. Barely made the plane in Schipol, the Amsterdam airport. Sit down for 8 hours. Get to Atlanta, new destination. Arrive at gate. New international terminal with automatic gate extenders. Hmm. Not so automatic. 20 minutes later. “Still a problem.”
Finally. Then, the whole Welcome to America gauntlet. Jetway, passport control, baggage (no baggage. sigh. should I wait and possibly miss my connection? no, I wanna go home.) Customs. Walk to train. Take train to concourse A. Long walk to escalator. Where’s gate 28? Not the farthest, but almost.
Run. Gate closed and locked. Please let me on this plane. Sympathy. Door unlocked and on plane. Arrive home 6 hours later than planned with no bags. 12:30 am. But. I’m adjusted now to Romanian time. So, it’s 8:30 am. I can drive home !
Crash.
Beltane Garlic Moon
My crazed body has given up on time. I wake up at 4 or 4:30 am and can’t go back to sleep. Then, mid-afternoon I do finally get some sleep, so I’m awake for the evening. I know this would equilibrate eventually, but I’m out of time one more time because I leave tomorrow. Just in time, I imagine to start over again in Minnesota.
Been thinking about people like entertainers, military personnel, some business types who stay in this mode for days, weeks, even months at a time. It’s easy to see how chemical fixes would seem necessary and, even, how small cyclic changes in mood could become amplified by them, reaching pathologic levels.
Beltane Garlic Moon
Left the computer during my fanboy trip to Constanta, so I’m two days behind.
(statue of Ovid in Constanta)
Ovid spent 8 bitter years in this Black Sea (Marea Negra) town. Greeks settled it in the 6th century BC and named it Tomis.
I wanted to get a sense of this place, this place of exile. There are a lot Roman goodies in the archaeology museum that is the building in the background. More on that when I get home and my pics in the computer. Forgot to bring my card reader with me.
More on Costanta later. It was very much a worthwhile trip.
OK. On sentimentalism. Here’s the distinction that just came to me after seeing a definition of nostalgia as a sentimental yearning for the happiness of another place or time. The sentimentality I have doesn’t include a yearning for the happiness of another place or time. I just want to recall my past, since it is mine, not wallow in it. Just sayin’.
Beltane Beltane Moon
Getting to do things ticked off as my trip to Romania goes onto the one week mark tomorrow. Made sure my debit card will work. Got new PIN #. Found a three-pronged plug and a step-down converter to take the Romanian 220 down to 110. That means I can take my phone and my netbook with me. I’m still not sure about how to handle the phone; that is, I don’t want an $8,000 bill when I get back thanks to data roaming charges. Nothing I’ve read so far makes much sense to me.
“I don’t like the idea of “understanding” a film. I don’t believe that rational understanding is an essential element in the reception of any work of art. Either a film has something to say to you or it hasn’t. If you are moved by it, you don’t need it explained to you. If not, no explanation can make you moved by it.”
Federico Fellini
Spring Beltane Moon
This am read the last chunk of Missing, getting back into the flow. I’ll start writing tomorrow morning. Close.
Lunch with Stefan today. We’ve honored each other’s creativity for a long time and did it again today. Felt good.