I was watching the play ANGELS IN AMERICA yesterday on dvd. At the very end there is a lovely line that I think is the perfect sentiment to start off a new year--

More life!

The great work begins.

"Being a poet is not writing a poem, but finding a new way to live."

Paul la Cour

Men generally regard women as cartoons:  Funny, colorful, loud, and being with them reminds you of how much fun and wonder you knew as a child.

Men see other men as documentaries: Serious, informative, essentially dull after a few minutes.

Women generally regard men as cartoons : Ridiculous, exaggerated, and they run around accomplishing little. But being with them is fast,  amusing, and a nice way to waste time. 

Women see other women as documentaries : Educational, sometimes you wish you could go where they're describing (but not really), typically about exotic creatures you like to look at but wouldn't want in your life.  

What would you rather watch-- POPEYE or a film about the migration habits of otters?

"Friends, every day do something that won't compute. Love someone who does not deserve it. Denounce the government and embrace the flag. Give your approval to all you cannot understand. Ask the questions that have no answers. Put your faith in the two inches of humus that will build under the trees every thousand years. Laugh. Be joyful though you have considered all the facts. Practice resurrection."

Wendell Berry, "The Mad Farmer Liberation Front"

An interesting moment this afternoon:

I was walking in an underground passage on my way to the subway. Things echo in those places. But at a bank of open telephone booths nearby, a woman was talking so loudly that she didn't need an echo to be heard above everything else. Her voice was one decibel away from shouting. She was also speaking very very slowly-- sort of a "one-slow-word-at-a-time" thing. Everyone passing in either direction wore the same look: "Do you hear that?" But it was impossible not to hear. When I passed the booth and looked in to catch a glimpse of the shouter, two things happened simultaneously: I saw from her face that she had Down's Syndrome. Then a moment later someone coming from the other direction looked into the booth too and recognized the woman's condition. Then another and another person passed, all of them looking towards the noise, and all of them grew the same expression on their faces: relief. All of their faces (and I assume mine too when I made the discovery) showed the same kind of relief. As if things made sense again. Normal people don't shout slow words into public telephones like that, only the handicapped. The world was logical and okay again now that we had seen and recognized what was going on.

Like so many kids, I had my obsessions when I was young. For a while it was collecting autographs, then baseball, then “Famous Monsters of Filmland” magazine and that attendant world. But one of my longest standing obsessions was  with professional wrestling. I was absolutely crazy for those larger than life characters and their loony, violent world. I think one day I’ll write in detail about why. But for now just one memory that crossed my mind today, probably because it is close to Christmas.

When I was growing up, my family lived about an hour from Manhattan. Once in a while we’d all go in to the city to a movie, go shopping, eat at a favorite restaurant, family stuff. But without fail, always to see the skaters and Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center. One December at the height of my wrestling madness, we had just finished a day poking around the city together in the middle of the Christmas rush. My father and I were walking back to the garage near Rockefeller Center to pick up the car. As was often the case, I was rattling on to him about something that had to do with wrestling (I’m sure). I talked about little else in those days. I knew all the wrestlers, all their signature moves, who were their tag team partners, their sworn enemies… I knew it all. I loved the drama, the hugeness of the men, the easy to tell good and badness of things.

While I rattled on, my father strode quickly toward the garage. But suddenly he stopped and put a hand protectively across my chest. I didn’t know why because we were not near a street. I looked up at him but all he did was point at something in front of us. As soon as I looked there, my eyes bugged out and my jaw dropped. Walking our way was  the biggest man I had ever seen, and instantly I knew him. One of my greatest heroes at the time was the wrestler Sailor Art Thomas. I had four photographs of him up on my bedroom walls and that’s how my father recognized him now. His gimmick(all wrestlers, whether they were good or bad guys, had to have one) was a hugely beautiful, weightlifter’s body. He must have been close to seven feet tall and 300 pounds. All he needed to do was step into a ring, take off his shirt and everyone swooned. He looked like a black Arnold Schwarzenegger. And that day he was fifty feet away from us. Sailor Art Thomas.

He must have seen the recognition and adoration on my face because he grinned and strode right up to us. He put out his enormous hand to shake. I barely had the courage or wits to extend mine, although the only thing I wanted to do in life at the  moment was shake that giant’s hand. Somehow I managed to croak in my seven or eight year old adoring voice,  “I think you’re the best wrestler in the world, Sailor. Could I have your autograph?”

He nodded and kept shaking my hand. He held it as gently as you’d hold a hamster.

I got paper and a pen from my smiling father. In a certain real way, it felt like he had conjured this whole wonderful thing. What I remember most clearly was how slowly and carefully Sailor Art Thomas wrote his signature on a green piece of paper for me in the dying light of a December day. 

Hello Mr. Carroll - I enjoy your books, but have never felt the need to write until I stumbled upon the article below on the Boston Globe's web site yesterday. It seemed to be a classic "Jonathan Carroll moment" - unexpected, moving, and yet another reminder of how much we don't know about the world and what we miss when we trudge through our daily routines with our eyes half shut. It had me thinking about the zoo scene in White Apples, and since I'm still doing that this morning, I thought that I'd pass it along. Enjoy the holidays - Stuart

P.S. - Don't these gorillas have great names?

Gorillas pay last respects to leader
December 8, 2004

BROOKFIELD, Ill. --After Babs the gorilla died at age 30, keepers at Brookfield Zoo decided to allow surviving gorillas to mourn the most influential female in their social family.

One by one Tuesday, the gorillas filed into the Tropic World building where Babs' body lay, arms outstretched. Curator Melinda Pruett Jones called it a "gorilla wake."

Babs' 9-year-old daughter, Bana, was the first to approach the body, followed by Babs' mother, Alpha, 43. Bana sat down, held Babs' hand and stroked her mother's stomach. Then she sat down and laid her head on Babs' arm.

"It was like they used to do in the exhibit, lying side by side on the mountain," keeper Betty Green said. "Then Bana rose up and looked at us and moved to Babs' other side, tucked her head under the other arm, and stroked Babs' stomach."

Other gorillas also approached Babs and gently sniffed the body. Only the silverback male leader, Ramar, 36, stayed away.

Keepers said the display wasn't surprising.

"She was the dominant female of the group, the peacekeeper, the disciplinarian, the one who kept things in a harmonious state," Pruett Jones said.

Koola, 9, brought her infant daughter, whom Babs had showered with attention since her birth in August.

"Koola inspected Babs' mouth for a while, then held her baby close to Babs, like she loved to do the last couple months, letting Babs admire her," Green said.

Babs had an incurable kidney condition and was euthanized Tuesday. Keepers had recently seen a videotape of a gorilla wake at the Columbus, Ohio, zoo and decided they would do the same for Babs. Gorillas in the wild have been known to pay respects to their dead, keepers said.

"I had a headache for the rest of the day after all the tears I cried watching them," Green said.

I'm coming home around 5:30 in the evening. A few feet from my place, a man is walking towards me with a child in his arms. A little girl about three or four, she looks tired and cold. She's resting her head on her father's shoulder. But just as I'm about to turn in, her face lights up so much that it stops me in my tracks. Her head is up. Both she and Daddy are grinning from ear to ear. I must turn and look behind to see what has suddenly made them so happy. An enormous man dressed as Santa Claus is walking down the street towards us. He must be six foot nine or ten and fat too. The biggest Santa Claus I have ever seen marching down through the winter dark towards the little girl. It seems like he has materialized out of nowhere just for this meeting. When he reaches her, he stops and starts to talk. But I don't want to hear anything he says because I want to keep the moment pure and think he is the greatest Santa that ever was. I rush to get into my building. What must be going through her head? It is easily the kind of memory you grow up and old with and embellish and smile about for years.

To laugh often and much;
To win the respect of intelligent people
and the affection of children;
To earn the appreciation of honest critics
and endure the betrayal of false friends;
To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others,
To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child,
a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition;
To know even one life has breathed easier
because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.

Emerson

"What is the path? There is no path. On into the unknown."

Goethe, FAUST

What is it about walking on an escalator that isn't moving that always make you feel odd and sort of creeped out?

Why do we cover our mouths when we're very surprised? In Viennese cafes, there's a wide variety of coffee to choose from. One of the most popular is called an "einspanner." Fill the bottom of the cup with two shots of espresso and then add a big dollop of frothy whipped cream on top of that. I asked a Viennese friend where the word comes from. She said in the old days at funerals, horses pulled the casket to the cemetery in a specially designed carriage. Whenever they were put to this task, the animals wore white headpieces, sort of like helmets, that covered their ears and the tops of their head. This helmet was called an einspanner. White helmet on top of a black horse.

Whether the story is true or apocryphal, it's good and spooky. Cemetery coffee. A special coffee to sip on the way to the graveyard.

"If you can smell garlic, everything is all right."
-JG Ballard

How about a series of detective novels about a very conflicted Jewish/Japanese shamus named Zen Cohen?