Taxes are done!

And I'm about to be $3000 richer.

Expanding

I don't normally do poetry, but for the longest time I've had a desire to read Paradise Lost. So that's what I'm doing, and in the spirit of poetry I shall be reading it out loud to myself. This is only some what uncomfortable for me, but it seems like the right thing to do.

A Farewell to a Farewell to Arms

That title is deep.

I enjoyed the book, of course I did. But at the end I felt a way I've never felt before about a book. I'll let Alex from Everything is Illuminated explain it. He is referring to a fictionalized biography Jonathan is writing about his grandfather.

I could hate you! Why will you not permit your grandfather to be in love with the Gypsy girl, and show her his love? Who is ordering you to write in such a manner? We have such chances to do good, and yet again and again you insist on evil. I would not read this most contemporary division to Little Igor, because I did not appraise it worthy of his ears No, this division I presented to Sammy Davis, Junior, Junior, who acted faithfully with it.

I must make a simple question, which is what is wrong with you? If your grandfather loves the Gypsy girl, and I am certain that he does, why does he not leave with her? She could make him so happy. And yet he declines happiness. This is not reasonable, Jonathan, and it is not good. If I were the writer, I would have Safran show his love to the Gypsy girl, and take her to Greenwich Shtetl in New York City. Or I would have Safran kill himself, which is the only other truthful thing to perform, although then you would not be born, which would signify that this story could not be written.

Although the circumstances at the end of Farewell are different and my feelings aren't as fierce as Alex's I did definitely feel like, "why couldn't they just be happy?"

Something Pleasant

Try It.

Memories are Pictures

Some Music:
Pictures

Some Words (by Earnest Hemingway):
Lying on the floor of the flat-car with guns beside me under the canvas I was wet, cold and very hungry. Finally I rolled over and lay flat on my stomach with my head on my arms. My knee was stiff, but it had been very satisfactory. [Doctor] Valentini had done a fine job. I had done half the retreat on foot and swum part of the Tagliamento with his knee. It was his knee all right. The other knee was mine. Doctors did things to you and then it was not your body any more. The head was mine, and inside of the belly. It was very hungry in there. I could feel it turn over on itself. The head was mine, but not to use, not think with, only to remember and not too much.

I could remember Cathrine but I knew I would get crazy if I thought about her when I was not sure yet I would see her, so I would not think about her, only about her a little, only about her with the car going slowly and clickingly, and some light through the canvas and my lying with Cathrine on the floor of the car. Hard as the floor of the car to lie not thinking only feeling, having been away too long, the clothes wet and the floor moving only a little each time and lonesome inside and alone with wet clothing and hard floor for a wife.

You did not love the floor of a flat-car nor guns with canvas jackets and the smell of vaselined metal or a canvas that rain leaked through, although it is very fine under a canvas and pleasant with guns; but you loved some one else whom now you knew was not even to be pretended there; you seeing now very clearly and coldly--not so coldly as clearly and emptily. You saw emptily, lying on your stomach, having been present when one army moved back and another moved forward.

Completely Unrelated

Not sure why but I have an urge to post about this song. It feels out of place here, if there is a theme to the music I've posted (which I don't know that there is) I find it hard to imagine that any Neil Diamond song would fit into it.

The song entered my consciousness sometime in college. I'm sure prior to that I'd heard it and it would sound familiar on the radio, but it wasn't until I fell in love with Natalie Portman and Beautiful Girls (the movie, not beautiful girls in general, not that I have anything against beautiful girls). As a twenty year-old there was a little shame in falling in love with the twelve year old that Natalie portrays in the movie, but watch it and you won't think I'm a creepy-dude-who-stalks-young-girls-half-his-age (hopefully, and if you do it's probably because their's something wrong with you and not me).

It's interesting that she has nothing to do with this particular scene in th movie. Maybe my smitten love for her stuck to everything in the movie like syrup. Maybe not though. The basic premise of the movie is a guy comes home for the winter and hooks up with all of his old high school friends. They're just a bunch of regular silly guys, none of them doing anything spectacular with their lives and he's the only one who has left the town they all grew up in. The scene involves all the guys hanging out in a bar and they request that the main character play a song on the piano (he plays the piano in bars in NYC for a living). This is the song he chooses, and this is where Neil Diamond enters my life. The main character starts the song, begins singing and the other guys slowly gather round, sucked in by something. Then it hits the "hands, touching hands" part and they all sing at the top of their lungs (none of them any good at it, but it doesn't really matter). And I thought, "now that's something worth something."

I get a little chill whenever I hear it now. But here's the thing, and why I'm talking about it now, until last night I'd never heard this song played at a wedding. For those that don't know my wife is a wedding photographer and I usually assist her at weddings so I have a fairly large sample size (compared to your average person). Last night the DJ played it and the dance floor came alive with dancing and singing. Even the bar tenders, who hadn't done anything besides sluggishly pour drinks all night long, started getting into it (singing and shaking their hips). I've decided it's a phenomenal wedding song. If you're not married yet play this song at your wedding, especially if I'm going to be there.

Poor Behavior

What a naughty blog this has been: quiet, sitting in the corner. I'll have to reprimand it.