Office/Diary: Wednesday
Dateline: Last night.
¶ Matins. A very good (if slightly biased) introduction to Vaclav Klaus — in case you need one — the heroic Czech anti-Communist (and would-be neoliberal economist) who is currently driving everyone crazy with his anti-Lisbon, anti-EU maneuvers. (via The Morning News)
A red-letter day; no two ways about it. Quatorze’s phone number available upon request (kindly supply references). The beautifully re-upholstered love seat came home this morning. I spent the rest of the day trying to provide it with the environment that it deserves.
¶ Lauds. The arts in a time of retrenchment: Landlords engage artists to soften their empty storefronts. Meanwhile, China’s art market is losing heat.
I ought to be exhausted. I must, in fact, be exhausted. But that information hasn’t reached the prefrontal desk yet. At seven o’clock I seriously doubted that I’d be able to compose this entry, but I rebounded after a meal of macaroni & cheese, salad and crisps, enjoyed on our restored 54″ glass tabletop (no need for place mats!). I had thought that I’d want to curl up with a glass of wine and a book, and maybe have a good cry, because, sheesh, I worked myself to the bone today; but, instead, me voici.
¶ Prime. Are you lying down? We weren’t, and we wish that we had been! Saudi Arabia thinks that we ought to pay for the oil that we don’t use in the interests of avoiding global warming. It has been making this argument since 1992 at least. All we can think of is Anna Freud on Identification With the Aggressor, our favorite “defense mechanism.”
The moving maneuvers in a nutshell: two guys from Meyers (a Bekins affiliate) appeared shortly after nine, and carted off the top half of the breakfront. Fifteen minutes later, their truck pulled up outside the delivery bay at the storage unit, but they declined to back in. Quatorze and I were standing on the quai, having already brought downstairs the other one of Kathleen’s grandmother’s love seats. Also a clunky DIY coffee table that I’ll never have to see again. The movers took these pieces away, leaving us with the top half of the breakfront, which we carted upstairs and locked into the storage unit. Then, for good measure, we walked two blocks up First Avenue. Peering down 64th Street, we saw one of the movers, standing outside the upholsterer’s shop. Concluding that all was well, we taxied back to the apartment, which the movers reached about half an hour later. It was all over by eleven. The moving maneuvers, that is. Then Quatorze and I got to work.
¶ Tierce. Life is a video game for my friend Jean Ruaud; no, but it really is. The problem is, nothing in video games prepares you for the dangers of bathroom breaks. Jean’s entry can also be read as nearly exact précis of Kathleen’s thinking this evening (substitute “client” for “card”). Since you’ll have to read French to follow my point, you’re already on the same page.
At some point between noon and one, I realized that we had done all that two men could do, and we broke for lunch, at Café d’Alsace. Over croque monsieur and quiche Lorraine we talked about nothing but the ancien régime, which is our trademarked version of rotisserie football. Quatorze opined that things would have gone much better for the Kingdom of France if Louis XV had died as an infant, along with everyone else in his family except his great-grandfather, instead of surviving the smallpox for sixty-odd years. I couldn’t quite agree. Quatorze suggested that, as king, Philippe d’Orléans would have handled the Mississippi Company bubble better. I suggested that Quatorze read Niall Ferguson on the subject.
¶ Sext. The Grey Lady peers through her lorgnette at Cake Wrecks noting that things have got pretty meta. “Everyone in the baking business follows Cake Wrecks almost daily, if only to make sure our cakes aren’t ending up on there.â€Â Â
The first thing that I had to take care of, once I resumed work on my own, was the stereo system. This was not fun. I considered the offer made by the dealer who sold me a nice and very straightforward new amplifier: he could set it up for me! I was quite able to set it up myself, but if I were to pretend to be helpless, I would arrange for all the hookups to be optimized while, at the same time, providing myself with someone (else) to yell at when things don’t work. Is this devious?
¶ Nones. Jonathan Kurlansky writes, refresherly, about “democracy” in Thailand.
Having begun in the stereo corner of the living room, so to speak, I worked my way outward, until I subdued the locality. By 7:30, the living room was fit to live in. The foyer, on the other hand…Â
¶ Vespers. New editor John Freeman answers three questions about the future of Granta. Nothing new whatsoever (except perhaps about the Web site, sort of), but we’re aware that not all of you read Granta, and we want to change that. Because what’s old about Granta, as Mr Freeman points out, is still pretty lively.
Tomorrow is another day!
What I really need, though, is another space-time contiuum. The foyer has become a refugee camp, crammed to the rafters with objects that have become homeless, stateless, de-cabinetized.
¶ Compline. A light-rail proposal for 42nd Street fails to interest Mayor Bloomberg, just as an earlier version failed to charm Mayor Giuliani. Because we expect mayors of Greater New York to act in this manner, we believe that a root-and-branch approach is required: fire the Outer Boroughs.
Kathleen, when she got home, admired the re-upholstery as much as everyone else who’d seen it. We all agreed that her late mother would have been pleased. Even. The apartment has never looked so grown up.