pedestrian saga

Pop quiz: Which creature is barely managing to sit still after sprinting 20 laps around the garden, and which one can hardly keep from trembling long enough to claim the soft meaty treat I’m bribing them with?

Holy cannoli, bat-folks! It’s snowing! Big chunky flakies piling up in the garden. It almost never snows in the valley!

Wow. Okay, so I’m going to put the tea on; You all enjoy “Abominable Snowman in the Market,” a ditty to celebrate the snow (while subtly protesting the excesses of icky holiday consumerism!) Hooray!

Alas, the silly torture tactics of the Spanish Inquisition, with their soft cushions and comfy chair, have prompted me to contemplate the very real torture perpetrated by my government and now shamefully condoned by Congress. Makes me wonder how Monty Python would’ve handled the “war on terror.” (Um, maybe like so!)

Along with her Thanksgiving wishes, my aunt sent me to this impressive coalition of religious groups protesting this madness. I’m gradually reading through their resources.

Which isn’t at all easy. Escapism comes more naturally; I’m more likely to run off with the Flying Circus than confront the problem directly or seriously. Rather than study it deeply, I’m inclined to feel it with my gut. And my gut tends to get excited about brilliantly subversive works of street art, like those iPod torture posters or Banksy’s recent Disneyland coup. Ah, the comfort of satire and secondary sources.

Check out Banksy’s video of the installation and marvel at how he penetrates a space infused, for me, with fond childhood memories - the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad - and plants such a dissonant token there. Brilliant.

Today I’d like to share my favorite semaphore art encountered recently and thereby take a stand against anti-semiotism!

• If I were going to be anywhere near Lower Manhattan before January 14, I wouldn’t miss the chance to participate in Office Semaphore, another intriguing approach to psychogeography brought to my attention by Glowlab.
• The ultimate protest art: The Semaphore Version of Wuthering Heights, double-billed with Julius Caesar on an Aldis Lamp, stands counter to the ruthless persecution enacted by the Spanish Inquisition!

Semiotics Department Accuses University Administration of Anti-Semiotism

PROVIDENCE, RI - After years of budget cuts and downsizing, Brown University’s Semiotics Department lashed out at school administrators Monday, accusing them of “blatant anti-semiotism”… “It deeply saddens me that in the year 2001, there are still people out there who discriminate against a group of people just because they engage in the study of signs and symbols, especially as elements of language or other systems of communication.”

-From The Onion: Best of Yesterday’s News 2006 daily desk calendar entry for Friday, September 8

I’m very excited this morning because I spoke Italian in my dreams for the first time in, like, forever. I was back at Bologna, auditing a semiotics course, eagerly gathering around to discuss the subject in a small group of foreign students. The facilitator addressed us in Italian and asked us to introduce ourselves. I started in English and then took a deep breath and launched into this amazingly uninhibited description of myself and my hometown in Italian. The interlocutor seemed genuinely interested in my exotic Midwestern roots, asked me questions, kept me talking. A guy in my group was some kind of brilliant artist who was, however, illiterate.

I left our small discussion group and walked around the periphery of the classroom, a large sanctuary with stone columns and dark wooden pews. A fellow student(?) walked beside me, and one of us - I can’t remember if it was me or if I played it totally cool - stifled a squeal and nearly hyperventilated when we thought we glimpsed Professor Eco in a front pew.

Then suddenly I was omnisciently watching the brilliant but illiterate artist dude as he went to enroll in a small-town American kindergarten and faced the derision and disgust of his potential classmates’ parents. “Who does he think he is, coming to kindergarten when he has a [fine arts] PhD?” sneered one mom to another.

And then the alarm went off.

November
Has tied me
To an old dead tree
Get word to April
To rescue me
November’s cold chain
Made of wet boots and rain
And shiny black ravens
On chimney smoke lanes
November seems odd
You’re my firing squad
November

“This is a song with a lot of weather in it, and I don’t know about you, but I’m a sucker for weather.” -Tom Waits, November 2004 (listen from 04:55)

So! Moving right along.

Yesterday was cold and dry, and I tried to spend the daylight hours outside. Scott and I headed downtown to the last outdoor farmers market of the season. I bought a pair of poblano peppers because they’re so damn cute and quite tasty in quesadillas. At one of the apple stands, Scott picked out a bunch of Stayman Winesaps and Mutsus, and I cleaned up on pippins. Time again to try my hand at dumplings.

Back home we turned the dogs out to romp and rummage and turned our attentions to the garden. During the week some mad winds had blown the tin roof off our little porch shelter thing and stripped the remaining foliage off our two maples. So while Scott hit the roofs, collecting and stowing the tin sheets and scooping out the gutters on the house, I raked the maple leaves into a gorgeous pile by our new compost bin behind the greenhouse. (Okay, okay. It’s not as idyllic as it sounds or appears. That photo shows the garden in summer before we bought it. The greenhouse currently sits empty, as we haven’t actually moved in to it yet, and the plants are rather soggy and brown these days. But I’m really proud of our leaf pile.)

Gordon snacked on some gutter gunk before I chased him inside. Maddy obsessed over cat tracks in the bushes until I chased her inside too. She smelled, quite pleasantly, of mint and rosemary!

I took a break from raking and climbed up the rickety ladder, stretched out on my back on top of our house, spied into the neighbors’ gardens, felt a little lighter.

Hi. It’s been a while. I’ve been either too wound up or run-down to write. E-mail? No can do. Grocery list? Not happening. My moods are oppressive, and interesting blog content they certainly do not make.

Since mid-August, when several personal and familial milestones->traumas converged and settled atop the unstable territory of my work life, I’ve been slogging through waves of self-absorbed melancholy, irrational angst, obsessive weltschmerz… Here. I’ll draw you a picture. Blah, blah, blah, blah. And then on really romantic evenings of self, I go salsa dancing with my confusion. See? Riveting stuff. (more…)