Je Recueille de Beaux Objets

Just watched The Science of Sleep.

Yeah, it was a bit difficult to work through, to be honest, but it was still one of those perfectly strangely wonderfully beautiful films that I like so well.

It occurs to me that a lot of my "art life" has been spent adoring films like this, or music like Edith Piaf, Bessie Smith and Cinematic Orchestra, or sculpture like Claudel's "Waltz" and paintings like Wyeth's "Christine's World." I suppose that these sorts of things inspire the quickest and deepest emotional responses; it's that odd love/sad thing that happens. Billie Holiday makes me want to climb a tree and cry while doing it. There must be a name for that emotion.

Let's call it "cry" + "love" = CROVE. Billie Holiday's music is crovely.

Sweet.

Intersections

I went to Sidney’s this morning for coffee in the usual manner. Ordered a “Shot in the Dark,” which is basically their Peruvian blend with espresso. I explained that I had been born in Peru. This elicited some interested hoots from the wonderful coffee-ladies. Naturally, full disclosure necessitated that the truth be explained, and it was.

“Not really. It’s a small town in Illinois.”

But it became interesting again, right.

“Mom’s a soil scientist, dad’s a forester.”

Got my coffee and went my way. As I was crossing 14th Street, sans WALK signal, I was almost creamed by a pickup truck. This is no joke: if the driver hadn’t been paying attention, he would have turned me into a road-pie. It certainly didn’t help that I was wearing the following in brown: shoes, socks, pants, shirt, and tie. It wasn’t so much getting plowed-up by a truck that would have been embarrassing, it would have been that I was spending my time crossing the street thinking about stopping in at Sidney’s for coffee on a weekend. Maybe if the coffee-ladies weren’t so cool, I wouldn’t have almost got crushed.

Moral of the story: I didn’t have an adrenaline rush; no emotional response whatsoever besides humor. There was a mad smirk on my face as I made it across the street, though. Weird.