A Palimpsest Has No Use For A Bridge

 Entry 1

The Bar In Which My Father Drank Himself To Death
In 1969.

Years ago I knew a woman who was around my age of 22 or so. She was in love with her professor, but apparently there were no strings at the time. I was fascinated by this woman, so foreign to this working class boy. She had gone to Boston Latin, and Bard College, her parents were two very famous and influential Marxist philospophers when that kind of thing still meant something. They summered in the south of France. She got almost all her clothes from J. Crew, a company of which I hadn't heard of before. 

As I recall, she liked me AND was very into the woman I was dating at the time (her roommate, who liked women but not her), despite her love for the geriatric professor of poetry. I took this woman out for a beer once or twice. I recall telling her my dream was to grow my hair long, get my college degree and drink at the Blue Moon Tavern (whether I meant it or not, isn't material). We were walking to the Blue Moon when I told her this dream of mine. Back then articles from local columnists Eric Lacitis and Rick Larsen were hung in frames in the back of the bar, columns which purportedly told the story of my father, a minor star of Seattle in the 1960s--famous for drunken recitals of lines from Moby Dick delivered in his booming baritone and Brooklyn accent as he perched on a fixed bar stool in the front of the tavern. Larsen or Lacitis' column also had me dead from a fire. Despite the heart attack, I am very much alive, despite an hour on the treadmill this morning. 

Anyway, we were friends. She was slumming in Seattle just before MTV and grunge changed it forever. She, this friend of mine, worked down at Elliott Bay. (I would pick her up sometimes  at night, worried about how unsafe it was--this was right around the time the lead singer of The Gits  was raped and murdered on Capitol Hill, not far from where my friend lived.) 

I used to go downtown almost every Saturday because I loved how empty the place was. Only the market and the two or three blocks around it had much activity. So, I went down one Saturday, probably in January 1990, got breakfast, went to the market and then drifted down to Elliott Bay Books (then in Pioneer Square) to buy my niece a gift for her birthday (I had just been at The Great Wind-Up buying her something outrageously annoying to her parents, I can promise you). 

My friend was working at Elliott Bay, a happy coincidence, given I used to go in every few weeks to buy literary magazine and poetry journals ( I used to be so interested in things). Anyway, my niece wanted Goosebumps. I was on a mission. Goosebumps it would be. 

As I was browsing in the children's section, my friend, who was working the register, saw me. She left the counter, came to me and asked to help. I told her I was shopping for my niece--who was 6-7 at the time and that I had a specific request for Goosebumps. My friend scowled at this bit of information,  took me by the hand and led me away from the promised land of Goosebumps and its like. Her incredibly beautiful tight auburn curls hanging down in such a way that it accentuated her pale ivory skin and just let a peek of her perfectly aqualine nose show. Leading me to a book of Russian folk tales, she unshelved it and put it in my hands. As I recall, I am sure it was a lovely hardback book of some heft. My friend said it was the only thing to get my niece, and then she was called away to go work the checkstand. 

What a dilemma. I hated to disappoint my niece by buying some pretentious book with illustrations made by the Marquis de Sade in his children's book illustration phase, or dismay my friend by buying low brow literature reserved for the hoi polloi.

I loved my niece, and despite the urging of my friend and my need not to disappoint her, I put the Russian folktales back where I had found them, found several paperback Goosebumps, and went to wait in the line to buy them. As luck would have it, the Monte Carlo randomness of cashier assignment put me right where I didn't want to be, in my friend's line. She honestly looked at me disdainfully, and as she entered the prices into the cash register said in a voice reserved for when you catch someone eating gum off the sidewalk, "Oh, Geoff, I am so disappointed in you." I am sure I blushed. I am also sure of two other things. My niece was thrilled, and I never spoke to the woman or went out drinking with her again. 

Today, she is married to that English professor--he about 40 years her elder--and she is a tenured professor at Stanford, known worldwide for her translations of Foucault, Blanchot, Guy de Maupassant, Gustave Flaubert and others. Her translations are reviewed in The Guardian, The New York Review of Books, etc. She even has a very long Wiki entry:  

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlotte_Mandell.

Despite my terrible decision, my niece has managed to eek out a hardscrabble life of fulfillment, college degree in hand, happily married with a child. Me, well the jury is out--or maybe they have just sealed the verdict.

I had  just finished reading a review of one of the books she translated this morning when I sat down to write a journal entry. The review is  of a story by a French novelist, Enard, where he imagines that Michelangelo instead of Leonardo, had gone to Constantinople to design a bridge for the ruling Sultan.

I would recommend any Goosebumps books you may find interesting.  See:  

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Goosebumps_books 

Meanwhile, I am going to go grow out my hair and contemplate having my first beer of the last few years, maybe at The Blue Moon. Cheers!

Entry 2

Fuck. I killed it working out this morning. I ate a banana and about two oz. of peanut butter for breakfast, plus a 20 oz. cup of coffee with a light dollop of cream. That was between six and six-thirty a.m. It is almost 3, and yet again, my blood sugars have been out of range all day--despite no additional food intake. I took my meds timely, lifted weights and did cardio for better than an hour, and I am absolutely frustrated. I expected a spike from the banana. It's the last whole banana I will eat until I figure this out. I thought the peanut butter would suppress the increase, at least a bit. I went and worked in the garden after working out, for a long time. I thought all of the movement and exercise would have some impact. If it did, then I guess my meds just aren't working as they should.

Abby got home around 2 in the morning. I had been up because of the dog, but my body wouldn't actually let me just be up worrying--not even if I had wanted to stay up. Abby, happy she had seen Boygenius, quickly retreated to her room to sleep. Then Willow decided I would get no peace for the rest of the night. She must have woken my 6 times before I gave up trying to sleep around 6. That was the latest I have been prone in some time, probably out of stubbornness more than anything. God knows I was up and down--more than you would be at a Catholic wedding--tending to Willow. (Also, why is stubbornness spelled with two Ns?)

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/dec/12/tell-them-battles-kings-elephants-mathias-enard-review