December 18, 2001, 6:50 p.m.

In which lips are curl'd with fyrey tongs...

back & forth

Not much to report about today, since I slept until noon and have a vague sore throat probably brought on by too much 17th-century English polyphony. Yesterday was one of those very-early-starting days at the Financial District P**t's, after which I ran into JwtE, who wasn't wearing her eyeglasses. She was at work, I was intensely tired; I kept smiling in a way which was supposed to convey that I wanted to have a long, interesting conversation with her, but instead came off looking slightly creepy. This is why I don't smile. On my face, for some reason, even the most benign expression looks threatening, smug, or both. Both complete relaxation of my facial muscles and actively scowling result in much the same appearance. In point of fact, the most pleasant visage I can muster most resembles a Pythia in her raptures. This may work well in certain kinds of photographs of me, but it tends to make people I'm chatting with think that I'm on the verge of spouting dactylic hexameters about swords and tortoises. So I either helplessly scowl and say a lot of nice things to reassure people or I do the embarrassing smile and hope they don't think I'm about to stiletto them between the third and fourth ribs. File under Sucks to be me.

File under A's Profligacy: After that, I blew all my tips on buying stationery to send out New Year's cards. Now, stationers' shops make my mouth water like no other places on earth. I have a totally erotic fixation on fine papers, inks, and pens. Anyway, my cards this year are exquisite pearl-white notes with a simple embossed rectangle, made by Crane's. [Yes, I admit it: when I get the new Crane's catalogue, I go straight upstairs and take my pants off.]

After that, I ran into KM in D*v*s Sq**r*. I had had a hazy premonition that I would, and when I told KM about it, she didn't respond but clearly thought I was looney. I wonder what my face looked like at that moment. Well, KM and I have not seen one another for a good long while (nobody has, actually: last week was one of my under-a-rock weeks), and I just had this weird feeling that she'd show up in my life that afternoon. That I will go so long incommunicado, and then snap into hyper-social mode is another way of waking up, confused, on somebody else's floor, unsure how I got there, and deciding to make them breakfast anyway (not that I don't do that as well). One day I have to fight down the urge to ring, page, email and write to every single person in my address book, and the next thing I know, I'll have gone two weeks without returning a single phone call. Note that neither of these states results in picking up the phone or sitting down to type. Only this diary seems to call me with hypnotic frequency, especially when I ought to be sleeping. Huh. The language games in the previous sentence shall be left as an excercise to the readers.

Current kick-ass book:Bharati Mukherjee's The Holder of the World, which is just the kind of sensuous, well-informed romp I'm always in the mood for: so far, Puritan New England, the (re)collection of fragments of history, Mughal India, miscegenation, emigration, noble savages, and religious radicals: "The gaudiness of Allah, the porridge of Jehovah".
Current musick: Denis Gaultier's Rethorique des Dieux, played by Hopkinson Smith. I have a Hopkinson Smith poster up on my wall. I would like very much to find a Smiths poster that's exactly the same odd size, so I can frame them identically as a representation of my divided self.
Current food thoughts: I cannot believe -- no, I can believe too well -- that I ate 200 grams of torrone morbido yesterday in about one sitting. Of course there's nothing not to love about nougat, but how I wish I'd had the sense to consume it in sane proportion!

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If I were one of Elgar's Enigma Variations, I would be Sir Edward Elgar (E.D.U.).

I am the exalted composer of this magnificent work, surrounded by my adoring circle of friends. I am energetic and somewhat enigmatic myself, a big fan of codes and logic puzzles. As for the abbreviation, it's a paraphrase of my wife's pet name for me, Edoo.

Who would you be? Enigma Variations Personality Test