...this: We addressed a couple dozen save-the-date cards for invitees to the big day. We watched the first three episodes of the new season of The Wire at Lindsey and Rugs's house after an easygoing dinner at home. And now, on the comfortable side of a few glasses of wine and wondering how the hell McNulty's gonna pull this off, and unable even to figure out how I feel about the whole thing, I can hear the ladyfriend talking on the phone in the next room, Georg Solti's epic Ring Cycle recording is on the hi-fi - Gotterdamerung's final act, gorgeous - and finally finally the end of the Inferno is beckoning for tonight or tomorrow morning. [Maybe I'm a Philistine or something, but I find Dante (or the Ciardi translation anyhow) unspeakably fucking boring thus far. From a dramatic standpoint, the Inferno is of course a failure; nothing is ever at stake, no development occurs, only amplification. In that regard it reminds me of The Alchemist, another structurally elegant work of utter characterological shallowness. As poetry it's not particularly beautiful, nor particularly elegant (though Ciardi is game); grounded as it is in grotesque Catholic-cosmological nonsense, it puts forth an arguably-interesting argument about a somewhat noxious topic. But I feel like I'm completing an obligation. Not since the first dozen cantos have I felt any affection for the work. Maybe I'm way, way, way ahead of my time! I'm looking forward to the last two books though; they have harder work to do and that appeals to me.]
Well wow, before I went off about my apparent inability to rise to Dante's poetic challenge I was saying today was quite nice. Maybe that's not enough to justify these couple hundred words but I, along with of course my boy Wagner here, can only say piss off and thanks for stopping, and see you tomorrow. Different soundtrack same song, really.
