Birthday Eve
Xochitl Gonzalez wrote in her latest "Brooklyn, Everywhere" blogpost that she lost her cellphone, flew from California to New York without it, had a new one delivered the next day, and in that Time lapse away from the phone experienced an old and forgotten freedom of Peace. My cellphone doesn't bother me that much: ringing only numbers listed in its Directory, it blocks all others, with the result that, because only spammers ring me, it's silent. I use it as a camera and for texting, which is not invasive. And email if I'm away from my laptop.
It was down to one percent charged last evening, so I left it charging while we went down to The Captain's Table for an early supper, and I didn't get to take any photos. The meal was good, mine pretty much oysters, and we thought they would be less crowded than Hunt's, but, destroyed by Hurricane Michael and undergoing rebuilding for nearly four years, TCT just this week reopened, and everyone and her sister was there to welcome them back.
Anyway, no pictures because no phone. Excellent to have them open again. They do have a major in and out traffic problem with the parking lot on the side where the Ice Plant was when I was a boy, though, that needs immediate attention.
A phone call this morning: Pam's Flowers asking me to open the gate so they can deliver an elegant summer bouquet from Joe, for Linda's birthday tomorrow.
But back on topic, which comes down to email. Over the years I've signed on to so many free info communications that they arrive by the dozens every day, and it would drive me crazy if I tried to read them all. I preserve my sanity by ignoring them, looking at the daily Word, sometimes the Poem, opening only a few more, mostly News flashes, such that some twelve or thirteen thousand unread emails accumulated in my "in-box".
One morning earlier this week I devoted a couple hours to screening through and deleting thousands upon thousands of both read and unread, keeping all emails from loved ones over the past dozen years. And a few others. Weldon Faull, a former parishioner, and I exchanged emails about 1935 Chevrolets a dozen years ago. Weldon died a bit later, head injury from a fall, and the blended family gathering for the funeral was a nightmare.
Some others from dear friends who've died or long ago relocated and no longer in touch, there were so many that I finally let them all go. Gina, there are dozens, scores, maybe hundreds of email exchanges between us, they're still there, I'll never delete them, they're my only contact forever with my sister. I can't ask her a question about some distant or ancient relative. Gina's death has been, for me, a constant awareness of the transience of human life, that nature is random, that life doesn't always go as we anticipate, and that Death gets very close, personal, painful, and then stays, lingers.
Anyway, lining them up by "From", I cleared away ten thousand emails, then set to work unsubscribing from dozens of daily, weekly, occasional sites. Another couple dozen this morning. Again, only the one phone call, Pam's Flowers asking me to open the gate, delivering a lovely summer arrangement for Linda's birthday tomorrow. Birthday weekend at 7H, Captain's Table last night, Ferrucci this evening, Grand Marlin for noon brunch tomorrow.
"You Can't Go Home Again" asserts Thomas Wolfe repeatedly, as George Webber experiences Wolfe's theme in so many ways. Maybe forty percent, I'm more than a third but less than halfway through, right now at a grand party of the bloated, arrogant and sumptuously but tenuously rich at the top of society, industry and show business, gathered in finery exactly one week before the October 1929 Black Friday that ruined so many who were living in castles of air, and that precipitated the Great Depression from which FDR's New Deal and WW2 rescued us during my childhood. The black Packard above is my notion of the car that Mr Jack's chauffeur drove him to work in the Friday morning of that evening's party.
The blue Packard roadster is what I would have arrived in.
"You Can't Go Home Again" is an interesting book, but Wolfe requires patience, because he goes on and on like a sermon that preaches on and on and on past half a dozen good stopping places. I'm enjoying reading it slowly, anticipating that life is not THAT short, and that I'll have Time to finish it. If not, it's in my Will for a favored beneficiary, with my place marked so s/he doesn't have to start at the beginning.
Many will despair and even jump before I start the next section of Wolfe's book. And I'm anticipating that Nora, Mrs Jack's sorry, drinking, unwashed and odoriferous, sour whiskey halitosis-breathing, seething with resentment Irish maidservant - - anticipating that Nora the inferior, who has laid aside several thousand dollars cash in anticipation of one day hying herself back home to Ireland, will finish even more self-justified at herself, finding that after The Crash she has more money than Mrs Jack, her condescending boss these twenty years.
Karma &c, what goes round comes round. Sometimes, not always. In fact, usually not.
1929: closed cars were just coming into their own as plate glass was starting to be replaced with safety glass. But the Packard brochure says that their most popular model is still the touring car. I remember Mama telling me that her father bought only Chrysler open 7-passenger touring cars until well into the 1930s, because of the danger of an accident in a car with plate glass windows. Seven-passenger cars because there were five kids. There are family stories, including that Mama did not want told, that maybe I'll share one day.
