I actually found myself thinking the other day, wow, there's so much I need to do before the spring, and winter's almost over. I thought, wait, did I really just think that? In the midst of this cold snap that's got me scurrying to and from the underground and curling up in my nest in the attic like a dormouse?

And it's not that I'm into winter sports, either. That's maybe owing to the fact that where I grew up there weren't any downhill skiing opportunities, it was all cross-country or snow-shoeing it. And that shit is work. A ski holiday might as well have been a forced march.

Memories of trips to the Potawatomi Inn in Pokagon State Park in Angola, Indiana, are no help at all in revving up my winter mojo. The tobogganing was fun. For, like, a half a minute, because once you got to the end you had to haul ass back up to the beginning, and then you did it again, and again, and again. Not me, jack. I got it the first time. I'm a quick study. Somebody point me to the spiked cider and roaring hearth.

It's like rollercoasters. I know I've talked about this before, but, seriously, even when I was a kid I thought, OK, standing in line for an hour-and-a-half for, like, a two-minute ride once I can sort of see, but doing it again and again? No.

In fact, after I had done it once—I mean the whole rollercoaster experience—standing in line, waiting with that mix of boredom and anticipation, nervously boarding the ride, being whipped around at great speeds, wobbling off afterwards—I never really needed to do it again. Ever! Rollercoaster. Check that off my To Do list. What's next? Let's see...Oh! Having my wisdom teeth extracted!

My brother, bless his soul, used to get so excited about rollercoasters. He could do it again and again and again. There was that moment in there he wanted to capture, and he could only capture it by doing it, apparently. I took a picture. It was enough.

Now he has, like, twelve kids, all about nine months apart. There were apparently no lines at that amusement park.

Anyway. What is it about this winter that I'm sitting here thinking, Jack Frost, we hardly knew ye! while he's still nipping at my nose?


Maybe it has something to do with standing outside browsing through the dollar racks at Brattle Books in single digit weather all alone. Not just browsing, but enjoying myself so thoroughly I'm flipping through the books reading bits of them and making notes in my Moleskine. Like some nut.

In my own defense, I had just come from the gym, where I'd had a vigorous workout and a relaxing sauna, which had warmed me up and steeled me against the elements, somewhat.

Flipping through David Rakoff's Don't Get Too Comfortable, I came across the quote of the day:

Writing is like pulling teeth.

From my dick.

It's not like that for me, personally, but I thought it was funny.

I also came across the more serious and less attractive—coincidence? I think not!--William Kittredge's The Nature of Generosity, wherein he squeezes out this one (between Machiavelli and Jung): "Humans yearn for peace, yet they are incessantly warlike."

I thought, hmm. First of all, I think that's a load of hooey. Humans don't yearn for peace. They don't. They yearn for safety. "Peace" is a euphemism for safety, because to say that we want to be safe prompts the question, from what?—or more precisely from whom? Because obviously it's from each other.

I had already decided to bring Mr. Rakoff home with me, and I thought, do I want to spend a dollar to engage in debate with Mr. Kittredge? Because the question of the nature of generosity is an interesting one—though I think most evolutionary psychologists would just say "reciprocal altruism" and call it a day—and because Kittredge seemed to roam like a gypsy all over the map for material, I decided to spring for The Nature of Generosity.

I will read it half-drunk, though, I've decided, because that seems to be the way he wrote it. I could be wrong, but either way it works out for me, since being drunk around sober people is no less fun than being drunk around drunk ones, and sometimes, actually, it's a great deal more fun.

I ran into Martin Buber next, whose Ten Rungs: Hasidic Sayings caught my eye from two racks away. Buber's automatic. If I see him, I take it as a sign. Buber would be my companion for the T-ride home, though I am not fit to pick the nits out of his beard.

I wanted to spend five bucks at least, to make it worth everyone's while, so I grabbed a copy of S.I. Hayakawa's delightful Language and Thought in Action, c. 1939, which had a section on "verbal taboo" I thought might be particularly enlightening.

I liked his chapter headings, too: "Bessie, the Cow," "Snarl-Words and Purr-Words" (could use that one, eh), "How Not to Start a Car." But what sealed the deal were the doodles throughout:

I like them almost as much as Thurber's. This one hit especially close to home:

I'm getting ve-e-e-er-r-ry-y-y slee-ee-ee-ee-eepy-y-y-y.

At the end of each chapter is a section of "applications" of what was covered in the chapter. A typical "application" (from Chapter 9: Art and Tension):

Read, ponder, and digest:

"The worst sometimes does happen. As men we have to count on that possibility, have to arm ourselves against it, and above all we have to realize that since absurdities necessarily occur, and nowadays manifest themselves with more and more forcefulness, we can prevent ourselves from being destroyed by them and can make ourselves relatively comfortable upon this earth only if we humbly include these absurdities in our thinking, reckon with the inevitable fractures and distortions of human reason when it attempts honestly to deal with reality." FRIEDRICH DUERRENMATT, The Pledge

Chew on that, eh.

Hayakawa himself was an interesting cat. Born at the turn of the century in Canada, he came to the US for his Doctorate, stuck around, and raised a little hell, gaining special notoriety as President of San Francisco State University at the height of student protests in the sixties, when he personally and quite literally pulled the plug on the Black Panthers during a rally there. Youch! That's what's called Hayakawa-powa.

In '76, at the age of 70, and in the long twilight of lucidity (he would die of Alzheimers in 1992), he was elected to the Senate (as a Republican, if you hadn't figured it out yet). He only served one term, and slept through most of it (his fellow Senators used to call him "Sleeping Sam").

My last acquisition before heading in to the cashier was another book on language, but without pictures.


As I said, I planned to share my ride home with Buber. Interesting then that strap-hanging it on my afternoon rush-hour commute on the red-line, I should come across this little portent:

It is written: "They saw not one man his brother, neither rose any from his place." He who will not look at his brother will soon come to this: He will cleave to his place and not be able to move from it.

The other morning, there was a woman—she must've been about ninety—on my packed morning train, left to stand while a row of well-dressed, comfortably-seated businessmen pretended not to notice her right in front of them. To each one of them I say: Enjoy that seat, bastard, because your ass is gonna be cleaved to it one of these days.


I have been informed by my housemates that, in their words: "dude, you can't eat Batman." Hmph. Now what am I going to do with that bottle of Châteauneuf-du-Pape?