Annotations

This morning, my new roommate was dropping coins into a barely filled tin jar where he keeps loose change, and I really really really for a moment genuinely thought That is most the horrid, awful, jangling-in-the-throat cough that I have ever heard. It was so distressing that even after a second when I realized it was coins dropped in a metal jar and not a human cough, I couldn’t shake the feeling that he was ill.

Sometimes you can’t do much more with your life than write a sentence: The jangled cough of quarters falling into a tin can.

Maybe everything in my particular corner of the world is getting sick. That would sit right with me.

bisutun replied to your post: So:

And what kind of snacks do they serve at the Vatican.

Communion wafers. Allthe time.

if you were a high-level Vatican official and you had fairly regular, casual interactions with the Pope and you asked him for some advice about a more or less inconsequential problem (like, “Where should I eat lunch?”) and he recommended a place that you discovered was terrible (bad service, awful food), would that severely affect your opinion of his spiritual authority? If the Christ’s Vicar can’t give good earthly advice, what is his spiritual advisement worth?

Alternatively, how powerful does a person have to get before people stop asking him or her where a good place to eat lunch is? I really never know a good place to eat lunch, and I want to be so powerful that no one ever asks me ever again.

All these articles about Rick Perry’s “electability” and the “excitement” over his officially entering the race are making my insides puke. If I wanted a self-fulfilling prophecy from scaredy-cat screed-writers, I would just stay inside all day and LiveJournal the inside of my own head.

Any fish caught in a barrel will be shot

The most damning thing I can say about College Park, Maryland, is that the grocery store I patronized during the four days I spent in town had run out—completely—of plain, unflavored sparkling water.

I used to hate sparkling water, but since I now love it, this state of affairs was borderline unacceptable. Seriously, carbonated water is the best: its beery after-fizz with none of the fatigue or breath-staling tang makes me feel like I’m making a plaster caste of the inside of my throat—like in that Pepto Bismol commercial where the stuff slides pinkly down your insides. Except sparkling water doesn’t taste pink. It tastes blank, and it bites. Anyway, that this particular store in College Park hadn’t checked with me prior to my arrival about what I might want them to have in stock—it was upsetting.

As for College Park, the town, my only question was: where is it? I can see the cars and the university campus and a bunch of roads and shops and even people. But where is the town? Every place there feels like a parking lot. I think College Park was founded by ancient tribe of strip malls. And it was swamp hot. Still, I enjoyed it.

I was in College Park for two reasons: to research the University of Maryland’s Special Collections archive of Djuna Barnes’s papers and to find sparkling water that hadn’t been corrupted by a hint of berry or lemon-lime. I had to settle for lemon-lime, but at least I got a look at Samuel Beckett’s handwriting. That was tops. It is crabbed, which is a word that is often used in novels to describe handwriting, but rarely serves as a realistic adjective to use in everyday conversation. Actually, his handwriting isn’t crabbed, if I’m honest with myself. I’m making a mistake there. Samuel Beckett’s handwriting is a uniform cursive, but hard to read in that stylish way that maybe didn’t look stylish then.

He was trying to lend Djuna Barnes $3000. It worked. When I left College Park, I had to put more air in the tires of my rental car. I found that irritating as well.