Good things....

Come in buckets. Never one at a time.

One of said things is this: I just received the proofs of my law review article. They look stellar.

Beautiful Day

I've made it a rule (that I've pretty much followed, surprisingly) not to blog about things that I do in my professional or academic life. In other words, I only blog about my avocations. I think this is smart. First, it won't get me into trouble with the few people who read this blog (hopefully) assuming I have any professional relationship with those people. Second, eh I'm bored of listing reasons and I'll get to the point.

The point is, I'm going to talk about a book that's tenuously related to my academic life right now. Which is why - and for no other reason - I am not going to mention the book's name, or its author, or what it's about. Maybe what it's about will come up, but I'll try not to let it.

Anyway, I was rereading a book yesterday for a pseudo-academic pursuit. I had read this book the first time in high school, and hadn't picked it up in as many years. It turns out I had written notes in it, when I was in twelfth grade, I think. This was in the highlight of my loving literature phase. I discovered books - really, for the first time, even though I had discovered my love of reading much earlier - in 10th grade. That was when I started reading like crazy - I mean spending a good portion of my waking hours reading.

Anyway, I figured my notes would be crappy. After all, I was seventeen. I had no or little knowledge of the world. I was incredibly surprised to find 1) (here we go listing things again) my handwriting was crisp and nice, like it is now, when I want it to be (which is rare) and 2) the points I was making were not only good, but were as good or better than points I would make in the margins of my book today. Goddamit, I thought. I was smart.

Which made me sad. Because not only was I smart, then. I also clearly had a love, a desire to know. Something I've sort of lost. I can spend hours staring at crap on a computer screen (hello, woot.com) now, and I know that I wouldn't have been able to then. I would've prioritized better. I would have cared more. It takes effort for me to pick up a novel, now, because I know there is so much else I need to be doing. Then, I didn't give a damn about anything else.

Anyway, this is why I was sad yesterday.

Today, however, is a beautiful day (just look at the title of this blog post, for goodness sake). I am now in a bright, airy room, looking out onto beautiful Amsterdam Avenue, and thinking about how happy I am. The more things change, I guess.

The book also made me want to be a lawyer, and made me not want to be one, at the same time. It was still very good, the second time around.

The Idea of Blogging at Key West

Besides for being a basatardization of a great American poem (I'm tired of hyperbole - it's not the greatest, or even one of the greatest American poems - although there as a time when I'd have called it that), and a great idea (I really would love to be blogging in Key West right now, instead of in this frigid city), I thought it would be a nice idea to think about the idea of blogging.

I mostly started actually posting on this blog to give myself another chance to talk about myself. I mean, now, when the subject comes to the Internet, or when people talk about blogs, or when there's a lull in the conversation in general, I can say "oh I have a blog" "I talked about that on my blog" or "did you know I have a blog?" And then I can make a humorous comment about how even though the blog is called bezalela, it should be pronounced bezalel a, being my first name, bezalel, and my middle name, a, and I am not confused about my gender. Then we (meaning me and those I am talking to) lapse back into awkward silence.

But then I was thinking about it. I started writing on the blog because I thought it would make me write more in general. Besides for the year and a half burst when I was writing and revising my novel, and ocassional spurts of poetry, fiction, and criticism, I haven't been able to write consistently for very long about a single thing. I thought maybe if I forced myself to write a blog that would be half serious but mostly humorous, rhetorical, or pop-philosophical (how can something be half something but mostly something else? Figure that out...) then I would be able to sit down and write other things daily as well.

But, as I soon realized, writing the blog daily wasn't going to happen either. Writing the blog became similar to the way I write in general (except I don't edit the blog; I like the stream of consciousness effect of it, and I like laughing at the stupid spelling and gramatical mistakes I made when I read it over - which I do every couple of days). By that, I mean I write my blog sometimes once a week, sometimes more than once, sometimes less. There's no rhyme or reason to it. And while I like to think the writing I spend more time on (i.e. not this) is better than this, that might not be the case. I see me in both, which is weird. How can you see yourself in writing, anyway? It's just a bunch of letters. Script, that means nothing. Except you put it together, and it means something. It's a mystery, I guess.

This isn't, as I'm sure my 3 readers (who are astute and intelligent people, which is why they read this blog) have guessed, a goodbye to blogging. I'm not going to say, the experiment failed, so now I'll give it up. The experiment did fail, but I realized that I don't really care. While I like getting paid for my writing, and I like writing fiction and poetry that I hope one day I'll get paid for, I realized writing this blog that I also like spewing my thoughts, knowing (hoping, damnit, I'll be honest and say hoping) that anyone in the world can read them and then maybe they'll understand a little kernel of the world a little better, or at least think about something, or at least smile. It isn't fiction (well, most of it isn't), and I'm not getting paid for it. But it's still fun.

Street Fairs

I think a fun thing to blog about would be street fairs. In NY, in the fall, there is a street fair pretty much every weekend (Sat. and Sunday). These street fairs include about 5 of the same thing, about thirty times. They usually go on for about 15 blocks, closing traffic to all non-pedestrians (happy for me; sad for busses and cars), and you have to walk through the whole thing, to see if you're not missing anything.

You're not. This is what is at the NY street fair: Vegetarian Falafel Stand - this is always, for some reason, the first thing I see. There are 3 of these, always. Other things in the way of food are the disgusting mozarella type sandwich thing - there are 2 or 3 of those; The sad asian smoothy place that never seems to have any customers; The Thai food for $1 place; and the huge hunks of unidentifiable meat places.

Then you have the crappy jewelery places: these are about 75% of the street fair.

Then there's the weird random things. The huge paintings that are so hideous no one would buy them. The Victorian plush psychiatrists couch. The weird metallic statue that looks like it belongs in an Adams Family movie.

Then there's the star: the diamond in the rough. This is why you search. For the one thing - it's always one thing, and it isn't always even around. It's the good store. We found it (gf and I), today. Today it was a jewelery botique, but it wasn't crappy jewelery. It was jewelery made by an Eastern European (vaguely Russian?) (maybe Ukranian?) girl and her mother. The father was there too, but his position was unclear. The daughter seemed to be in charge. When I asked for a business card (their stuff was good enough to ask for a card), the father searched around among some random boxes for about 10 minutes, while I fidgeted uncomfortably, until he decided that he would make me my very own personal business card by tearing off a piece of paper, and writing his number on it - (or his wife's; or his daughter's; I wasn't really clear on this part). Then I scurried away, throwing the paper in the next trashcan I came to. Truth is, I had only asked for the business card in the first place to be nice.

Teeth Cleaning - Redux

I don't know about you, but I sure love not being able to feel the side of my face. As I write these words, I have absolutely no feeling in the left side of my face. I bite on my inner cheek (something the dentist told me not to do) and feel nothing. Nothing at all. It's pretty great.

Here is how this happened:

I went back across the street to the dentist in order to get a "cavity filled". (The dentist is across the street from my apartment. How convenient. And scary.) Now, I don't exactly now what getting a cavity filled means, but I do know that it involves, at first, injecting a lot of novacaine into the left side of my face.

Only problem is, the novacaine, or whatever it was, didn't really do anything. And so, when the dentist asked me if I could feel my tongue when I bit it, I said yes.

"Are you sure?" she said.
"Pretty sure," I said, feeling a searing pain flash through my mouth.
"Well," the dentist said, "I think I'm just going to go ahead with the procedure anyway"

So it was, that I got to have my cavity taken out, or put in, or whatever they do with cavities these days, without the benefits of novacaine. Needless to say, it wasn't the most pleasant experience.

On the plus side, the dentist who was doing the job was very sympathetic. "I'm really sorry," she kept saying, as I screamed through the sounds of the drilling of my enamel (or whatever it is they put on teeth these days).

Then, when the procedure was over, and my cavity was magically healed, I got up. Suddenly, I realized I couldn't feel the left side of my face.

"You might feel a little numb later", the dentist said.
"I'm way ahead of you," I replied.

And so, I, now, get to bite really hard down onto my tongue and not feel a thing. Is that blood, I wonder? Gotta run...

Studio 60

Is good tonight. Really good. That is all.

Nicole Krauss

Maybe if I say Nicole Krauss a couple of times she will google herself and come to this site and I'll be able to talk to her in some sort of strange, post-modern, internety way. Nicole Krauss Nicole Krauss Nicole Krauss penis (that last one was to bring in all the people looking for gay porn sites).

Anyway, I'm going to assume I'm speaking to Nicole Krauss now, so I'll just address the rest of this post to you, Nicole.

I just recently finished your book "The History of Love". I know I'm a little late, and I'm sorry. But I really enjoyed it. Your writing, as I'm sure you've heard too many times, is wonderful. And while it can be a little cutsie at times (you know which chapters I'm thinking about), in general, it is incredibly moving.

But you know that. That's not why I'm writing to you. This is: You didn't let the book end. I hardly ever say this, ever, as I'm an impatient reader, generally, but your book was 100 pages too short. Why did it stop? I mean, I understood why it stopped, because it was cute and you had developed a neat idea and it would be hard to take it past the ending (a page for the kid, a page for the old man, these damn books don't have enough pages to add in a third character), but, come on, Nicole Krauss, you know as well as I do that you left us all hanging.

Now don't go saying that it's part of the "art". That it's the style of the book, that it's post-modern, that it's meant to leave an aura of wonder, as to what happens to, I don't know, all of the characters, after the final scene closes. You know, as well as I do, that that's a load of crap. You found a cutsie ending - an ending that worked (and the ending does work) - and you used it. Except by using it you more or less destroyed a novel that was bordering on perfection.

As someone who just recently (read: today) completed a book which also contains the word "History" in its title, I empathize with you. It took me approximately as long to write the last, thirty page chapter of my book as it took me to write the first two hundred and forty odd pages of it. Books are hard to end. Books are hard, even, to continue. God knows that I know that. But that doesn't mean we don't try. I read somewhere that you, Nicole Krauss, said that you stopped writing poetry because you were tired of trying to make the perfect poem, because, I think I'm quoting you sort of right (although I'm probably wrong), that perfection is unattainable. Well, Nicole Krauss, you had the perfect story there, almost. And then you let it hang. That was sad, for me.

In other news, if you'd like to read my book, leave me a post and I'll be happy to send it to you. Good talking to you, Nicole Krauss. I hope you are having a great night.

Decisions

I like trains. Trains are fun. For some reason, I feel so free on a train - it's like the feeling I get when I'm on a highway, driving out, just starting. But when I'm driving, the feeling usually goes away after thirty minutes or so, because I have to pay attention to the driving.

Trains aren't like that. In a train, the newness and the excitement of newness never goes away. On the train last night, I was so happy. I'm so happy when I'm travelling. It's like endless possibilities, you can stop anywhere, you can go anywhere. And even though it's not true, and even though I know it's not true, and I know that I'm going to be in New York in an hour, and that, moreover, the track only goes in one direction: south, and the train only goes to one place: the city where I'll soon be, but it doesn't matter. It's the feeling that matters.

Good Magazine - Part Two (The Upstairs)

Just when you all had given up hope of ever reading about me and RPP's further adventures at the good magazine party, I come and satisfy your thirst for all the lurid details. See, that's my style. I get you excited about something. And then I withhold. And withhold. And then you forget about it. And then I bring it up again. It's called good writing.

So, when we last left our heroes, the seductively intrepid RPP and the casually handsome BAS, we had finally crossed the barrier between good and awesome, represented in this case by the steps from the second to the third floors of the party.

The third floor was like something out of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - and by that I mean the good Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, you know, the one we grew up with, not the crappy Johnny Depp one, where he overacts to compensate for the fact that he has no idea how to act, and where it's just spooky and weird, as opposed to the first one, where it's only slightly spooky, and highly weird, and all around great. Man, those little people (munchkins? doodads? what're they called) from the first one totally kick the butt's of the one little guy in the remake. But, I digress.

The third floor was a wonderland. Their were all these really cool looking people. BTW - RPP pointed this out to me afterwards - everyone there was hot. I mean really, really hot. RPP and I were by far the shortest people there - and I am pretty average, height-wise - 5'9" (which is actually exactly average). Everyone was really thin, also (RPP is good at that part). And also really attractive. I cannot emphasize this enough.

Ok, maybe I can.

Anyway, there was this really cool "piece of art" that took up a good chunk of the first corridor we went up to (which was a really wide hall, which led of to a number of side rooms). This is the one cool piece of art I mentioned in Good Magazine - the prequel. It looked like this: Have you ever been to Disneyworld? If I say this, would you know what I'm talking about? "It's the wildest ride in the wilderness!"

Know what I'm talking about?

Know what I'm referring to?

Hmm? Hmm?

Ok, this is it. It was Thunder Mountain Railroad. It was so cool. It was this huge, over-life sized diarama of a mining western canyon, with real tunnels and train tracks and everything. Except smaller. The whole mountain was maybe 12 feet high and probably 12 feet wide. It was so awesome. It was the one good piece of art in all of the building.

Oh wait, there was something else, in the next room, that was pretty awesome too. Ok, there's this photographer, that's trying to take pictures of children in New York. But wait, it's not what you're thinking (at least not what I hope you're not thinking). Here's the cutsie, non-ironic part: She's trying to take pictures of children in New York from every country on earth. Isn't that genius? Isn't that non-ironic fun? I love it. So far she's got over a hundred countries - there are only about forty or fifty, I think, left. And I'm sure they're around. One of them is Seychelles. Where I really want to go, someday.

Ok, the next room was about water. It was lame.

The next room was the "cool room". This is how I found out it was the cool room. Everyone in that room was super hot, and there was a bouncer at the door. This is another way I found out it was the cool room. The bouncer didn't let us in.

That was sad.

Then we went to the water room, so we could peek into the cool room (there was a window between the two), and pretend we didn't care that the bouncer didn't let us in.

Then we went to the party room. The party room was insane. Suddenly there were approximately a million people and crazy music. It was awesome. We left 10 minutes later.

In short, we met some good people, had some good times, and took a picture to be published at goodmagazine.com of me and RPP holding a sign that says: "Daven, like you give a damn"

Also, we got 4 packs of gum. It was a good night.

Busy...

And I promise that this won't just become a link site. But this guy is funny - I went to Brandeis with him, and he also wrote for the Justice...

Trying stuff out...

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So close...

I want to take this opportunity to ask forgiveness of the three people who read this blog for anything I might have done against them, during this past year, or ever. I am really, truly sorry.