2008 favorite albums, in descending order:


Beach House - Devotion


The Walkmen - You and Me


Vampire Weekend


Raveonettes - Lust Lust Lust


Portishead - Third (This might be a tie with Crystal Castles, have to think about it more)

Best? Don't know about that...

...but I'll be compiling the music I listened to in 2008.

Stay tuned for an edited post.

It was oddly beautiful in Fells Point today, probably because it was so very quiet.

Have you forgotten what we were like then
when we were still first rate
and the day came fat with an apple in its mouth

it's no use worrying about Time
but we did have a few tricks up our sleeves
and turned some sharp corners

the whole pasture looked like our meal
we didn't need speedometers
we could manage cocktails out of ice and water

I wouldn't want to be faster
or greener than now if you were with me O you
were the best of all my days


[1950]

Poem by Frank O'Hara. Born in Baltimore in 1926.

New favorites from 20x200:

The pivotal scene of Swann's Way - once you are enthralled by this, perhaps there's no going back-


Many years had elapsed during which nothing of Combray, save what was comprised in the theatre and the drama of my going to bed there, had any existence for me, when one day in winter, on my return home, my mother, seeing that I was cold, offered me some tea, a thing I did not ordinarily take. I declined at first, and then, for no particular reason, changed my mind. She sent for one of those squat, plump little cakes called "petites madeleines," which look as though they had been moulded in the fluted valve of a scallop shell. And soon, mechanically, dispirited after a dreary day with the prospect of a depressing morrow, I raised to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had soaked a morsel of the cake. No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a shudder ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, something isolated, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory - this new sensation having had on me the effect which love has of filling me with a precious essence; or rather this essence was not in me it was me. I had ceased now to feel mediocre, contingent, mortal. Whence could it have come to me, this all-powerful joy? I sensed that it was connected with the taste of the tea and the cake, but that it infinitely transcended those savours, could, no, indeed, be of the same nature. Whence did it come? What did it mean? How could I seize and apprehend it?

I drink a second mouthful, in which I find nothing more than in the first, then a third, which gives me rather less than the second. It is time to stop; the potion is losing its magic. It is plain that the truth I am seeking lies not in the cup but in myself. The drink has called it into being, but does not know it, and can only repeat indefinitely, with a progressive diminution of strength, the same message which I cannot interpret, though I hope at least to be able to call it forth again and to find it there presently, intact and at my disposal, for my final enlightenment. I put down the cup and examine my own mind. It alone can discover the truth. But how: What an abyss of uncertainty, whenever the mind feels overtaken by itself; when it, the seeker, is at the same time the dark region through which it must go seeking and where all its equipment will avail it nothing. Seek? More than that: create. It is face to face with something which does not yet exist, to which it alone can give reality and substance, which it alone can bring into the light of day.

And I begin to ask myself what it could have been, this unremembered state which brought with it no logical proof, but the indisputable evidence, of its felicity, its reality, and in whose presence other states of consciousness melted and vanished. I decide to attempt to make it reappear. I retrace my thoughts to the moment at which I drank the first spoonful of tea. I rediscover the same state, illuminated by no fresh light. I ask my mind to make one further effort, to bring back once more the fleeting sensation. And so that nothing may interrupt it in its course I shut out every obstacle, every extraneous idea, I stop my ears and inhibit all attention against the sound from the next room. And then, feeling that my mind is tiring itself without having any success to report, I compel it for a change to enjoy the distraction which I have just denied it, to think of other things, to rest refresh itself before making a final effort. And then for the second time I clear an empty space in front of it; I place in position before my mind's eye the still recent taste of that first mouthful, and I feel something start within me, something that leaves its resting-place and attempts to rise, something that has been embedded like an anchor at a great depth; I do not know yet what it is, but I can feel it mounting slowly; I can measure the resistance, I can hear the echo of great spaces traversed.

Happy 75th anniversay of the repeal of Prohibition. Go celebrate!

Another photo (well, at least part of another photo) from 20x200 that I'm fond of.

Feeling pretty swamped and ready for 2008 to be over, so perhaps it's apt.

November 2008 - the books.

November seems to be a great month for reading for me, especially when last year's November count is taken into consideration too. Blame it on the change in weather? It only really got wintery-cold this month...

Right Ho, Jeeves, P.G. Wodehouse

Cleopatra's Nose: 39 Varieties of Desire, Judith Thurman

The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck

Kitchen, Banana Yoshimoto

The Book of Other People, Zadie Smith, ed.

Staying Alive, Neil Astley, ed. (poetry anthology)

The Accidental Masterpiece: On the Art of Life and Vice Versa, Michael Kimmelman

Proust Was a Neuroscientist, Jonah Lehrer

My Mistress's Sparrow Is Dead: Great Love Stories from Chekhov to Munro, Jeffrey Eugenides, ed.

Wodehouse was a wonderful discovery this month courtesy of a bookish friend. Lighthearted and humorous - I'm looking forward to reading more about my new favorite butler.