Hope y'all had an easy fast, you who fasted. I attempted to make do with lettuce wraps, lox, and cream cheese. Wasn't quite the same. And then I had to have the blintz souffle anyway.

In Memoriam

Today would have been my friend David's 47th birthday. Take a look at the blog his friends set up in his memory. It's a fitting tribute to someone who lived a life of the mind and valued language so much.

There was no bottom and no top, only waves and waves of sorrow.

So it's about 2 AM and I'm listening to Pandora, and Pete Seeger comes on singing Tom Paxton's "Rambling Boy," and I can hear my mother singing it. I'm just curious, do I ever stop getting stabbed in the heart by grief? Does it ever end? It's been nine years, and it is no less of an awful loss than it ever was. I don't feel any of the things I thought I'd feel.

Dog Days of August

Haven't felt overmuch like posting here, obviously. Felt sad about my friend's death, and it's been hot, and the kids are home, and and and. Am losing weight (most excellent), but otherwise not doing much. Not sure why I maintain this blog, but I can't quite bear to take it down, since it's been a sort of diary for six years.

From Woolf's The Waves:

‘Oh yes, I can assure you, men in felt hats and women carrying baskets—you have lost something that would have been very valuable to you. You have lost a leader whom you would have followed; and one of you has lost happiness and children. He is dead who would have given you that. He lies on a camp-bed, bandaged, in some hot Indian hospital while coolies squatted on the floor agitate those fans—I forget how they call them. But this is important; “You are well out of it,” I said, while the doves descended over the roofs and my son was born, as if it were a fact. I remember, as a boy, his curious air of detachment. And I go on to say (my eyes fill with tears and then are dry), “But this is better than one had dared to hope.” I say, addressing what is abstract, facing me eyeless at the end of the avenue, in the sky, “Is this the utmost you can do?” Then we have triumphed. You have done your utmost, I say, addressing that blank and brutal face (for he was twenty-five and should have lived to be eighty) without avail. I am not going to lie down and weep away a life of care. (An entry to be made in my pocket-book; contempt for those who inflict meaningless death.) Further, this is important; that I should be able to place him in trifling and ridiculous situations, so that he may not feel himself absurd, perched on a great horse. I must be able to say, “Percival, a ridiculous name.” At the same time let me tell you, men and women, hurrying to the tube station, you would have had to respect him. You would have had to form up and follow behind him. How strange to oar one’s way through crowds seeing life through hollow eyes, burning eyes.

So my friend died today, which was sudden but not unexpected. This sucks, as does cancer. He'd probably be shocked by the number of friends who were anxiously following news of him. As our mutual friend said, "He wouldn't believe how many women are crying over him right now."

We weren't close, but I liked and respected him enormously: he was tremendously supportive of my fledgling attempts to write, and he would suggest offbeat and interesting books to read and got me to read Pynchon with new eyes. He wasn't particularly impressed with himself but did a lot of things very well, had an excellent shit detector but a lot of tolerance as well. Ach, I'll miss you, my dear. Thanks for the friendship and the dog biscuits and turning me onto Jonathan Ames. I'm so sorry you didn't get to live out a long life. It's so unfair.

I Love Him Like a Brother--David Greenglass

So my bro went to Israel and through a series of incredible coincidences was chatting with someone whose family used to know the Greenglass family on the Lower East Side. The person's family used to be house painters. It would seem that when the Rosenberg execution date neared, Tessie decided to have the apartment repainted because they knew that there would be a lot of publicity and they wanted the place to look nice.