Hitting The Links: 11/26/23
Thanksgiving relativity, links a-plenty, a cold hike & more
Either/Oar
I was writing my daily postcard on Friday, when it occurred to me that it was 20 years since I semi-celebrated Thanksgiving in New Zealand. I had booked a two-week adventure tour spanning Nov.-Dec., during which I engaged in all sorts of craziness: jet boating through river canyons, helicoptering over a rainforest onto a glacier, my one and only bungy jump, and drinking with Australian men.
I wrote to my friend about how odd it was to be on to the other side of the planet during Thanksgiving, in a place where nobody would ever think to prepare turkey for a meal. (Also football has a different meaning in NZ, and they contended that their rugby players were tougher than US football players, because “your guys wear pads.” I struggled to convince them that if “our guys” played rugby, their combination of size and speed would have led to the sport being banned due to fatalities, but neither here nor there.)
Just 2 or 3 of us on the tour were Americans, and we pretended to have a little Thanksgiving dinner in one of the roadside cafes our bus, The Wahine Machine, stopped in. But really, we were out of context, in a place that didn’t know our rituals, and the memory of that put me in mind of Odysseus’ Next Quest, the one he has to take after the events of the Odyssey, on the advice of the dead prophet Tiresias. In Book XI, during Odysseus’ visit to the underworld, the soul tells him that he must make amends to the sea god Poseidon and — well, I’ll let Samuel Butler translate it —
‘When you get home you will take your revenge on these suitors; and after you have killed them by force or fraud in your own house, you must take a well-made oar and carry it on and on, till you come to a country where the people have never heard of the sea and do not even mix salt with their food, nor do they know anything about ships, and oars that are as the wings of a ship. I will give you this certain token which cannot escape your notice. A wayfarer will meet you and will say it must be a winnowing shovel that you have got upon your shoulder; on this you must fix the oar in the ground and sacrifice a ram, a bull, and a boar to Poseidon. Then go home and offer hecatombs to the gods in heaven one after the other. As for yourself, death shall come to you from the sea, and your life shall ebb away very gently when you are full of years and peace of mind, and your people shall be prosperous. All that I have said will come true.’
[No, I didn’t write all that in the postcard, but the gist was there, & my pal went to St. John’s College, so he’ll get the overarching vibe.] Sitting at The Analog Desk that morning, I couldn’t really imagine that 20 years had gone by since that trip. I thought about that un-Thanksgiving, spent with people I didn’t know, in a hemisphere of the planet where maybe a half-dozen people had ever heard my name.
I wasn’t carrying an oar on that trip, but at some point it occurred to me that I wasn’t carrying any other baggage, and for a little while there I was free of everything.
Except gravity.
And now, let’s hit the links!
Links & Such
Recent Virtual Memories Show podcasts: Matt Bors • Phillip Lopate • Leslie Stein • Josh Bayer • Adam Sisman • Lisa Morton • Daniel Clowes
RIP Rosalynn Carter . . . RIP Bob Contant . . .
Bob was the cofounder of St. Mark’s Bookshop, where Amy & I met on our very first date (the 31 Third Ave. location), just a few weeks after my NZ trip. Separately, I bumped into Wallace Shawn there. I loved that bookstore.
Sebastian Smee reviewed the gorgeous John Singer Sargent exhibition in Boston. You will plotz at the paintings included in the piece.
Steven Heller (2018, 2019, 2020, 2022) has a lovely writeup about the new Leo Lionni exhibition at the Rockwell Museum.
You should also check out Steven’s interview with Christopher Payne about his Made In America book, and his piece about the first-ever exhibition of the children’s books of Seymour Chwast.
Continuing the theme of psychosis from recent emails, apparently magicians are less prone to it than the general population as well as other creative folks. Or they deceive the doctors better.
I really enjoyed this Matt Zoller-Seitz interview of Philip Kaufman about directing The Right Stuff.
Thinking about the lights-out main cast members of The Right Stuff got me wondering about what movie has the highest slugging average for a casting director, and I settled on ALIEN, because that movie only has 7 actors (besides the alien & the cat), and they managed to cast Sigourney Weaver, Tom Skerritt, Harry Dean Stanton, John Hurt, Ian Holm, and Yaphet Kotto (okay, and Victoria Cartwright). That’s a heck of a lineup.
Speaking of batshit-crazy stories about directors, this one about the 47 Ronin guy’s meltdown is A-W-E-S-O-M-E.
I enjoyed this morning’s newsletter from Warren Ellis, for reasons that will become obvious 1 pullquote in.
Which also reminds me of the quote from near the end of 20,000 Days on Earth, which I cited earlier this year:
“All of our days are numbered. We cannot afford to be idle. To act on a bad idea is better than not to act at all, because the worth of the idea never becomes apparent until you do it.”
Current/Recent Reading
Inherent Vice - Thomas Pynchon
My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer - Christian Wiman
Zero At The Bone: Fifty Entries Against Despair - Christian Wiman
Sound Body, Fractured Mind
I did my full 5-day workout routine last week, Fri.-Tue. weights & yoga on alternate days, + a 5.5-mile slow run w/The Guys on Saturday. I missed weights this past Friday, as we had guests staying over from Thanksgiving, & that meant driving them back to Princeton, & then Amy & I meandered around Princeton for a bit, then home to nap & then eat & by then it was just too darned late in the day to throw my dumbbells around. But I got my yoga workout in on Saturday, and will get to weights later today. I might even join The Guys for a few miles of their faster run on Monday or Tuesday, to make up for missing Friday’s workout. (I could have doubled-up on Saturday, but Bendico the greyhound called an audible on our morning walkies around the corner, instead leading me on a 1.7-mile walk/hike up his favorite trail to a cliff; it was 28°F and I was in a t-shirt & light hoodie, so by the time we got back, I was just trying to get myself warm for a while. But that all counts as some sorta exercise, I figure.)
At a party last Sunday, one of my past guests / listeners / readers brought up last week’s email, and asked me to send him a detailed writeup or even video of my workout, so he can start a dumbbell routine for himself. He’s an artist & a little older than me and can feel the creaks. Maybe I’ll shoot that today, and shoot one of my first-thing-in-the-morning stretch-yoga-plank-pushup-clamshell-leg-raise routine. I don’t wanna go all Kriota Willberg on you, but if you’re in the arts and you’re at a drawing table or keyboard or something all day, I implore you to get in some physical activity, okay? (In fact, artists oughtta read & implement Kriota’s Draw Stronger exercises.)
Until Next Time
Thanks for reading this far! I’ll be back Wednesday with a new podcast, maybe some art, & who knows maybe a little profundity or something, and Sunday with more great links, current reading, and this broken down ol’ body of mine.
This tornado loves you / What will make you believe me?,
—Gil Roth
Virtual Memories
Bluesky • Instagram • Flickr • YouTube • Linktr.ee