It's not exactly that I'm a shut-in. It's more that I'm shutting myself in.

I don't feel fit for human company. I don't want to see anyone, I don't want to talk to anyone. I don't want to be around others.

Depression? Yeah. I suppose. Stress? Oh, definitely.
So what to do tonight and tomorrow? It's the two holiest days of the Jewish calendar. I don't have tickets for services, although Star has offered me one for tonight.

Tonight is Kol Nidre. I love this service. I can lose myself in the ancient melody. Which is precisely the point. But I just don't feel up to the rest of the ritual: the saving of seats, the gossiping about others, the false faces and air kisses. I don't want to get dressed up. I don't want to be with others.

I haven't been able to go to temple since my father died. Last year, there was a hurricane and it pre-empted services. This year the only thing pre-empting me is my own ennui and depression.

I did manage to get a rabbi to visit my mom on Sunday, and he read a blessing over her for the coming year. I cried and cried and cried.

No, I think I'll make a nice pre-fast dinner for the RLA and myself, listen to a lovely recording of Kol Nidre variations and stew in my own misery for another evening.

Off to run errands.

I love this. These delivery guys are all over my building in the morning, with steaming cups of cafe con leche, and aromatic Cuban toast (a loaf of water bread. split along its length, loaded with a dizzying amount of butter or oleo, then toasted flat in an aluminum foil-lined press).

But, if it's a Cuban cafe, and believe me, it is... why is their logo the Eiffel Tower, and the name of the place the Paris Cafe?

When I was just a yellow pup, ordering books from the Scholastic Book Service was always a big treat. I loved, and still love, buying books. It is an indulgence which nobody can fault. If you collect shoes (whistling innocently and looking up and away), people will find you self-indulgent and frivolous. Wasteful, even. If you have a fondness for more art supplies than you will ever be able to produce artwork from, again, you could be found guilty of avarice.



But nobody, ever, ever, looks askance at an addiction for books. Anyway. I digress.



One of my favorite Scholastic Books was "Reflections on a Gift of Watermelon Pickle" and it is an anthology of poetry.

I have loved so many of the poems in this book, for forty years or so now. And the other morning, when I saw this from the train platform, I was reminded of yet another poem from the book.







"Steam Shovel



The dinosaurs are not all dead

I saw one raise its iron head

To watch me walking down the road

Beyond our house today.

Its jaws were dripping with a load

Of earth and grass that it had cropped.

It must have heard me where I stopped.

Snorted white steam my way,

And stretched its long neck out to see,

And chewed, and grinned quite amiably.



Charles Malam"

Yes! It's finally here. I can't afford it, you can't afford it, but after a lifetime of empty promises, the flying car has arrived.



How many comic books, how many science fiction movies, how many episodes of "The Jetsons" did I watch, drooling for the flying car? An infinity minus one. And here it is.

In the Neiman-Marcus Christmas catalog, for a mere 3.5 million, and with a list of caveats as long as one's arm, but still. This is only the prototype, and they are swearing that more will follow, at a reasonable price.

Well, I don't care if reasonable is the price of a fully tricked-out Hummer, I'm starting to save up today.

I love me that Bob Dylan. This week, with the release of Martin Scorsese's documentary, I've been in deep Bob mode. All Bob, all the time on the i-pod. Obscure releases, bootlegs, new stuff, old stuff. But something came to me as I was watching "No Direction Home", and that is this: if they ever make a bio-pic of the Bob, there is only one man who could play the part... Johnny Depp.

No. Really. Look at these two photos, and tell me that this isn't another case of separated at birth.


You see?

Or, failing that, Johnny could play Jack Barron in the film version (never to be made, I'm afraid) of "Bug Jack Baron" and Laurence Fishburne could play his friend who's the president of the Black United States. And Christopher Walken could play the creepy old guy who's using the pituitary glands from little kids to remain young for ever.

This morning, someone making an illegal turn attempted to cut in front of me to access the Metrorail parking tower. And boy howdee was she pissed that I wouldn't let her in to my turn lane. She gesticulated wildly with the hand not holding either the steering wheel or her early morning cigarette and made rude faces at me as she slammed on her brakes to avoid plowing into my side.
Since there was no one behind me in that lane, she was able to get where she wanted to be a nanosecond or two later than she prefered. This meant that she got to enjoy dogging me as I went around and around the spiral ramp...in second gear. I actually had to drop it into first on the first ramp, because people were stopping at the top.

That made nanosecond bitch go crazy, for sure, and she was up in my tailpipe for the next six rounds. She actually honked at me! To go faster. Up a spiral ramp. For what? When I finally found a parking spot (and I had to pass by at least a dozen because she was so close that I couldn't brake for them) the bitch roared past me and honked again, gesturing with the middle finger.

I responded in kind, along with a shout out to her: You are an idiot!

It was that kind of day, all day.

The printer was possessed. The boss had a millionty-two things for me to scan into Word. The purchasing tsar had a favor to ask (and you always say yes to purchasing). My mac couldn't get connected to the web. The Other Boss (and you better believe that I'm thinking up a name for her) was on my case about our "non-working" fax machine.

Except it works fine. The problem is, as the techies are wont to say, between the device and the chair. But she won't hear of that, and so I've had to call in a tech support call on a perfectly fine fax so that I can tell her that it's her problem. Maybe if she didn't jam 20 pages into the machine and walk away, it would work.... or if she fanned her pages first. Or whatever.

But I am just a secretary, and it isn't for me to tell a director that she doesn't know how to operate a fax. So I just call tech support.

And then I work. And work. And work. And then I come home and cook dinner. And drink. And pass out.

And in the imortal words of Jackson Browne, do it again, amen.

On another note, my mummy is playing best three out of five with death. She's back in her nursing home, and doing well. If by "well" you mean eating and breathing. But, hey! that's an improvement over her condition in the hospital.

I am reminded of the scene in "Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey" where they are playing Twister and Battleship with death, and beating him. It's a lovely send-up of Bergman's chess match. Or the badminton match in The Dove, which was itself a send-up of Bergman.

Whatever. I've had enough tonight. I'm off to watch Marty's Bob documentary.