Seems like I haven’t been to ballet in a long time. Seems like Jessica B. has taken my spot at the barre, after having taken over it for a while before the recital and then inexplicably relinquishing it for a while after that. Seems like I can’t frappe for shit. Seems like it’s really hot up here in the studio. Seems like a really colorful funky top that Anne is wearing. Seems like a long walk home.

Oh, hey. I kinda screwed up.

I had been thinking about featuring a poem or two in this space. First, of course, so I can show off my vast knowledge of poetry. (Heh.) But also to share some of my faves with all of you, my loyal readers. (You two know who you are.)

This thinking had started somewhat earlier in the year, but then really coalesced when I had done the Memorial Day entry and mentioned Owen’s Dulce et Decorum Est. I hadn’t included that poem then, saying it belonged for another day. Which was true. But also I thought that if I started throwing out poems, I should start with the one that I somewhat consider my first favorite poem, the first poem that really made me dig deeper and actually appreciate poetry.

But then one day, without thinking, in haste maybe, desperate for a blog entry, I just kinda coughed up Shakespeare Sonnet #30. Sure, it’s a favorite, it’s great and all, but it’s not the one I had decided to be the first poem featured here. That great honor was supposed to go to Yeats’s An Irish Airman Foresees His Death.

I KNOW that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate
Those that I guard I do not love;
My country is Kiltartan Cross,
My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor,
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public man, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.

I first encountered this poem watching a movie, actually. My all-time favorite stripper Christina had recommended this movie Memphis Belle to me. I don’t remember if I then rented it or just found it on cable somewhere. I think maybe I just happened to catch it on cable. I do remember that I watched it at my mother’s house, upstairs in the loft, on that TV up there. Must have been 1996 or 1997.

The eponymous Memphis Belle is an aircraft in World War Two, a bomber. Maybe a B-17 or B-29, doesn’t really matter. The ensemble cast are crewmen on the plane, and one of them is Eric Stoltz. He plays like this sensitive guy, and the others are always teasing him about how he’s always writing stuff down in his notebook. At one point somebody snatches it away from him and starts reading it, and I think Eric Stoltz snatches it back. But anyway they make him read aloud from it. And he reads this poem.

And he reads it as if it were something that he himself wrote. But later in the movie he’s wounded, and unconscious, and then after that when he comes back to consciousness, even just as he’s coming back around, he’s saying, “I didn’t write that. W.B. Yeats wrote that.”

But I had liked it so much when he had read it, aloud. And it made so much sense in context, in the context of his situation. (Now I can look back and think that maybe it’s a little too apropos, but whatever, right?) And it was lovely and sad. And then when you read it on the page, you see that it’s nice and traditional, good rhyme and meter. So, again, like the Shakespeare sonnet, it’s satisfying in content in a traditional form. That sums up a lot of my poetry sensibility right there.

So, Eric Stoltz reads this lovely & poignant poem, and then later announces that it’s actually from Yeats. And I know that I’ve heard of Yeats, right? I remember getting Yeats and Keats mixed up when I was in high school, or maybe later. But I’ve at least heard of this Yeats guy. Like maybe he wrote that Ozymandias poem, or maybe that was Keats. (It’s actually Shelley.) But I know Yeats totally wrote that Second Coming poem. You know, “What rough beast … slouching toward Bethlehem to be born,” that one? In Stephen King’s The Stand, one character refers to this poem, and mispronounces Yeats’s name, using the long “e” and calling him Yeets.

But anyway, I had grabbed my old copy of The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry, which I had owned for years but hardly glanced at ever, except maybe for trying to read Gerard Manley Hopkins one time, when my then-girlfriend Cathy had gotten into him. And the Norton had like fifty pages of Yeats, including The Second Coming and An Irish Airman Foresees His Death. And so I started reading some Yeats.

And some of them I liked and some of them I didn’t. But some of them I liked(!), which was great. And new to me as well. I had thought poetry to be pretty useless, like in high school, declaring that if somebody decided to write something in secret code, why the hell should I bother to try to figure it out. I even once wrote a poem, snarkily called Emily Dickinson Eats Worms, for a community college class. But then here I was, older, in my early thirties, not so full of myself now, with nothing to fear or prove, just reading and enjoying. I wasn’t being forced to read it either. Maybe that was part of it too. But whatever, here I had this amazingly great book of poetry, with annotations and explanations and short biographical sketches to fill in what otherwise I couldn’t figure out for myself.

And this particular poem, Irish Airman, I really like for a lot of reasons. First, as I said, I first heard it read aloud. And in that reading, I didn’t especially notice the rhyme or meter. It just sounded beautifully sad. But then looking at it, it does have a quite traditional scheme. And I love the contrast of the two lines about love and hate, that sort of bewilderment, that understanding but not understanding of where he is and why & whom he’s fighting for and against. I love of course his declaration of solidarity for Ireland, although he fights for England. And even more his declaration of solidarity for the poor of his county. And finally that weariness, that sadness, where the years behind and the years ahead are all even just a waste of breath.

Although it was featured in this Word War Two movie, it’s actually about a pilot in World War One, and he did actually die. Yeats wrote it for a friend, whose son is the airman in the poem. He did die.

It’s similar, the poem, to another poem, High Flight, by John Gillespie Magee. Contrast “this tumult in the clouds” in Yeats to Magee’s “tumbling mirth of sun-split clouds.” Except High Flight to me is really treacly, while Irish Airman is not. Not nearly so much, anyway. And the airman in Yeats is at least cognizant of why he flies and fights, and how unimportant he himself is in the scheme of things, whereas in Magee the pilot is all too self-absorbed, telling us how he has done things that we have never even dreamed of doing. And worst of all, Magee’s pilot declares that he has “touched the face of God.”

Number one, ew, as in it’s a bit gauche and grandiose, even for poetic metaphor. And but then number two, have you now, really? I’d figure the dead pilot of Yeats is a lot closer to God than Magee’s obnoxious braggart.

But, then, sadly, Magee did in fact die, at the tender age of nineteen, in a mid-air collision during a flight. Yeats lived to a ripe old age.

Finally, there’s one other little tidbit, regarding my love for Yeats. Having mentioned Wilfred Owen more than once now, you know that I’m a huge fan of the War Poets. But Yeats himself wasn’t, a fan, actually. Of Rupert Brooke’s poetic talent, Yeats once said that Brooke was “the handsomest young man in England.”

In all the excitement of my life of late, I’ve neglected to mention here in this forum a couple of our cultural outings to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. A week ago Saturday it was with Mother Dillon to the Kennedy Center’s Eisenhower Theatre to see Mame starring Christine Baranski.

I had the idea after talking to my mother that Mame was originally played by Rosalind Russell. This turns out to be true but also somewhat confusing. Apparently first there was a novel called Auntie Mame, by Patrick Dennis, published in 1955. Then there was a play in 1956, on Broadway, starring Rosalind Russell, who went on the star in the movie version in 1958. But then there was a musical version, called simply Mame, which ran on Broadway from 1966 to 1970, and was again revived in 1983, starring Angela Lansbury as Mame. Got all that?

So anyway, we get Christine Baranski in the musical version. And it seems like a Christine Baranski kind of role, actually. I’m a little underwhelmed in general by the whole thing, as it’s really to me such a threadbare plot, more like just a lot of songs stitched together by an afterthought of a story. I’m shocked to learn that there’s an actual novel as the basis for all this. But by the second act I’ve grown a little fonder of the thing, and I end up enjoying myself.

And it’s fun during intermission, in a Washington DC as both big city and small town kind of way, that we see and chat with a friend from St. Matt’s, on the Adult Formation Committee with me, Pat Durham. And sitting near us, whom we chat with briefly later, is Nancy Lutz, another St. Matt’s person. She’s on the Hospitality Committee.

Our seats are nominally terrible, up in the balcony, all the way up against the back wall, but the Eisenhower Theatre isn’t really all that big, so it’s not a problem. And at these prices, we aren’t going to pay the tons more to be much closer. And we can generally hear just fine, as the performers are miked, although there are a few audio dropouts here and there. And at one point, one of the actors, giving Christine Baranski/Mame a hug, speaks his line right into her lavalier, his voice hugely booming out so as to be heard I swear in the whole tri-state area.

And then just Saturday last Dawn and I go to see the Kirov production of Giselle in the Kennedy Center Opera House. I’ve seen Giselle before, and I’ve seen the Kirov before, but I’ve never seen the Kirov’s Giselle before. They’ve renamed Hilarion in their version as simply Hans.

I think Leonid Sarafanov as Count Albrecht is a tad girly, until the second act where his tour jete is spectacularly high, like his back leg practically brushes the Opera House chandelier. Viktoria Tereshkina as Myrtha, Queen of the Wilis, (scary!), is the same, leaping ridiculously high. And those Wilis are awesome. There’re 27 of them, counting Queen Myrtha. Beautiful and haunting, and all of the dancers in amazingly exacting precision. Dawn says that Olesya Novikova as Giselle is praiseworthy for not hamming it all up during her mad scene.

And more small town-ness, we meet Dawn’s old dance St. Mark’s partner Francis during intermission. He apparently has just come from being in the first act, during the hunting scene, when the servants enter bearing the day’s kill hung upside down on poles. (The scene was noteworthy to me because the dead animals were so clearly stuffed animals. It was kind of funny but then also reminded me of the time we saw that man carrying his poor dead dog in his arms a month or two back. These stuffed animals’ heads didn’t hang down right, like that dog’s head did.) We hadn’t recognized Francis, sadly, during his star turn on stage.

And a quick word from the architecture critic in me, although I know really so little about architecture. The Kennedy Center itself is one of the few more modern buildings that I actually like, although I only like it to a certain extent. I think from far away it’s great, but I think that I think that because it’s somewhat deceptive as far as its scale. Far away it looks like a smaller building. Up close it’s just yet another modern example of huge expanses of way way too much plain façade. Or at least I think so.

And this coming weekend we’re going back to the Opera House to see the Royal Ballet’s Sleeping Beauty on Saturday. Then Sunday it’s the Washington Ballet at their studio theater.

I talk to Dawn. She says that she doesn’t like that Shakespeare sonnet. Just too much self pity. And she did indeed read Swann’s Way but didn’t like that either.

Took the Blue Line to Springfield after work, where Gordon picked me up and drove us to Vienna VA. I haven’t lived in VA for a long time, apparently, since I couldn’t think of how one should go to get from Springfield to Vienna. I would have hopped on the Fairfax County Parkway for lack of a better idea.

Gordon wisely took 495 to 66 to Vienna. We would have been to the show in a little better time but for Maple Ave being completely shut down for a stretch of a few blocks. We had to detour and sit in traffic on the side streets for precious minutes. When we finally arrived at Jammin’ Java it was standing room only.

But as we stood there, me feeling sorry for us while Gordon was proactively putting together broken chairs sitting by the soundboard, I saw a man in the aisle gesturing to a woman sitting down. Looked to me like he’d found better seats and was trying to get her to come along with him to them. So when she stood up, I asked her, “Moving on to greener pastures?” She was indeed, so I grabbed the vacant seats. I looked around for Gordon, who seemed to have quite impressively built like a ziggurat of parts into some actual seating, and he abandoned his construction and came and sat down.

Gordon stayed and saved my seat for me while I went to rustle up dinner. The barmaid looked about fourteen. The guy at the register maybe seventeen. But they had turkey sandwiches and Sam Adams. I brought Gordon his beer while waiting for the sandwiches to be made. I finished my beer while waiting for the sandwiches to be made. I got another beer while waiting for the sandwiches to be made. They came out just as the lights were going down.

I had been to Jammin’ Java once before, to see Peter Case. For that show there were tables set up, so there were like thirty or so people there tops. And some young dude opened the show, and seemed like there were a lot of groupie chicks there just to see him, so it even emptied out a bit before Peter Case played. For Marshall Crenshaw there weren’t any tables, just rows of chairs. And Marshall himself came out right away. No opening act, although he did announce a few minutes later that management had asked him to split the show into two parts. So there would be an intermission anyway.

He opened with There She Goes Again, saying it was from way back, “back from day one,” he said. I don’t remember the rest of the setlists, but he also at some point played Something’s Gonna Happen, Fantastic Planet of Love, Mary Anne, Someday Someway, Cynical Girl, and You’re My Favorite Waste of Time. Whenever You’re on My Mind, too, maybe. Some covers as well: Nineteenth Nervous Breakdown, a Buddy Holly song something like Annie is Working the Midnight Shift, two Gene Pitney songs – Love My Life Away (Marshall said that used to close his shows with this, back when he played with his brother at CBGBs) and Twenty-Four Hours from Tulsa (apparently written by Burt Bacharach). Some newer stuff I didn’t know: Sunday Blues and a sweet song, about moving into a new place, called Twenty-Five Forty-One. Maybe Gordon will remember if I’ve missed anything.

The crowd was old, like us, although they started trickling out before the show was over, while we toughed it out. We started worming our way up closer as people bailed on their seats. We had started out in the 8th row, towards the side wall, but ended up like in the 3rd row on the aisle for the last song. We could only see his head from way in back, but up close we could see that he was playing a beautiful old hollow-body Gibson, itself patched into a little Fender amp, which amp had a microphone in front of it. He sang into a mic as well, of course, but there was another one down by his foot, to amplify his foot tapping for percussion I guess. It was his left foot, I noticed, because the shoe on his right foot for some reason didn’t have any laces.

This is one of my favorite poems. I can recite it from memory, although Dawn tells me that I do it in an especially annoying way. I think maybe I do it in some sort of stylized performance. Or as an acting audition, more likely, probably how my first wife would have. Or how she maybe actually even did, although I seem to remember that she used sonnet number twenty-nine as an audition piece.

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste;
Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow,
For precious friends hid in death’s dateless night,
And weep afresh love’s long since cancelled woe,
And moan th’expense of many a vanished sight.
Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o’er
The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,
Which I new pay as if not paid before.
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restored, and sorrows end.

I remember, not being an especially literate dude, and not speaking French either, being taken a little aback by the phrase in the second line, “remembrance of things past,” when I first read it. Hey, that’s Proust, I said. Only later would I learn that À la recherche du temps perdu is in fact more literally translated, and is more accepted as the English title nowadays as, In Search of Lost Time. I’ve never even tried to read Proust, though. I think Dawn’s said that she’s read Swann’s Way. Anybody else out there Proust fans?

What I love about this poem though is that it’s honest and true in content but also delicious in form. It’s so utterly grandly over-dramatic, describing the mere act of thinking of the past in so tragic of terms. Just remembering is heart-wrenching drama. But that way the present dear friend can then be so greatly contrasted, I guess. But still, I love that “which I new pay as if not paid before,” that totally reliving whatever pain that still lingers.

But then all of this is couched in the beautiful language that Shakespeare could rattle off endlessly, apparently effortlessly. This poem is like candy in the mouth when reciting out loud. It just makes the mouth feel good to recite these words.

Try it.

Dawn and I both take the day off from work and visit museums with Sarah. We go to two of the Smithsonian museums, first American Indian and then American History. Apparently I haven’t been to a history museum in a while, as I find myself pretty much overwhelmed by the overstimulation. It’s just all too much.

The docent at the NMAI directs us to the fourth floor, where there’s an introductory film that plays every twenty minutes in the Lelawi Theater. We get up there about halfway through the eleven o’clock showing, sow we wait ten minutes or so for the next one. Inside the theater there are no seats proper, just risers for seating, with the screen in the middle, ampitheatre style. The screen is a triangular wooden structure with three blankets, one on each side, on which is projected the film that we watch, called Who We Are. There’s a boulder beneath the screen structure on which images are projected as well. And there’s a domed ceiling above us, again with images. There’s a lot to look at.

The film itself is rather shapeless, just sort of meandering from cliches about respecting the land and losing & refinding ancient practices. There’s one montage that I like, showing the immense diversity of this group of peoples: people dancing around a fire, then like someone bowling, then an astronaut, that sort of thing.

We exit from the theater and are led immediately to the Our Universes exhibition. I try to find some structure here, but I fail. There’s a sign at the beginning saying that the stars on the ceiling and the equinoxes & solstices on the floor will help guide us. I see stars, but nothing on the floor. I do eventually come to recognize that there are eight galleries in the exhibition, four groups of two, each group probably representing a season or one of the equinoxes or solstices, but it’s pretty vague. I’m looking for more signage.

Each gallery is presented to us by a particular “community,” e.g. Pueblo or Quechua. Here again we’re faced with the remarkable diversity of the subject of the museum, the peoples themselves stretching from Point Barrow to Cape Horn. That’s a lot of territory to cover. A lot of people.

There are no straight paths anywhere in the museum. All of the wall curve one way or the other. At times the glass of the exhibit cases throw off weird reflections of the light, so I have to sort of dodge back and forth to try to see whatever is in the case. The galleries are all shaped differently, so I lose my way and double back at times when I’m trying to go a different way. It’s all part of the experience, I guess, a deliberate anti-linear-ness. A different way of thinking.

We eat in the Mitsitam Native Foods Café. It’s a cafeteria setup with different stations representing different regions. Dawn & I both grab from the South American foods, where apparently tamales is the plural of tamal & I have one. Dawn has the quinoa. Sarah goes for a wild rice salad.

There’s more overstimulation at American History, where we tour the America on the Move exhibition. It’s all more like the American Nostalgia Museum to me. Like for instance, you’d figure that a history of American transportation exhibit would include the automobile, and you’d be right. But do they really need the 1948 Tucker and the 1950 Studebaker and the 1953 Glasspar and the 1954 Buick and the 1965 Ford LTD and the 1965 Mustang and the 1967 Pontiac Grand Prix and the 1972 VW Beetle and the 1977 Honda Civic and …

Well, you get the idea.

I do actually have a hootin’ good time at the American Maritime Enterprise exhibit. There’re lots of models of sailing ships of all scales. Good Horatio fun, although they do have a lot of stupid stuff from before and after the Napoleonic Wars, like anybody’d be interested in that. I go through the hall twice, and then we go through again when we leave.

I finish yet another Horatio book. I’m going through them too fast, and soon I’ll be through them all. What will I do then?

I guess I can go back and re-read them. I’ve ended up buying all of them so far, except for the first one, Mr. Midshipman Hornblower. I can probably spring for that one as well. And one of the things I’d like to do is get the Nelson’s Navy: Its Ships, Men, and Organization, 1793-1815 book that I’ve seen at Second Story Books. It’s a beautiful hardcover from the Naval Institute Press, and they describe it thus:

First published in 1990, this encyclopedic yet highly readable work gives an indepth description of the Royal Navy in Lord Nelson’s time. Filled with over four hundred illustrations, the book is divided into fourteen sections that deal with the design and construction of ships, the navy’s administration, and life at sea. Other topics include shiphandling and navigation, gunnery techniques and fighting tactics, and a discussion of foreign navies of the day. Nelson’s Navy is an important source book for the naval historian, a valuable reference for the enthusiast, and a revelation to the general reader.

The hardback is thirty dollars at Second Story Books, but I see a trade paperback available from Amazon for twenty-three and change. Interesting that the average customer review on Amazon is five out of five stars.

Anyway, I just kind of gloss over a lot of stuff in the Horatio books, mizzenmasts & quarterdecks and bomb-vessels & cutters and linstocks & bosun’s mates. I’d probably get a lot more out of it all if I knew more about what they were saying and doing. Although that’s not to say that Forester doesn’t explain so much of it to the modern civilian reader. A real navy hand might find the books ridiculously dumbed down, maybe. I don’t know. But I’m often just taking things in context as I go along.

And I’m going along because these are exciting adventure stories. I feel a little guilty at times, like when I’m sharing Horatio’s excitement as he’s going into battle, not wanting some ship to get away, wanting him to get around again for another broadside, while men are being maimed and killed all around. These are war stories. Awfully gritty stuff. Lots of shit blowing up, as my brother might say. And I’m usually Mr. Pacifist Anti-war Boy, but here I am all caught up in the excitement of these war stories. Oh, who knows why we like the things we do?

So I’m reading these now for the narrative, for the atmosphere, for the adventure. I can go back later and fill in more of the details, appreciate the aracana more then. But for now, it’s fun to live in Horatio’s world and find out what happens.

And in that vein, I finish Flying Colours. I am most definitely not happy about poor Maria. And I’ve been annoyed at Horatio and his pathetic mooning over Lady Barbara and his scandalous behavior with the Vicomtesse de Graçay. But I go trucking over to Borders Books on 14th Street to get the next book, Commodore Hornblower, because I’m dying to know what happens next anyway. The Borders website says that the store also has in stock the next book after that, Lord Hornblower, but it’s not on the shelf.

I take Carol’s 9:15 yoga class, and Carol is actually teaching it, after two weeks away and then last week cancelled for the holiday. And assisting her is the same woman who was assisting when I took her class in early May, but she’s not named Karen as I thought. Although again this time I hear someone saying hi to someone named Karen, and when I turn around it’s this person that I see. But her name is Purvi. I introduce myself after class just to make sure.

Afterwards I meet Dawn outside and we walk up to Academy of Theatrical Arts to get tickets to their fiftieth anniversary recital. Dawn took ballet there for years, when she lived and worked closer, before we moved all the way across town. They’re all excited to see her, and excited that we’ll be coming to see them at the recital.

I’m looking for the next Horatio book, since I’m threatening to finish the current one soon. (Ship of the Line. Next one is Flying Colors.) The used bookstore Kultur has apparently closed, moved to Los Angeles. We go to Kramerbooks, but they only have two Horatios, Midshipman and Lieutenant. On the way back to the car we stop at Second Story Books, another used bookstore, but they have no Horatio. We’ll try Borders tomorrow.

We stop at Whole Foods for cucumbers for a salad Dawn wants to try making. We buy a bottle of white wine because Dawn likes the bottle. We stop at Safeway on the way home as well, for the regular weekly groceries.

We have quick snack for lunch, then we’re off to the dump. Officially it’s called the Fort Totten Waste Transfer Station. We have two old cabinets to take, one a kitchen cabinet, a corner cabinet, that’s been slowly rotting in the back yard while we’ve been using it to store bags of potting soil and mulch, the other a little cabinet of Dawn’s that used to hold videos, and more lately I’ve been hacking away at trying to fashion a shopmade router table, which I don’t need now with the new Ryobi saw with the extension that I want to see if I can drop a router into. The dump is fairly deserted. Some days we’ve had to wait in line, but not today.

On the way home we sort of what-the-hell stop at Home Depot. Dawn’s mother is coming to visit next weekend, and Dawn seems to think that her gardening needs a bit more show. So while Dawn looks for flowers and plants, I get ten minutes to go check out the tool corral.

I play with the fence on the Ridgid table saw that’s way out of my price range, just to see how much steadier it is than the Ryobi saw I’ve got. I’m pleased that it’s not remarkably different. Then I check out the little Ryobi bandsaw. It’s a little 9″ thing, meaning that you’ve got nine inches of clearance between the blade and the arm of the saw. It doesn’t mean that you can resaw nine inches. Depth of cut is probably like three inches or so, around the same as my table saw. I check out the Ryobi planer, playing with the depth adjustment. I think I’ll buy a planer next year. And finally I play with the drill press, trying to figure out the stroke adjustment.

I go back to meet Dawn and help her grab some hanging plants too high for her to reach. We’re on our way to get in line when I think of needing a deck box or something to replace the cabinet that we just threw away. We see a lot of Rubbermaid ones, but no prices. We decide it’s probably in our price range and grab one.

When we finally get through the line to the cashier, it won’t scan though. The cashier pages for help and has us wait while she checks through the next customer. Then she has a problem with him trying to charge something to his store account. Then her entire register computer just flat out dies. We read the gardening circular to pass the time.

At home the thing snaps together in a jiffy. The instructions are on the giant box itself; there’s no printed manual or instructions inside. The instructions are just pictures, even, no words. There’s a picture of a screwdriver and a hammer, and a block of wood with “1×4” under it. Like who has 1x4s just lying around? I find a strip of MDF that’s about right and use that. And then I stretch the plastic hinges while I’m screwing on the straps that hold the top. I have to yell for Dawn, who’s inside toasting walnuts, to help me. Finally it’s done. And it fits pretty well in the yard, where the old cabinet was. Looks a lot better.

Dawn and I go after work to Arbutus MD to the Ambrose Funeral Home. The father of our friend Rhea has passed away suddenly. We’re using Yahoo/MapQuest directions. We get lost.

Step 10 gets us off I-195 and onto Washington Boulevard/US-1. Problem is step 11, which says to continue on US-1. But apparently we should have veered off to the right, which would have taken us around and under the road on which we stayed, and would have taken us to where we needed to go. And compounding the problem was that, right around the time we were supposed to turn left on Selma Avenue, there was in fact another fucking Selma Avenue right there exactly. And we find Maple and Poplar Avenues, streets that we see on the map as being right by where we want to be, but they’re also apparently the wrong ones. Could it have possibly been any more confusing?

So we get into the classic man/woman thing about asking for directions. I’ve never before understood this, really. Like who wouldn’t stop for directions if they were lost? Well, me, turns out. But it’s because Dawn is suggesting that we stop for like any person walking. No way. I’ll stop at a gas station or some other business for directions, but I sure ain’t asking just any random schmo for directions. That’s just crazy.

So we pass up various random schmos. Dawn will say, “How about this person?” and I’ll reply “No, I don’t like that person.”

It appears from the map that we’re on the wrong side of these railroad tracks here, despite Selma and Maple and Poplar. So we find an overpass, and on the other side we find Oregon Avenue, which we also see on the map. So we take that and sure enough we finally find Sulphur Springs Road and the Ambrose Funeral Home. And later it’s only on the way back, retracing the Yahoo directions that we see where we got off track. And probably those railroad tracks are a later addition to the area, is why there are non-contiguous streets with the same name on both side of the tracks.

At the funeral home a sign directs us into the visiting room immediately to the right, where we sign the guestbook just inside the door and then wander further inside. I don’t see Rhea in the crowd. A man comes up to us and asks who we are and introduces himself. He’s Harold Jr., Rhea’s brother. He points out where Rhea is standing, talking to other people. Dawn had already spotted her, and we were just waiting politely until she was finished, whereas I thought we were waiting for her to arrive. But anyway Harold Jr. takes us over, because Rhea’s talking to some people who used to work with her, at Covington & Burling, where she and Dawn work now. Sort of predecessor coworkers of Dawn’s then. They are Roberta and Ann. We meet and greet for a while. We also meet Rhea’s mother, who’s a dear.

Then we talk with Rhea over by her father, by the open casket. She says that he doesn’t really look like him, and Dawn notes that she thought the same thing at her Grandfather’s funeral last year. There’s a kneeler in front of the casket, and I want to kneel and pray, but I’m not sure of the protocol. I’m not sure if it’s more of a Catholic thing, the kneeling and praying in front of the deceased, and I don’t know if making the sign of the cross is okay in Lutheran settings. So I opt for safety and refrain. I tell Rhea that, I don’t know why, but I found the loss of my grandparents ameliorated somewhat by the thought of them having had lost their own grandparents. Somehow I was comforted by the idea that they themselves had to deal with this very same grief. She understands.

The trip home, back into Washington, is a lot faster than the rush hour trip coming out to Arbutus, going against rush hour traffic now.

It’s our last game of the season, and we’ve got only two guys on the field at game time. We need four or we can’t play.

Usually this wouldn’t be a huge problem, as another team might give us grief for not having enough women but would also likely just go ahead and play – and expect to totally stomp us – if we don’t have enough men. But there’s a young woman in a yellow t-shirt (Balls to the Wall, I think) who’s acting as some sort of league official today. And she’s being a hardass about having the right number of people on the field. The 6:15 game that’s going on, neither team has enough women, but they’ve decided to play anyway. But yellow t-shirt is trying to stop the game. There’s lots of arguing.

We need to find some guys.

We’re lucky, though, that the game is delayed for other reasons. There are workers erecting all these tents on the Mall where we play, so we’ve only got three fields for the eight games going on this evening. With a full complement of four fields, there’d be four games at 6:15 and four games at 7:00. As it is, our 7:00 game has to wait for another 7:00 game to play before we can play. And that gives us time to find some guys.

Kate is our hero in this, stopping random young men walking or jogging by our field, asking them if they want to play. And she actually gets two guys to volunteer. The second of the two is Brian, whom I meet briefly and then don’t see again, not after Virginia’s husband Patrick shows up, making Brian unnecessary. The first guy Kate grabs, however, is Chester, and he is a total star.

Chester makes protestations at first, about how he doesn’t know the game like we do, hasn’t practiced like we have, doesn’t have a strategy like we have. So we explain that it’s like baseball, except that you kick the ball. Then we explain that we’ve never practiced. And we explain that we have no strategy, except, well, “play kickball.” So he’s perfect.

Making small talk, I ask him what he does for a living, and get this. He’s a pilot. He graduated from Indiana State University with a degree in aviation technology, and now he flies. How cool is that? Well, sadly, like a lot of pilots, he doesn’t actually fly. He looks for work. I tell him that I always look at and write down the N-numbers on planes on which I fly, and he’s excited that I know what an N-number is.

Our game finally starts. I’ve got my video camera with me, and I’ve been interviewing the players, to match up later with footage of them actually playing. Neither Ben nor Julie want to be on camera, although Ben doesn’t declare such until after the interview starts. I also interview actual fans who have shown up to watch us play: LaFaundra and her daughter, and Stephanie’s two friends, Lindsey and Hannah. Lindsey later takes over camera duty and shoots us while we play. Chester tells the story of how he was born, at home.

We play a decent game, although we lose, to Recreational Hazard, who are generally nice about it though. Chester makes spectacular catches in the outfield. And then he kicks a home run, driving in another baserunner along with him. Another time he catches a pop fly out in left field, then personally comes hustling into the infield to tag the base runner trying to get back to first base. Elisa pitches well, but she tries to give up at one point after somebody kicks a home run on her. Stephanie tries a few pitches, but Elisa eventually returns.

I get up to bat twice. The first time I fly out to shallow center field. The second time I get on base, but later I’m forced out running to third. As usual on defense I play catcher and introduce the opposing team players at their first at bats. After the game I drive Tiffany, Kyra, and Kate to the bar, and then head home.

I leave work later than I had hoped, right around five-thirty. I’m trying to get to Springfield via the Blue Line, trying to get there at six. The platform at Farragut West is packed: there’s some trouble on the Orange Line, resulting in single tracking some ways back, so my Blue Line is delayed as well. I’m late.

I get to the Franconia Springfield station right about six-thirty. I called Gordon when I was between King Street and Van Dorn, and we agreed that he would wait seven minutes then leave to come pick me up at Franconia Springfield. The cars at the Kiss and Ride are three deep when I get out and try to find him, but I don’t see him. I walk all the way down to almost the split between the Kiss and Ride and the bus lanes, and I wait.

Then I think about what car I should be expecting. When I met Gordon he had a VW Bug, then he got a Ford Escort, then a Ford Mustang (I even remember his license plate, LHB-507). Then he had a Honda Prelude. I remember all these cars so well. But I really don’t have a fucking clue what he drives now. Oh, wait, yes I do. It’s a Lexus. Babs bought him a Lexus for Christmas one year. I think it’s purple or champagne colored, even. Maybe. Oh, I don’t know. I’m waiting for my friend to arrive in a car I don’t know in a color I’m not sure.

Luckily, when he pulls up he sees me and pulls over. The car certainly looks familiar, but I am sure to forget it as soon as it’s out of sight.

We have dinner at the Hard Times Cafe in Springfield Plaza. Gordon used to manage the Mars Music here, that’s now a Baby-R-Us or something like that. I used to manage the Crown Books here that’s now a donut shop. The hostess who seats us turns out also to be our waitress. I ask her about this, and she says the hostess was just busy at the moment, so she sat us. (It’s only later that I think that this is a good strategy to make sure that customers get sat in your section, if you’re the wait staff. Seating them yourself, I mean.)

She’s a cute little number. She introduces herself as Christine. I give her my usual schtick, “Hi, we’re Gordon and Edward, and we’ll be your customers this evening.” While she’s off to get drinks, Gordon teases me about flirting with her. I’m thankful that he also notes that there’s no real actual desire behind the flirting, though. It’s just sort of habit with me. I’m not trying to pick anyone up. And she’s so young, just a girl, far too young for an old guy like me. Not that I ever picked up a waitress in my life anyway. Not to mention that I am also happily married. I ask Gordon to keep me reigned in, though, to make sure I stay friendly-nice-customer guy and not creepy-older-hitting-on guy.

Later, after dinner, when she’s bringing the check, she asks if I want more water. I’ve had a 23 oz. beer and a tall glass of water, so I tell her, “No, because … ”

And then I hesitate, because I was about to say that we’re going to be driving around in the car, maybe just listening to tunes, but anyway not especially near a restroom for a while, and I’m worried about having to pee later. And really all this is unnecessary. A simple “no, thanks” will do here.

She asks, “… because you’re already hydrated?”

And that just confuses me, the word ‘hydrated,’ and I don’t know what else to say now so I blurt out, “No, because I’m worried about having to pee later.” She laughs and walks away, but then Gordon warns me.

“Creepy,” he says soothingly.

Damn.

So when she comes back, I apologize to her for being crude. But she just immediately laughs genuinely and says that she was glad that I was honest. She doesn’t seem offended at all. So I think I’m in the clear. Gordon thinks so too. Whew.

But it was close, man.

Dawn wakes me with song, with Happy Birthday, and then she gives me a sweet card. We have breakfast but are able to be a little lazy. Yoga is later this morning; early classes are cancelled for the holiday weekend.

My class is at 10:30 a.m. Danielle is teaching. I’ve gotten kind of used to Chuck, after two weeks now, but Danielle taught my newbie workshop so I suppose it’s okay. The class is packed full, everybody’s mat is on a daisy, all thirty of us. Time passes oddly quickly. I’ve forgotten to wear a watch, but the woman next to me has one, and every time I glance up another half hour has gone by. Only in the last fifteen minutes or so does Danielle start to kick our asses.

We get home just in time to go meet my Dad at the Metro for the baseball game. Dawn walks over with me, then heads out for a walk by herself. Dad and I head over to the stadium. There’s cart vendors selling water and peanuts on the way, telling us it’s much cheaper to by from them instead of inside the stadium. I buy a water, which I’m positive has been refilled and resealed, but figure it’s okay. I drink it in the block to the stadium, but I take the empty bottle in with me and refill it twice, although the 72 oz. of water requires me to go to the restroom twice during the game.

We get sausages with pepper and onions right away and find our seats. We’re still in the middle of eating when we have to stand for the national anthem. We remove our hats. Some Springfield high school student madrigals sing their multipart harmony arrangement of the Star Spangled Banner. It’s a little awkward, holding hat in one hand and sausages in the other. Finally we get to sit back down.

We greatly enjoy the game, even though the Nationals lose. But they deserve to lose, blowing as many scoring chances as they do. We have very good cheap seats, although we do move up even further so the people walking on the gangway in front of us don’t distract us so much. And up higher we’re able to stretch our legs over the seats in front of us.

On the way home we see Adrian Fenty, who’s on the city council and is also running for mayor. He’s out pressing the flesh. I make sure to shake his hand and tell him he’s got my support in November. But of course he needs votes in the Democratic primary in September. I’m not a registered Democrat, so I can’t vote in the primary. I ask him what he plans to do, as mayor, about the Nationals’ crappy bullpen. He says he’ll work closely with Lerner, the owner.

I introduce Dad to our neighbor Kara and her dog Rosie. I take an extra fabulous picture of them. Back home I print it out and take it back to Kara. We talk about councilman Fenty, and I tell Kara that I’m not a registered Democrat because the Democratic Party is too conservative for me. Dad pipes up that the Republican Party is too liberal for him.

We head to dinner at the Carlyle Grand at Shirlington. Dawn drives while Dad rides in front and totally kibbutzes. We get to Shirlington and there’s like condos and an office building and a parking deck all new to me, although I suppose it’s been almost fifteen years since I worked down here. I’ve been to movies here still over the years, but I haven’t been paying attention to the construction. Maybe because the movies have been at night?

We meet Rob and Carol waiting at the bar. Dad calls Sharon and she’s still on her way, so we make our way upstairs to our table. It’s a nice corner table, round, big, up a step. We order drinks. I get the Carlyle Lager and Dawn gets a glass of wine. Sadly, no one else orders alcohol. I feel a bit self-conscious. Sharon arrives and I really expect her to get wine, but she doesn’t.

The food is very good. I have lobster pot stickers for an appetizer and the pecan encrusted trout for an entree. Dawn has a salad, sized up to an entree. Rob has the lobster bisque to start. Carol has what looks like mashed potatoes but is in fact creamed cauliflower. I give Dad some trout in exchange for a medallion of his pork.

We all get coffee, except Dad, who says he thinks he hasn’t had coffee since the mid fifties. Dawn and I share the creme brulee. They bring it with a birthday candle on the plate. And they’ve written Happy Birthday in drizzled chocolate around the rim of the plate. The gang sings to me.

And there’s presents too. A wonderful book from Rob and Carol, and fun toy tools as well. And a very generous check from Dad. We chat more, about Tom Hanks and politics, and then we make our ways out and home.

At home I feed the cats. As I’m bending down to put Louise’s dish on the floor, it feels a little funny how far I’m bending down. I straighten my legs and see how close I can get to my toes. I’ve never been able to get more than about a third of the way down my shins. Now I can stretch stretch and touch the floor. And I’m still wearing my shoes while I do this. I rush out of the bedroom to the other bedroom where Dawn is on the computer to show her.

Amazing. It might have something to do with the yoga.

It’s a relief to go to ballet and not have to run through the recital piece time and time again. But then Miss Jessica throws some trickier combinations at us in class. Even at the barre I’m completely inept at the double frappes that she wants us to do. I just stand there throwing out random frappes, embarrassed.

Later when we come center the adagio baffles even Miss Jessica. Another combination with changements and something new to me, contretemps, leaves me completely defeated. But it’s fun and I’m able to laugh at myself.

By the end of class we’re all leaping across the studio, first with a pique combination and then with grand jetes. Jill is easily the best leaper of us all, although she sounds like she lands hard, loud, without enough plie.

On the walk home we walk a ways with Renee, who invites us to a wine tasting. But it’s on an evening that we’re seeing the Royal Ballet at the Kennedy Center. It’s a shame, because it sounds like great fun. Renee also gives us a flyer for an almost month-long season of the Washington Early Music Festival.

I’m not even sure what early music is, but I’m intrigued. I think of it as something like the version of Handel’s Messiah that I have, the version that Dawn owned too when we met, with Christopher Hogwood leading the Academy of Ancient Music. Period instruments and things like that maybe.

It’s Wednesday, so that means kickball. Kyra goes early to squat on the fields. Kate, who originally had to stick around because of a conference call, but now the call’s been cancelled, leaves a little later. They get to the fields sometime after four. Early games start at 6:15 p.m. Our game’s at 7:00.

I mean to go home to change into sports clothing, but I get wrapped up in work at the office until after six. But I’ve got jeans on today, in case of just such an emergency, so I just change into my sneakers and I’m ready. I get to the fields about ten of seven.

Kate’s there reffing the early game, between the grey t-shirts and the yellow t-shirts. I think the yellow are Balls to the Wall. Kate’s already on beer three, of the Natural Light or whatever rank brew that Ben has brought. She’s a little loopy and has to pee.

We find nearby some sort of construction area surrounded by privacy fence. She’s able to just squeeze under a gate as I lift it up manfully. And I’ve got a pack of Kleenex, so no need to drip dry, as she puts it. She comes back under the gate and we shake hands at our mission accomplished.

Our game turns out to be a very close one, with the Parc Vista Ballers scoring one run, after which we settle in for a defensive battle. Only in the bottom of the last inning do we get a break. Ryan boots one up the third base line past both infielders and outfielders, allowing Kyra and Virginia to score before he’s tagged out at third. But we’ve won anyway.

I actually feel a little guilty at our win, snatching it away from them at the last minute. I poll the rest of our team and nobody feels even remotely bad about it like I do.