May 4, 2002
Thursday

Tonight I read something by that luscious lady lyricist from the island of Lesbos. She said, "Mere air, these words, but delicious to hear." Twenty-six hundred hears ago.

I may becoming addicted to poetry.

It's something I've written about before -- that I never understood poetry. Not until about a year ago, anyway. As it happened, I was driving across a long bridge on the way to work, coming from Music Theory. My head was full of the morning's lessons, swimming around without my actually focusing on them. The sun reflected into my eyes as it played against the clouds over the water, and Martha Argerich playing Ravel in the stereo. (It may have been his Sonatina or may have been the Gaspard de la Nuit.)

Somehow, all these pieces came together. For just a few moments, everything in the universe seemed right and good. And I was happy.

Soon I realized (and that's what killed my buzz), the moment couldn't be explained with music. Ravel was only part of the moment, and certainly I wasn't going to improve on him. The way to capture the essence of my experience was through poetry. And that's what poetry was -- essence.

A few weeks after that day, I bought "How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry" by Edward Hirsch. And that's what I've finally started reading. (It's a fabulous book by the way -- makes me think of Robin Williams in the Dead Poets Society.)

That's the book I've been reading today. Let me see... It took four paragraphs to say that. Not very poetic!

Austin sent me an email saying he would like to see "Italian for Beginners" with me during the week. Also, that he couldn't go tonight because he was seeing Spider Man. I suppose an independent film better qualifies as better first date material. But there isn't anyone else to see Spider Man with, so I'll probably see my big summer movie alone. (Still not sure if I can sit through another bastardization of Star Wars.)

This whole day has been lethargic. I'm generally sad and tired. It may be that my subconscious realized I don't have anything else to do today and therefore took the opportunity to thrust me into a state of slow contemplation.

I was going to go to the wine bar tonight and then decided against for no other reason than not being excited about it. And I thought about going to the Scream'n Bean, but didn't. Finally I decided to go to the Double Meat because it's more clean, I don't know a lot of people there, and I mostly wanted to be by myself. And quiet.