Nimbus 24, 28.

DIARY

Note: Connor Coyne is unable to post to his blog today. He is sick with a cold. He has deputized me, his good friend from New School, Antique Olive, to post in his stead (bestowing upon me all privileges thereupon, including, among other things, his username and password -- I'll never tell, so don't ask.) What follows is the post as dictated to me by Connor (who is in his bed at present and running quite a temperature. I'm taking notes to clarify any muddy contexts or blathering that comes about on account of the temperature he's running.)

- THE WEEKEND - I've been reading Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov¹.
- On Friday I didn't make as much as progress in Pale Fire as I'd wished² though I did read a remarkable critical essay on Walepole's Vathek³, which I'm liking more and more as time⁴ goes by. In the evening, Jess⁵ and I watched the Olympic opening ceremonies⁶ with the sun and moon⁷ balloons coasting above the crowds, and dancers waddling onstage wearing monstrous condoms on their heads⁸.
- On Saturday, I got up and took the train to Manhattan for Frederic Tuten's new "radical approaches to fiction" seminar⁹. Back home, I read more of Pale Fire¹⁰, and skimmed poor Gulchenrouz's¹¹ dilemmas on the island. I watched a little bit of the Olympics as well. As evening drew on¹², Jess and I bundled up and set out to celebrate Valentines day. Early, I know. We went to a cute little place in Little Italy with wonderful gnocchi¹³. Afterward, we took the Q on to Times Square, transferred to the 7, and rode out to Queens where we met my coworkers Isobel and Brett and Nouronihar (who once was in the same situation that I am), and Brett's girlfriend JoAnna (sp?). We went to Miriam's (another coworker) performance of a Midsummer Night's Dream. She played Hermia, and the production, while a little rough around the edges, was both energetic and fun¹⁴. The black-box space in which the play was performed was part of a two level restaurant and bar. Some sort of cover band setup immediately took over the space after the show, while the rest of us went down into the catacomblike¹⁵ basement, much like the caverns of Eblis to which I will never be tempted, but to which I could not go if I wished, for drinks and karaoke. Jess sang her classic "The Letter" by the BoxTops. When we finally ventured out onto the street and took the G home (it was my first time riding the G), the blizzard was already in full swing, with a monstrous wind roaring up over Long Island City from the river and horizontal sheets of snow sweeping over us. I felt for Jess' poor legs, exposed to the cold. We took a shortcut through Fort Greene Park, which was an absolutely hostile and alien landscape¹⁶, the snow so creamy and drifted that we could only mark out the paths by the placement of streetlamps, and such swirling clouds that even the lights on the streets below were lost like some lighthouse winking out across miles. When we got home, we warmed up with a shower and hot cocoa¹⁷.
- On Sunday, I was going to go to church, but did not, on account of the snow and the insane amount of work I had to do. I struggled through another hundred or so pages of Pale Fire¹⁸. Jess made chili¹⁹. I was up until 4 AM critiquing my classmates writing for workshop. I love my wife!

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- WEATHER - The Weather is wonderful, and probably a factor in getting Jess to make the chili²⁰, so it's doubly-blessed in my book. Only Yoopers would be nonplussed by the amount of snow that fell on the Big Apple Saturday and Sunday, and after a dreary December and a balmy January, it's nice to finally see winter from a more crystalline perspective. It's supposed to warm up later this week (and when it does, oh, there will be flooding), but I can hope the forecast is wrong, right? Hey Midwest, you're next!
- FEBRUARY - Is the month of weddings.
- TODAY - Is Dresden Firebombing Day.
- HAPPY BIRTHDAY - Peter Gabriel, Grant Wood, and Thega-Iouri Shereh-Elpme!

NEWS OF THE WEEK
The Mercury News - Visalia man held on charges of bank robbery, hostage-taking.²¹

QUESTION OF THE DAY
If you were trapped on a desert island with no prospect for escape, but all of the amenities of a modern-day apartment, what would you make for dinner?

<sup>1. Aka Charles Kinbote, aka John Shade.

2. Ala Timon of Athens, aka William Shakespeare. But this is not the present architect of our immediate quandary. Our struggle is as Germanic as it is Spanish.

3. A grotesque tale of the most grotesque grotesquery. I was disappointed, myself, and much preferred Lewis' The Monk. I shivered when I read the last pages of the piece, describing the good Monk's incantations upon the eagles and butterflies and droplets and starlets, and I maintain a good hope for his future restoration, by which I mean both that of the good Friar himself, as well as for efforts by which contemporary critics might correct the understandable errors of neo-classical censors (in prohibiting Matthew Lewis from distributing his story to its full effect).

4. Time, I've been given to know, has completely eased our author's transition from Flint and Chicago to New York. Mr. Coyne requests that you remain his friends in spirit, and continue to comment as you wish, but that you cease imploring his return to the Midwest. It'll be a cold day in Hell when he leaves this beauteous coast! Incidentally, don't plan on making a visit. Ever.

5. I can only think that "Jess" must be a sort of code Connor uses in connection with this blog when referring to his wife, "Matilda."

6. When watching this, I observed that "MSNBC knows nothing, got it? Here they've said that Turino is the largest city to ever host the Winter Olympics and is the fourth largest city in Italy. This is a triavial error of the most eggregious magnetude! Sarajevo is the largest city to ever host the Winter Olympics, and the fourth largest city in Italy is Turin!" (That extra 'o' makes a big difference)!

7. Manufactured in Amsterdam.

8. By "monstrous" he doubtlessly refers to a recent study (as published in News of the Weird) addressing the question of national endowment (not economic). In said survey, the Italians were second only to the French. Americans, meanwhile, straddled the median.

9. He was not alone in this undertaking; he shared it with Reinhardt, Marco, Erica, Sarah, Daniel, Alex, and Josephine, among some others. He told them not to come over for a visit. Ever.

10. I begin to doubt that Connor refers to Nabokov at all, but that the phrase is actually a code he uses to establish a connection to either the Monk who was tempted astray by intervening demons. I know that he read Lewis recently, and that the wandering Jew in that story seeks out death with the words: "I rush into fire; The flames recoil at my approach." Could this fire rushed into not damage the man on account of it's weakness? Might we not equate the weakness of the fire with pallor? And is it truly that far-tetched that the Wandering Jew himself is meant to collide, coincide (in fallen grace) with Ambrosio himself? Oh, if only he had had a friend, an ally, to keep his practice pure, to keep him from falling under the corrupting influence of the world. The Austerity of Religion is almost as formidible as the Austerity of Art.

11. I am overcome by the gnostic turpitude of this "piece" of "literature," and see no semblance whatsoever between Gulchenrouz's dilemma and those belonging to reality.

12. As embittered Deconstructivist painters strive to render lines and circles, and alas!, they are mere mountains and trees. But I could never paint, so...

13. "You gnocchi?" "No! I didn't even know that was your car." Vandals should be excommunicated, every last one. The Italians are compartively lax upon this front as compared to the Spanish, who rattle offenders with their Great Inquisition.

14. It is possible for a thing to be one thing and not another. In my own fallow brain I tend to array things along these coordinates. This show, fun and energetic. Hydrogen fusion, energetic but not fun. Neon fusion, fun but not energetic. Pale Fire, neither.

15. Suggestive, perhaps, of the Sepulchre of St. Claire in which Anbrosio and Metilda raped the unfortunate Antonia, and where the evil prioress imprisoned poor Agnes for so long. But the Queens catacombs were much more cheerful.

16. Note how cunningly he evokes in the snowy sweep of Fort Greene park what we might fairly call the mountains to which he traveled with his "Infernal Conductor."

17. They fell asleep to the Olympics. Or rather, he fell asleep. Matilda, doubtless, went on plotting his downfall.

18. Pallid Fire, Pale Fakery, Perverse Funbling, The Cloutish Freak.

19. Meaning, doubtless, that she behaved towards him with a "chilly" coldness.

20. See Note #19.

21. I don't know what induced Connor to recommend this particularly insignificant story. Read instead about the real travesty of the art of seduction.</sup>

END OF POST.