In the quotidian tides that struggle against balance, one sad item washed out to sea is my time to pause and record the things I have read and seen and done. A summary will have to suffice, playing here the part of ersatz analysis.

Yesterday I was at a conference in which I played a surprisingly contributory role. It was a conference about WordPress, the Web blogging/publishing software upon which this site and perhaps forty-eight trillion others rely. I ended up at the end of the day (I’m American. I meant that literally. It was the end of the day and people were about to disperse.) sitting about five feet from the inventor of the WordPress (Matt Mullenweg), who was (I’m positing) still mellowing off the effects of playfully-forced Widmer Hefeweizens¹, sucking down bottled water and sportingly putting up with the locals. It was at this moment that I ironically won a headshot package from photographer Aaron Hockley as a door prize, which inspired me to leap out of my seat screeching “Are you kidding me—err, awesome!” which thus daisychained into my own cataclysm of self-reflection and realization that I don’t even know who I am a lot of the time and what the hell am I doing with myself these days anyway? Mullenwegg, all precocious twenty five years of him, grinned and laughed and otherwise behaved like someone totally cut out for being around other humans. If you denote a touch of envy here it’s because I wish I could have been him on some level. But then again, I love my own life, too, even if I am terrible at explaining exactly what it is that that life is, anyway.

Rewind a few hours and I have surprised people. My coworker Jason had just finished giving one of his stellar presentations (@grigs is a talented public speaker) in which I played a brief and technical (if blithering) part. But what was interesting here is that I exposed a slice of me not actually seen often in public circumstances–though it is somewhat known in local technical circles that I am one of the founders of Cloud Four and thus must have a requisite amount of chops in the world of Mobile and Web concepts, it is not perhaps evident that I spend an awful lot of time actually floundering around in code. A surprising number of people addressed me as follows yesterday: “I didn’t realize you…knew things about that.” This felt interesting and mostly good. Cool.

Also cool: Somehow yesterday I ended up in a conversation with smart people at this same conference about Shakespeare. In which I somewhat rejected the notion of Twelfth Night being his strongest work (The Tempest, if you’re curious). I got an honest opening to quote a passage from Richard II that I’d memorized (“This royal throne of kings, this sceptered isle / This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars / This other Eden, demi-paradise / This fortress built by Nature for herself”, etc.). Most wonderfully, I didn’t have to tell them that this was the only long Shakesepeare passage I’ve ever memorized (successfully, anyway, despite repeated efforts at Sonnet #44), so it was an unsullied moment.

I finished Richard II today. I decided to undertake this particular streak of the histories in order (Richard II, I Henry IV, II Henry IV, Henry V, etc.) and with a keen obsession on following along with historical rigor. As part of this, I’m listening to a lovely set of lectures from the Teaching Company by Professor Robert Bucholz on English History from the Tudors through the Stuarts. That’s what I do when I walk around, listen to these lectures, as there are 48 of them, and this is no short thing.

There have been other books lately:

• On urging from my better half and our other friend John–both avid orchid growers–I read Orchid Fever by Eric Hansen. I didn’t love it. It made me tetchy. It rails on in that vein particular to books about people into orchids–to be fair, perhaps it serves as a sui generis predecessor to such things as The Orchid Thief–portraying orchid professionals as wacky, furiously obsessive, but utterly lovable types. Though Hansen goes to lengths to proclaim his journalistic indifference, much of the book is given over to tedious decrying of CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) and its draconian (and ill-informed) restrictions on international orchid transit. His opinions run transparently beneath his chapters like a pulse, thumping out in saccharine moments like this (regarding a man arrested for alleged orchid smuggling): “During Henry’s stay in jail…his wife and two young children were left to fend for themselves…he told me he can forgive his tormentors for what they did to him, but not for the pain they caused his family.” When I read passages like that, I cease being able to accept the writer’s objectivity. His ongoing shrill tone suggesting “Can you believe how weird and crazy these people are?! This is going to sell like hotcakes!” bugs me.
• I read both The Inheritance of Loss (Kiran Desai) and The Glass Palace by Amitav Ghosh. Both steeped me in south-central Asian history deeply useful to my intellectual growth. Both also left me slightly unsatisfied: Inheritance of Loss for its dull second plot arc (repressed immigrant in NYC, yawn) and weird, distributed implications of blame (colonialism, OK, yes, but then it got weird and hydra-like, the anger) amidst its absolutely enchanting setting and characters (I want to take the next plane to Kalimpong and rescue Sai); The Glass Palace for its momentary nuances of character interrupted by jarring leaps in chronology. Both were edifying.
• I read The Sea Runners by Ivan Doig. This book was nearly perfect, but hobbled by its lack of passion for its own plot. Loosely based on real-life events in the early 1850′s, the premise is centered around four Scandinavians who escape a Russian work camp in present-day Sitka, Alaska. They escape by Native American cedar canoe down the inside passage to Willapa Bay in Washington State. This book’s genius lies in its scenery and pacing; its total love for its surroundings and respect for the surreality of nature remind me slightly of the brilliant movie Dead Man (with Johnny Depp). Doig has an understanding of the power of trees and mist and grey on humans. The shortcoming is that the book doesn’t feel like a novel as much as a series of impressions. But I don’t care because I like it just that much.
• I read a book about Magellan’s circumnavigation of the world. But I wrote enough on that alone that it warrants its own post.

Yes, neglectful, I’ve been that when it comes to books and thoughts.

Glossing over the fact that David and I gutted the attic bedroom, ripped out the Murphy Bed and its surrounding infrastructure, moved our bedroom furniture up there, repainted the master bedroom, bought entirely new furniture–that element alone deserves its own post–and cetera, I’ll mention that I recently obtained (oh, so exciting!) a new barrister-style bookcase. I got it at a local antique place; it’s from England. What a great excuse to lovingly rearrange my entire library, with concomitant wiping of shelves with perfumed water and reorganizing of library furniture.

Detail of my new barrister bookcase.

Books in this Post