Apres-Juneteenth and Heat
Last night the power went out for several hours.
Though that tiny mosquito of fear keened at the back of my head about the possible loss of infrastructure (I never take my comforts for granted--ever--am always aware they could be summarily taken away, and in a Survival situation, old bats like me would be the first targets) I set out to enjoy it.
I'm up pretty much every day before dawn so I know all the shades and colors of sunrise, but sunset I'm generally up here working, or else dealing with some portion of food preparation for the family. So it had been a long time since I was aware of a long, lingering twilight at this time of year. Not that we get the dramatic twilights of northern climes. But for Southern California, this late June the sky is a glowing blue that slowly darkens. Because the smog is so thick there aren't many stars until it's quite dark. With no city lights, we saw more stars when they did begin to glimmer than we ever see normally--even when we go down to the beach, the city lights throw out a glow against the sky.
My immediate neighborhood reminded me of summer camp on Catalina in 1970: the black boxes of buildings squatting low, the serrated domes of trees between or above the rectangles, the fading light a faint blue glow, broken by tiny flashlight cones, usually wiggled back and forth, or turned dramatically up or down as people rediscovered the fun and mystery of the world by flashlight. The occasional crack of laughter and voices as people who ordinarily did not speak to one another asked variations on "What happened? Wasn't a quake--I didn't feel anything--maybe a car wreck against a power pole?" One neighbor had cranked on his generator, and so his house was lit, his a/c on, his tv flickering, as the generator roared in the yard and a smell of diesel fuel eddied outward.
So today I will los a workday as I don't have a laptop. I have to take the foreign student (who is here two more days, and this is his wish) to Universal Studios for their tourist thing. It would be fifty bucks to haul up there in the traffic and haul back, and then reverse that later tonight, and none of us want to face that grueling drive four times, so since the spouse is working it is I who must do this trip. No way can we afford the sixty smackers for a ticket, and I'm not all that interested anyway, and really want to avoid standing in lines in the heat. Having had sunstroke as a kid, I go to considerable lengths to avoid standing outside in the heat, as I faint easily.
So I will spend the day in the mall that I understand is adjacent, called Citywalk. I hope it has a book store; I will take a tablet and work as long as my hand holds out. We're going to pool our cash, and a movie might be in the offing as well, a pleasant prospect. Anyway, I won't be back all day, yet I still had a question for anyone who's read this far.
Yesterday was Juneteenth, and while I was walking around in the gloaming (the lights being out, it really could be called gloaming, a rarity in this city!) I was thinking about Juneteenth, and history, then shifted to literature, James Joyce, and then I thought, what about the classics we've come to appreciate? It's easy to take bashes at books we were forced to read. Some of those we still dislike, but others were badly taught. I mean, I am a total Jane-ite, but I can see how requiring eighteen year olds to complete a test on P&P and then write a graph on its "theme" would kill any interest, just as in the book, Elizabeth jokes about having to write love poems kills off love.
But what about the classics we ended up liking? Especially at the time? For me, one would be Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man. The alien-yet-shared emotions, but above all, the zings of possibility and vision caused by the awareness of how the story mapped over the tale of Orpheus--for the first time I saw how evoking the old could strengthen the new. Wow, how powerful!
Anyway, if you've come this far in my ramble, and have a minute to share, I'd love to come home tonight (traffic willing) to some shared glimpses of classics that readers treasured.
Though that tiny mosquito of fear keened at the back of my head about the possible loss of infrastructure (I never take my comforts for granted--ever--am always aware they could be summarily taken away, and in a Survival situation, old bats like me would be the first targets) I set out to enjoy it.
I'm up pretty much every day before dawn so I know all the shades and colors of sunrise, but sunset I'm generally up here working, or else dealing with some portion of food preparation for the family. So it had been a long time since I was aware of a long, lingering twilight at this time of year. Not that we get the dramatic twilights of northern climes. But for Southern California, this late June the sky is a glowing blue that slowly darkens. Because the smog is so thick there aren't many stars until it's quite dark. With no city lights, we saw more stars when they did begin to glimmer than we ever see normally--even when we go down to the beach, the city lights throw out a glow against the sky.
My immediate neighborhood reminded me of summer camp on Catalina in 1970: the black boxes of buildings squatting low, the serrated domes of trees between or above the rectangles, the fading light a faint blue glow, broken by tiny flashlight cones, usually wiggled back and forth, or turned dramatically up or down as people rediscovered the fun and mystery of the world by flashlight. The occasional crack of laughter and voices as people who ordinarily did not speak to one another asked variations on "What happened? Wasn't a quake--I didn't feel anything--maybe a car wreck against a power pole?" One neighbor had cranked on his generator, and so his house was lit, his a/c on, his tv flickering, as the generator roared in the yard and a smell of diesel fuel eddied outward.
So today I will los a workday as I don't have a laptop. I have to take the foreign student (who is here two more days, and this is his wish) to Universal Studios for their tourist thing. It would be fifty bucks to haul up there in the traffic and haul back, and then reverse that later tonight, and none of us want to face that grueling drive four times, so since the spouse is working it is I who must do this trip. No way can we afford the sixty smackers for a ticket, and I'm not all that interested anyway, and really want to avoid standing in lines in the heat. Having had sunstroke as a kid, I go to considerable lengths to avoid standing outside in the heat, as I faint easily.
So I will spend the day in the mall that I understand is adjacent, called Citywalk. I hope it has a book store; I will take a tablet and work as long as my hand holds out. We're going to pool our cash, and a movie might be in the offing as well, a pleasant prospect. Anyway, I won't be back all day, yet I still had a question for anyone who's read this far.
Yesterday was Juneteenth, and while I was walking around in the gloaming (the lights being out, it really could be called gloaming, a rarity in this city!) I was thinking about Juneteenth, and history, then shifted to literature, James Joyce, and then I thought, what about the classics we've come to appreciate? It's easy to take bashes at books we were forced to read. Some of those we still dislike, but others were badly taught. I mean, I am a total Jane-ite, but I can see how requiring eighteen year olds to complete a test on P&P and then write a graph on its "theme" would kill any interest, just as in the book, Elizabeth jokes about having to write love poems kills off love.
But what about the classics we ended up liking? Especially at the time? For me, one would be Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man. The alien-yet-shared emotions, but above all, the zings of possibility and vision caused by the awareness of how the story mapped over the tale of Orpheus--for the first time I saw how evoking the old could strengthen the new. Wow, how powerful!
Anyway, if you've come this far in my ramble, and have a minute to share, I'd love to come home tonight (traffic willing) to some shared glimpses of classics that readers treasured.