Bruce in the Bathroom

I just returned from our back bathroom, where Kim is in full effect painting the main portion, Born To Run on the portable CD player. I filmed two minutes of the process, for possible linking-to later.

She gets totally charged redoing things in the house, the more dramatic the better. I remember how I'd arrive at her flat at 617 Napa Street in the early years of our relationship, when she'd have two weekday mornings at home, and find everything rearranged and spotless.

Not being able to do that, after I moved in, what with my piles of "archives" and general Taurean intransigence, definitely added stress to her life.

Outlets, as both she and I have come to realize more forcefully since beginning to blog, are even more important than we think they are when we don't have them.

That old place in Vallejo didn't have many. Every one had a power strip or surge protector attached. And if you tried to use the microwave while toasting something, a trip to the back alley circuit breaker was your reward.

Now we have plenty of places to download electricity. But, until we started keeping our journals, not many places to upload our thoughts and feelings.

It's funny how metaphoric and literal meanings converge. Perhaps that's the most prescient lesson of the cyberpunk fiction I'm writing about this week.

Anyway, hearing "Jungleland" rumble through the walls to the front of the house, where I'm sitting, helps make everything come together, even with this paint and solvent-induced headache that won't go away for a day or two.

Archival Item of the Day

My latest excavation doesn't come from the boxes of "archives," but from a shelf of special books. It's actually a red, cloth-bound journal. The outside reads, "Year Book - 1907 - Surety Savings: The United States Fidelity And Guaranty Company - Baltimore, MD. - We Will Bond You." It belonged to my maternal grandmother, Jean Rights. She was born in 1907, so the journal is presumably a gift from her bank of some sort.

Most of the pages are blank. But some contain handwriting practice. And a few have text that fluctuates between diary-entry and creative writing exercise. I don't know exactly when these entries were written. Because they are preoccupied with concerns -- romance, alienation -- that typically don't manifest themselves until someone is a teenager, I'm guessing that they date from the early 1920s.

This is the first substantive entry:

The lights were low.
A rosy glow over all,
A soothing beauty
Tiny wisps of smoke
Wafted upward.
A faint scene of the East
Where all is mystery.
Dusky skins and gleaming weapons.
Thus it speaks.

It lulls one.
The soft lights, the faint perfume, the quiet --
It soothes one.
This weird peace
Suddenly, within the sinuous smoke
Is entwined a face.
The face of my Beloved.
In a soft mist that but adds to his wonder.
He whispers one word, "Tomorrow!"
And so I wait for the dawn of a new day.

I don't know how many movies Jean might have seen prior to writing this, but it sure bears the stamp of the popular culture that made Rudolph Valentino the star of all stars, American Orientalism at its apex.