The Overnighter

Furnished or unfurnished?

I don’t know Cambridge well because I know it well enough. I’ve only been there a few times; once, with Terry Brogan—the twentieth anniversary of our visit is fast approaching (we took photos, of course, of Le Corbusier’s Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts.) The first time I went was to cover a basketball game; when the Hahvahd squad beat my school’s team, I asked Satch Sanders if he was surprised to beat us, and he looked at me as though I had asked him if he was surprised that it was cold in February. There have been some scattered other visits, none meaningful.

But we all know it well enough; we all must live with Cambridge, nearly everywhere we go. There it is, in Pasadena, planning the parade; it is all over San Francisco—San Francisco, that town settled by opportunistic Yankee clippers, laid out by salts who braved Cape Horn (unlike we Angelenos, who merely braved Flagstaff Arizona, don’t forget Winona and mighty pretty Oklahoma City.) And even if we for a minute would like to close our eyes and forget their camouflaged nods to waspishness, there is a considerable Cambridge diaspora right here in Los Angeles, mostly women, mostly cultured, mostly reckless.

~~~

The immigrants here from Mexico and Brazil rarely tell me what I’m doing wrong; they see me as a person with a soul. The immigrants from Cambridge, on the other hand, their license is to ask the leading question that aims to critique. They may ask me embarrassing questions; they may tell me things about my health I never knew nor cared to; they may be certain they know my financial arrangements, and make recommendations; they see me as a little Cambridgian myself, but that only indicts me; they really like Lynn, maybe because the mere name Lynn itself suggests quirky gentry, harmlessly nutcakes Mary Baker Eddy, and an ocean breeze.

~~~

One thing I’ve noticed about the Cambridge ladies: they like to try to provoke you, then are shocked to see you provoked. Certainly there is something wrong? They are like the Hofrat Behrens in The Magic Mountain: “What do you mean, you’re well? I have never met anyone who is well in my life!” In ordinary societies, provocation is a force to lay beside love and revolution; in fact, it is healthy nearly everywhere; but in Cambridge, provocation is folded up like lingere, only to be taken out and worn for a private audience—and of course, once the Cambridgean goes abroad, all the local mores are ditched.

The Cambridge lady abroad really lives, then, to provoke. Show that you are provoked by a Cambridge lady who has pushed your buttons and then the condescending cures come rolling in: she will refer you to yoga, acupuncture, the Tao, therapy, ginger tea. She will do her level best to feign that something is wrong—when of course it is—that’s why you’re provoked, right?—and you are already sensibly dealing with it by…yes…being provoked…but never mind that. To the Cambridge lady, you now have something to cure.

~~~

I’ve tried to figure out why this is so, and I imagine like most disturbing things it really originates with the male. The males I’ve known from Cambridge would never be known as the quiet disturbing type; oh no, abuse is written all over them, in loud letters. Their life is a constant sneer, a nonstop pose, an imposition of perpetual lack. No amount of degrees can compensate, no wisdom gleaned will ever come to a final resting point. The Cambridge man is perpetually finding fault with everything, perpetually defining himself by his faultfinding. The Cambridge ladies undoubtably were on the front lines to absorb the barrage.

~~~

[My favorite Cambridge lady was one I dated putatively in 1988: LeBouttilier. She was a travel agent for African tours. She had written a great book called “Bush Bimbo” about her adventures in Botswana. She remains my favorite, because, when I once gave her an intellectually mushy card, she said, helpless to provoke: “Joseph, what you wrote was beautiful, but it was inaccurate.”

I see she is now in Australia. The best part was, she wasn’t from Cambridge at all. But very close.]

~~~

You wonder about EE Cummings, who wrote such gentle, such beautiful things. Then suddenly there is this utterly savage, savage poem:

THE Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls
are unbeautiful and have comfortable minds
(also, with the church’s protestant blessings
daughters,unscented shapeless spirited)
they believe in Christ and Longfellow, both dead,
are invariably interested in so many things–
at the present writing one still finds
delighted fingers knitting for the is it Poles?
perhaps. While permanent faces coyly bandy
scandal of Mrs. N and Professor D
…. the Cambridge ladies do not care, above
Cambridge if sometimes in its box of
sky lavender and cornerless, the
moon rattles like a fragment of angry candy

Who is really the savage one here? It may not be the Cambridge ladies after all…it may be cummings himself. Yet we are forced to deal with the resultant reaction. And knowing as much, we can forgive them their merely frivolous provocations.

The Overnighter

Brogan, Terrence, Just What is it that Makes Today’s Hermtown so Different, So Appealing? 2007

I don’t like Thoreau, but I read him anyway. Thoreau, of course, is mostly a response to Dana, the success. And Dana is an adventurer, two years older than Thoreau, writing a wonderful if boyish book at an early age, his success driving Harvard peer Thoreau mad. Two Years Before the Mast is adventure, the seafaring fare that led to Moby-Dick. You can feel Thoreau turning green on every bad page of A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers–two years, one week, before the mast, on a lazy river—could there be any more contrary protest to Dana’s success than that?

And other than Walden, have you ever read a Thoreau book that wasn’t a complete mess, mostly unfinished, only somewhat rescued by an editor a century later? Still, I read him anyway.

~~~

[Lesniak asks, why the sudden spate of Overnighters? She thought it was May 1 already, when it was barely April. I was obliged to explain that The Overnighter is not a good sundial. But in truth I didn’t have a good answer—the simple fact is, after a year of only writing one a month at the top of the month, I am now writing one whenever I feel like it. That year, whatever it was, is done.]

~~~

The idea of living two years on Walden Pond is obviously derivative of the idea of living two years before the mast. After his two years, Dana went on to do something else of stature: he brought maritime jurisprudence more favor to swabbies. He also successfully argued before the Supreme Court that the North could blockade Confederate ports and remain within U.S. law. Thoreau wasted away between forty-one and forty-four, probably of complications contracted years earlier, working in his father’s pencil factory, the shavings having ransacked his lungs. (Dana died in Rome, of the flu).

But The Maine Woods is largely an adventure book too; that one is the best Thoreau. Thoreau himself was the main editor on that one.

My own life is far more like Thoreau than Dana’s. I have sat quietly, reading or writing, through most of it. Though I don’t bring much peace to others, I am at peace with myself. I skimp, live small, walk for miles. The fact that the backyard sometimes gets weedy doesn’t bother me at all. I couldn’t build a cabin—no patience for doing much other than writing—but I could build a yurt, and I could live in one too.

~~~

A week ago, we had the interior of the house painted. There have been other projects of considerable scope this spring.

This afternoon, madamina, frantic with the planning of a coming family event I do not understand, led me down to the basement and told me she wanted it cleaned. She pointed out a hundred things. I only wanted her out of the way. She left, and I cleaned it. I always think of Thoreau in the basement—the space is small, my lungs are bad anyway, and I itch after ten minutes. Still, I stuck with the job, and cleaned it. She didn’t even check it later.

Every now and then I looked out the open door, saw the green, saw the day, heard the birds, and sat down to read St. John of the Cross. There are about three hundred books in the basement, almost all good, almost all classics. How I feel about a book is indicated by whether or not it makes it up into the house: if the book might be read soon, as about another two-hundred may be, they are upstairs. If they are more hanging out like pinch hitters, ready for a clutch situation, they are in the basement. Almost all the spiritual books—the Augustine, the Thomas a Kempis, the St. John of the Cross, the Theresa of Avila—are in the basement, along with many dusty philosophers.

A few days ago I was also in the basement and found Sartre’s The Transcendence of the Ego, which contained this marvellous appraisal:

“Consciousness a great emptiness, a wind blowing towards objects.”

All afternoon I contemplated that: the object could be trees, birds, wind itself, philosophy itself, a woman, God, Old Overholt. Then I was drunk for many hours.

St. John of the Cross has a wonderful diagram explaining how to ascend Mt. Carmel. Nada nada nada nada nada nada (nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing) is on the path of ascent.

Thoreau has snuck upstairs sometime in the past three years—I don’t remember when. He’s going back down. I don’t have upstairs time for him. Sartre, and St. John of the Cross: welcome up.

The Overnighter

Where the clerks are

You may not recall, but in the last Overnighter (Overnighter 68), I couldn’t recall one of the names of the two new employees at the 7-11 where I buy my Modelo for $1.11. Carolina and…Carolina and…

His name is…Guru.

~~~

Guru looks to me like a complex man. Carolina does not look to be a pointlessly complicated woman. The other day Carolina asked my name, without an introduction even; I suppose she did this because, without an introduction even, I call her “Carolina” off of the strength of her name tag alone. The 7-11 clerks at the local store seem to wear their name tags religiously for three months, then intermittantly after that.

I told her “Joe” which will probably be easier for her to say than “Joseph”—although to native anglophones I am quick to point out that Joseph is in both Testaments and Joe is in neither.

Carolina is open, simple. But Guru, his brow is often knotted. He always looks tense, busy, active. I have yet to speak to him in any meaningful way. I don’t want to interrupt him, really. He could even be a…writer.

~~~

Occasionally I do visit other 7-11s, and I have to say that my native one at Hyperion and Rowena is one of the cleanest and most efficient in the City.

Lately, this 7-11 has added fruit to its offerings. There is a veritable cornucopia of the stuff where they used to have the odd Raider Christmas stockings that one Christmas (Overnighter 44). All the fruit looks polished and genetically altered.

The other day, what a great sight: the carbonation truck was in the handicapped space. Can you believe that they do carbonation of the drinks by pressure from a big truck? I’m fascinated. It’s way better than seeing the potato chip guy with the kneepads (Overnighter 36). I’m sorry I didn’t pay more attention to it, but the painters were here, and I had to get back.

~~~

And about a week ago, I was talking to Asif, my beloved Pakistani friend (Overnighter 42 et al.).

“Asif, how come six Modeli [which I almost never buy—there is no real place to hide them from Lynn] cost $6.49+tax, or about seven bucks total, but if you were to buy six separately, they would only cost you $6.66 total?”

“I don’t know, man” Asif said. “I’ll ask the boss. Maybe we need to raise the price on the singles.”

You should never ask questions about pricing. Not only is it impolite, it usually screws you in the end.