Frowzy

"When the time comes to you at which you will be forced at last to utter the speech which has lain at the center of your soul for years, which you have, all that time, idiot-like, been saying over and over, you'll not talk about the joy of words. I saw well why the gods do not speak to us openly, nor let us answer. Till that word can be dug out of us, why should they hear the babble that we think we mean? How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?"

-- Orual, in C. S. Lewis' Till We Have Faces

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Faces amock, turned upside down on my desk, finally closed. A magnificent read, a pre-Girard rereading of a sacrificial, mythological text. Cupid, Psyche, filtered through Orual, on pagan ground. Is it, like A Grief Observed, an unveiling of death?

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A Christmas Carol is next, halfway done. I'm stealing a break in a little over an hour to catch Hamlet at Cincy Shakes (finally, after two weeks of trying, a matinee on a puffy, gray Saturday). But it's now or never, for both: Carol rehearsals start Monday, and Hamlet ends tomorrow.

Speaking of the Carol, the beginning of its rehearsals marks the end of my first run of shows. We finished touring Sleepy Hollow and Cinderella yesterday. Turned in the paperwork, too, with accompanying checks and notes. I am now one-fourth of my way through my first (?) professional gig, and the bottles in my room are testament to my life in Cincinnati. As is the stack of media from the library: The Flaming Lips, Miles Davis, Aaron Copland, Jimi Hendrix, and the old fave, MWS. Got music on my horizons as the world around me leaps past Thanksgiving and into Christmas.

Also caught Quantum of Solace last night, saw it with dozens of high-school underground types and middle-aged couples out for a Friday night frolic. Yet another hella-good Bond flick. I'll always be a sucker for action sequences with long camera shots from daring angles, and while some herky-jerky clips cut way too quickly, a good story and cool people doing ripshit stunts will always be enough to sustain a badass film.

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Feeling frowzy today. I did not know what the word frowzy might mean until this morning, when I saw it on my Google homepage. It means "habitually unkempt." My gut fidgets at my waistline and the piles around me grow, and with the overcast sky outside my window (so bright, the brightest color of brooding, like silver milk) and the sounds of cars driving on wet streets (peeling, spraying water from the pavement, through the treads and into the heavy air, tires leaving ghostly tracks of drier road that fade back into wetness and shine), I fight my eyes for aperture.

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Cooked for the house on Thursday night. They loved it. Ladles of casserole sauce over hills of just-right rice, sweet tea and cobbler after, and the vegetarians were just as stoked as the carnivores. And I have no chores this week; I am off, in more ways than one.

Also: Discovered the Trinity Oaks 2004 California Cabernet Sauvignon yesterday. Kept me toasty. What a wine.