Oh, Boogers

In theory, the transition from fall to winter is my favorite time of year. Unfortunately, I can almost predict more precisely than i can the approach of Chanukah when my sinuses will go into seasonal shock. I've been fighting it since last Friday and endured it through turbulent flights to and from Jackson and Denver. Thus, my creative prowess have been diminished of late. I hope to be back to 100% soon. Now at about 68% compared to 28% at the same point last week.

Two Lives for the Journey

Certainly the last thing I needed was yet another book to add to the pile on the nightstand shelf, but Martin Duberman's The Worlds of Lincoln Kirstein is proving to be worth the $37.50 investment. Kirstein has always been a fascinating figure, if only for that pouty, overly self-aware expression in all of his photos. (He did an entire series posing as gangsters and boxers despite his Harvard roots.) I've read at least a couple of his self-penned memoirs and other books chronicling his era and circle that sometimes crossed with the previously mentioned Leo Lerman who cites him occaisionally in his journals. These two long lives that were contemporaries. give or take a couple of years, shared a commonality of various same sex couplings but chose very different paths in their mutual marriages. Lerman was with a male partner for decades, and Kirstein was married to a woman in a virtually chaste but not unloving relationship. The crankiness in those photos is apparently not a pose but perhaps connected to his likely bipolar disposition.

Though his lineage and circle are ones I could only dream about, there is much about this 6'3" jewish man's life I could relate to, particularly his own memoirs such as Mosaic in which he muddled fact and fiction and used an anonymous 1930s magazine photograph to represent a past lover. What is fact and what is fiction? And why should one muddle with clarifying those two f-words instead of focusing on truth? That, indeed, is why I ultimately abandoned my path in journalism, but then recent infractions at the Times and New Republic prove that I am not alone in the blurring of the lines.

Kirstein himself summed it up best when introducing a teenage production as being "a world wholly, profoundly dedicated to the realization of the unreal." A "bad "student who was too inventive to follow instructions or color within the lines, he ambled down many paths before making his name in the ballet world and proving one of the most influencial forces in 20th century art. Knowing that it's nearly impossible to sort out the fact and fiction of his life makes the book all the more interesting of a read.

The last thing I am interested in following is a tedious tale of mental disfunction, but that's fortunately a small part of this 723-page read. A couple of decent books, of course, are welcome additions to the impending chase of the sun across America and a good diversion from trying to guess how many people in the two surrounding rows have TB.

24/Lost

No, the above title does not refer to the TV show but my past 24-36 hours. Crash, burn..bleah. At 4 p.m. United called to say that my return flight was cancelled and they put me on one for Tuesday at 6:50 a.m. Tuesday. United actually calling you? What a concept. That was fine, I didn't want to arrive at 11 p.m. anyway and deal with parking. What's twelve hours delay. After checking in near the airport, I ordered a chicken related entree at Charleston's with some trepidation. It had a mysterious mix of mushrooms and havarti cheese and ...bacon. Bacon? I think the last time I had that was in 1987. I pulled it aside and made it halfway through. It didn't taste that bad, just somehow not quite right. Two hours later, "not quite right" meant five hours of retching, fever and various other combustible actions I'll spare you the details. I wasn't up for the 6:50 flight, and almost dropped the phone as I went through hearing United electronic voice "help" line repeat "I think I heard you say..." six or seven times. All I did the past 36 hours was watch the two-part American Experience piece on the history of the Mormons, reminding me that it's just a few weeks before those well-scrubbed 19-year-olds return to the Mission. I'll have to remember to talk to them in Spanish to ask probing questions about Joseph Smith. Joseph Smith, what a wild and crazy guy!