November 24, 2012

Dedicated Friday at the Y. Ran over two miles without thinking about it, reading The Sun in Splendor, finding only two typos, stopping then only to take an aerobics class, which turned out to be mostly stretching. I’d lost track of how little I stretch. How my body protested being forced back into it!  I was the only man in a class of women, and the female instructor’s eagerness to adjust and guide my body stopped just sort of indecency. Not that I minded.

Got up under starlight (under beautiful and surpassing starlight, Venus brilliant in the east, Jupiter radiant in the west) this morning to repeat the regimen, but the Y was dark and creepy. Forgot it was Saturday. The stars still burned brilliant when I settled down at Edna’s to write on my Thanksgiving play, called Thanksgiving. The worst music in the world–jazzy holiday songs and popped-down jazz standards–didn’t wholly prevent the creative flow.

Yesterday I attacked the front terrace harder than it’s been attacked before, sawing and clipping and ripping out. Leather gloves were barely sufficient against the great daggers of the rose canes. Found last summer’s mockingbird nest, all lined with snugly plastic. My hatred of wild honeysuckle is almost mystical.

When not gardening or working out, spent yesterday on the phone to Mombai, trying to get Microsoft to correct a billing error. Exhausted, I withdrew from the fray vaguely assured (but by no means certain) that I had been victorious. The apparatus is expressly designed to prevent communication with anyone who can actually help. “Customer Service” is designed specifically to prevent customer service. Quite amazing, actually. It’s too complicated to be accidental. Premeditated malice lurks behind it, a dark intelligence experimenting on how much suffering it can inflict before provoking outright violence. Everyone has a packaged statement before them to be read rote, consequently no one listens to what the actual problem is. I started saying “Let me speak to your supervisor. Now,” first thing. Surprising how that moves things along. The Indian gentlemen were kind, and probably genuinely sorry they didn’t know what the hell they were talking about.

The dusty pink antique rose still blooming after many freezes.