October 19, 2013

Apothecary is officially dead. They boys can get on with their interrupted lives. Not all battles are over, though: Metabolism magazine (which should know better) is carrying an anonymous opinion piece convicting us of gentrification. I haven’t seen it, but one of our number, who does design work for the magazine, has. Our being vanished will steal some of its weak thunder, so in that at least the timing is well. The most questionable academic disciplines (by this I mean, this time, the pseudo-science sociology) are the most eager to put the world in little boxes, especially if those boxes have some kind of temporary social glamour. They are as eager to deliver dogma as any snake handling preacher. There is no such thing as gentrification. There is only change.

Book club discussion of Wiley’s book in the afternoon, then off to see a poet in the evening at All Souls. The poet was good looking and gentle. Gentleness was his only poetic attribute, that I could hear, beside an impressive tolerance for the sound of his own voice.  Holly teaches his books in class, and two men behind me were discussing how he was their favorite poet. It was neither the time nor the place to ask “Why? What am I missing?” People like things they don’t have to think about. I keep forgetting this recurring truth.

Praying that my great angel’s trumpets bloom before the frost.