tied to a door

My first day of a ten day holiday has enjoyed auspicious (if slightly mixed) beginnings. Last night I read for hours after N went to bed. i listened to my head phones and enjoyed a strange commingling: Orson Welles and the Mercury Theatre troupe reading Julis Caesar followed by Green Day's American Idiot. I thought both were appropriate, each dealing with tyranny and responsibility. As I am soon to complete the first volume of Foote's Civil war narrative (a week behind schedule in my best imitation of McClellan) I am harboring a desire to read a slim volume of fiction before beginning the second installment of the Foote. I had originally thought of Red Calvery by Issac Babel but given the moribund trajectory of the past 24 hours (if not this week) then I think that Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Illych is a better fit. Indeed as client from work passed on yesterday and I then discovered this morning that Artie Shaw was laid to rest I pondered my own fortune. I have seen only one corpse in the past year (that was today, at noon) and that person died in their sleep. Oh, I often shudder at my comfort.

A return to Ivan Illych is important for myriad reasons, most notably for my friend J Barry who reccomended such over decade ago. I was struck then by its singular flame, its absence of angelic comfort. It is easily matched by The Kreutzer Sonata but that is for another samovar.

I was dealt a sinister laugh theother day when Joel cited Rumsfeld's logic "with the troops" that you have to tie yourself to the tree that you have in the tsunami, not the the tree you'd like. Such language is sadly not bound (bad pun) to our own era as I have reached the section in the Foote where Bragg has liberated Kentucky from the despotism of the Union. Not to ponder partisan but if you OWN people should you be tossing about rhetoric of Liberty? Obviously, Abolition was a secondary issue to most who fought for either side; preservation of the union and resisting invasion were the ideas held high, but i find a sour tint to such considerations.