With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.
The good life, as I conceive it, is a happy life. I do not mean that if you are good you will be happy - I mean that if you are happy you will be good.
Too much sanity may be madness and the maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should be.
The only way to find the limits of the possible is by going past them into the impossible.
September 13, 2009 - 8:50 a.m.
This is a rare pre 9 AM edition of Wise Madness. At least I'm starting it at 8:08. It figures to be short so I should be done before 9.
Yesterday I did something that Rob Petrie did on the Dick Van Dyke show. I'm not going to point it out. If you were a fan of the show see if you can find it. Shout it out if you do.
My plan yesterday was to go the Take Me to the River Fest in Hastings. Just as I making my breakfast, right before I planned on leaving, I got an email from Mark from Spuyten Duyvil that the festival was postponed till Sunday due to the weather. If my phone was turned on I would have also gotten a phone call from Barbara, one of the festival organizers, that it was postponed. That's service, when you get personal notifications about a postponement.
I had a ton of things in its stead but I did none of them. I had overwhelming lethargy. I read the New York Times but that was it for the day. I couldn’t' get myself to read On the Road let alone leave the apartment. Perhaps it was health related but I otherwise felt fine. It was my first day without feeling anything in my intestines, no pain, no pressure. I spent the day on the computer or watching TV or napping. I did a lot of napping. How bad was it? I fell asleep while watching Guns of Navarone! If I needed an alibi nobody would believe that.
The good part of the festival being postpones is that the weather is going to be splendid today. That doesn't make up for the bad parts. Joe Crookston is not going to be able to make it today. That isn't the worst of it. I already had plans for today. I was going to go to Aiden and Christine's Guitar-b-cue. This is a tradition of theirs that they have brought to New York. It's a barbecue/hootenanny. It sounds like so much fun. Meg was going to be there too. I'll make it next year.
On Friday I realized that I had a flashback couple of days. I was doing things that I rarely do now but that used to be major parts of my life. On Thursday I spoke to Carey on the phone. When this millennium was just getting started I did that every single day. Now it's something I haven't done since May. I had barbecued chicken for dinner on Saturday. That was once my most common meal. This is just the second or third time I've eaten it since I moved into my apartment. After dinner I went to see Pińataland and Deni Bonet in the East Village. I see Deni plenty but Pińataland has only recently re-entered my life. As for the East Village, I haven't been there in ages. It used to think of it as my neighborhood away from my neighborhood.
The Nineties were a strange decade for me. Two of the friends I had spent the most time with, Lauren and Ira had moved away. I stopped seeing Carey (New York Carey) as often as I used to. We used to get together at least once a week. I also stopped going to Farley and Willis's. I used to see them a few times every month. Part of what filled the void was bridge. I started playing regularly with Roy. If he couldn't make it I'd just go down to the bridge club and play with pickup partners. That's how I met Andrew who introduced me to Larry, Marco, Warren, Len and lots of other people. That took a lot of my time.
The other thing that I discovered was the East Village music scene. It started with my going to Café Siné on St. Mark's Place. I then found other venues, CB's Gallery, The Sidewalk Café, Hotel Galvez, and other's whose names I forget. That's when I became a music junkie. If I had nothing to do I'd just head down to the East Village and check out who was playing. I'd walk into Siné or the Sidewalk Café and hope to discover someone new to love. I often did. That's how I met Ruth Gerson.
Some days I would just walk the neighborhood. That's how I discovered the fun weird stores like Love Saves the Day and Alphabets. There were days I went down there, got a bite to eat, walked for a while, then came home.
It was a weird life. It was at times very lonely. I'd walk around and hardly interact with people. On the other hand there was something very me about the whole thing. I felt connected to the neighborhood. It still forms the basis for the Gordon Tour of New York. I really should do it again next time I'm not doing anything.
Today I am doing things and I better get started. John Gorka goes on at 12:15. I want to leave at precisely 11:00. I'd like to leave earlier but Jill Sobule is playing guest DJ on John Platt's show and I don't want to miss that. I love Jill. I also want to hear if she plays the song I suggested. The theme is East Coast vs West Coast and I suggested John Elliot's Feet to the Fire.
This ended up being longer than I thought but I still finished before 9.
Did you catch what I did like Rob Petrie?
Whether Vain. - September 18, 2009
Daydream Nonbeliever - September 17, 2009
Primarily I Voted - September 16, 2009
The Joy of Cooking (for those that can't cook) - September 15, 2009
Take me to Take Me To The River - September 14, 2009
Email me: GordonLew at gmail
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. Horvendile September 13, 2009
