I became insane with long intervals of horrible sanity.
Edgar Allen Poe

The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.
- H. L. Mencken

Many people would sooner die than think; In fact, they do so
-Bertrand Russell

What I have been telling you, from alpha to omega, what is the one great thing the sigil taught me — that everything in life is miraculous. For the sigil taught me that it rests within the power of each of us to awaken at will from a dragging nightmare of life made up of unimportant tasks and tedious useless little habits, to see life as it really is, and to rejoice in its exquisite wonderfulness. If the sigil were proved to be the top of a tomato-can, it would not alter that big fact, nor my fixed faith. No Harrowby, the common names we call things by do not matter — except to show how very dull we are ...
-James Branch Cabell

November 27, 2013 - 9:54 p.m.

Pretty Maids All in a Rohe

It's late, I better start writing. What's this with evening updates of Wise Madness?

So first a couple of things from a blind spot in my blogging. I starting writing Monday's blog during my break between classes and finished late in the evening. I never wrote about what happened in between.

First I went to therapy it was an interesting session. As you know from reading this I've have an emotionally complex time of it. Lots of roller coaster rides. I surprised my shrink by getting my timeline confused. Thanks to blogging and just my natural way of looking at things if I remember that I did something I remember when. But when going through the chronology of the week I got all mixed it. I said that something happened on Friday then realized it couldn't be because that's the day I went home sick. then I said Wednesday but that couldn't be because that's when I went to the opera. But it couldn't be Monday and it had to be a school day. I was ready to say I had the week I went to the Opera wrong till I realized I did it the same day I went to the opera. Doing one didn't exclude the other. I just liked that she knew that I normally have my chronologies down well.

After therapy I ate and at a new restaurant. A Greek place opened right on the corner. Who knows what I get when I order Greek? There is very often only one thing I like in a cuisine and it's true of Greek. I ordered souvlaki. that had perhaps the best pita I ever ate served with gallons of olive oil. There was pita while I waited and of course pita with the souvlaki. I'm always looking for places to eat with a vegan. They have one vegetarian dish and it's served in a cream sauce. The world obviously thinks vegans and meatans shouldn't be friends. The world is wrong.

When I headed to the subway I saw that the booths for the Union Square Holiday Market that opens after Thanksgiving were up. But when I got there I saw that they were actually open for business! That meant taking my first walk through. Nothing new excited me and I didn't see any gifts for anyone that leapt out at me but I did say hello to old friends. Market is like Brigadoon and appears once a year and the people that work there don�t exist in between otherwise how do they remember me? I went to the Nirvana imports where I bought my cool Nepalese hat last year and the woman that I got friendly with remembered me. Yes it helped that I was wearing the hat. This year I bought ultra cool hunting mittens! They are super warm but you can take off the part that covers your fingers if you need to use them. So I can answer my phone! Last year I hemmed and hawed and said I'd have to think about it but this year I just bought what I loved the first time. I didn't have a really warm pair of gloves. I told her that next time I come back I won't have an excuse it would just be to talk to her.

I walked by the puzzle stand and before I could say anything they guy called me over, he said, "Hey genius!" Last year I corrected him on how many moves it takes to solve the Tower of Hanoi.


If there are n disks it takes 2n moves to move the pile from one needle to another. The rules are you can only move one disks one at a time and never put a large disk on top of a smaller.

I'm mad at myself now as I can't remember who my third once a year friend was. I made a new one, a woman that sold me a great chocolate chunk cookie. My "No Chewing" chocolate guy wasn't there. He now supervises the booths in the different markets so I have to look out for him. I didn't talk to the guy I've known the longest and spent the most money on, the Celtic Connection. He just isn't friendly. He never remembers me from year to year. I'm happy that people do remember me. I enjoy talking to people and it's not to know that they seem to enjoy talking to me. But I would never remember them without the context of where they are, not even the cute woman that sold me the hat. They just have that kind of brain, while I don't have a brain at all.

Last night I went to see the effulgent Jean Rohe at Rockwood Music Hall. The show was just announced the night before, or actually early that morning. I need to go through my entries and make a spreadsheet but Jean might be the performer I've seen the most in the last year. I often say she stimulates the Bach side of my brain but Mozart is an even better fit. Bach pieces do not have the variety of Mozart's, both between pieces and within each work. There is no Jean Rohe sound. They don't sound alike but you can tell there's the same guiding genius. They are complex without being ponderous. Like Mozart she's a master of the light touch.

I started wondering why I associate Jean's music with Bobtown's. I am guessing nobody else does that. It's different style, genre, and sound. It isn't just that I've seen Jean with Katherine. I trust my brain's pattern recognition. It can see the pattern before I can put it in logical form. I showed that over and over again in math and solving puzzles. There is something structurally similar about the music. It's that Bobtown also writes songs that vary so much between pieces and within one work. It pretty much guarantees to hold my interest.

She had only a five piece band last night. Usually she performs at an octet or septet. I think that's right. It's hard to count that high. This might be the first time I saw her no solo but without Ilusha.

I got there early and had planned on sitting on the floor level to take pictures. Two things went wrong with that plan. First they had moved the table and chairs out. Secondly I forgot my phone. That also meant I had no watch so I didn't know if I was early or late. I was a bit early. The previous act had just let out. Those two things convinced me to sit upstairs and I took my usual perch in the Statler and Waldorf seats. An advantage to that is I could put my trench coat and sweater on the rail and my bag and hat on the floor next to me and not take up any more seats or inconvenience anyone. The problem was the temperature. Using my best scientific estimation methods it was One Zillion degrees plus or minus 3 degrees. A real scientific estimate will always give a range.

A little while later they put back the tables and chairs downstairs. I was going to move but didn't because I'd have to find places for my hat, coat, umbrella, and sweater. Yes I forgot my umbrella before. Remember that.

Like I said it was a last minute gig. So not many people showed up. In fact that was nobody sitting in the tables and chairs by the stage so I decided to move down and put my stuff on the chair next to mine. So I did, I gathered my hat, coat and sweater and headed down.. You caught it I forgot my umbrella. the miracle is I caught it before I went down the steps.

After the show Jean said she's be in the back room selling CDS and saying hi. Well I didn't need the CD but I certainly wanted to say hi. But I couldn't find her. The act in Rockwood 3 had just let out too and the place was filled with people. I found some of the people in her band but not Jean. For some reason I don't know anyone in her band other than Ilusha. I really should introduce myself. I got off the subway with the bass player.

I was looking around and I saw someone that looked like Caitlin. As you know I don't see well and it's dark in there and I would have known if she was playing there so I figured it wasn't her. I didn't want to keep staring because staring at a beautiful woman that you don�t know is asking to make somebody uncomfortable. Then I hear her call at my name. It was Caitlin! You know that people calling me over to talk to them makes me happy. They have to actually want to talk to me. And now I'm going to impress you and impress Caitlin. She introduced me to her friend Jessie! Yes I remembered her name. I had to ask twice and she introduced Jessie to someone else, whose name I have totally forgotten, but I did the mnemonic thing to get it in my head. I'm sorry to say that in involved the former Governor of Minnesota and professional wrestler, Jesse the Body Ventura. How did they elect somebody whose middle name is "the body?" In all fairness I did also think of Moses's father�in-law. Too bad his name was Jethro. Who the hell was Jesse in the Tanakh? Oh he was the father of King David. Anyway I had a lot of fun talking to Caitlin and Jessie, who was a cute woman not a huge male wrestler, so my time in the back room was not wasted though I never did fine Jean. I just wanted to tell her she was great. I've done that before.

Wow I had a lot more to write about but I'm almost 1700 words in and I actually want to write a second entry tonight or early tomorrow before I leave for Thanksgiving dinner. I need to check but I probably should leave here around 11 AM. That's earlier than I usually finish writing. I need to write about Festivus but I also want to write about some thoughts I had on the train. Some people have writer's block. I have writer's overflow.


I signed the Pro-Truth Pledge:
please hold me accountable.





Memories: Not that Horrid Song - May 29, 2018
Wise Madness is Now In Session - May 28, 2018
The NFL and the First Amendment - May 27, 2018
On The Road Again - May 26, 2018
Oliver the Three-Eyed Crow - May 25, 2018



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Horvendile November 27, 2013
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