Unregenerate and Obdurate.

This dropped out of my travel journal too. I knew I had met him and shaken his hand.
I forgot I had gotten his autograph! Thanks, Susan, for instigating this.

Found this gathered in an old journal I was leafing through. It really is as close to a personal manifesto as you are going to get from me:

"Our finest writing will certainly come from what is unregenerate in ourselves. It will come from the part the part that obdurate, unbanishable, immune to education, springing up like grass ... To love ourselves right now -- that is the transformative success. To see what is already beautiful -- that is the astonishing strength." -- Bonnie Friedman, Writing Past Dark, p 146

Unregenerate. Obdurate. What great words. Obdurate. The first two syllables are like buttocks, heavy and voluptuous, pressing roundly up against each other.

Reading: Like Wilde said, "I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read on the train."

Writing: Yes. Looking for, reading, using/transcribing/revising/incorporating important notes from my travel journal.

Dinner: Pre-fab lemon pepper breaded haddock filets. Not bad. With whipped up with a secret ingredient tartar sauce. Very good. And raw carrots and cucumber (the English variety, which always, always makes me think of my friend Katie and the first time I ate lunch with her. She served me lentil soup and slices of English cucumber.)

Soundtrack: Untouchables radio on Spotify is unsatisfying. Too much college music, not enough ska. I should have just played The Untouchables (the ska band that does the song "I Spy (for the FBI)" not anything having to do with Eliot Ness).

And for today's love song? In honor of my found autograph above, I give you a Paul Weller twofer (he sang this song at the Apollo too, where it seemed particularly fitting):



Random thing: This is all pretty random, but Orson singing "Feliz Navidad" in a deep dramatic lounge lizard kind of voice was truly one of the most random and hilarious moments ever. Where the hell did that come from?

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