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Mar. 21st, 2012 02:16 pm
St Patrick's summer
At about ten p.m. last night, I suddenly decided to start reading Madame Bovary. Even though I knew nearly exactly where I'd left it lying, it took a while to dig it out because--once again--I had the wrong picture in my head of what the book looked like. Speaking of which, I found myself utterly baffled by the first paragraph until I went and looked up the word Proviseur; once I knew this meant "headmaster", then everything feel into place. From what little I know of the novel, I had simply never expected it to start in a boarding school, and certainly not with a first-person narrator.
So I guess Irish season is officially over; it has wilted in the heat. I did read a short selection from Kinsella's Táin on Monday but even then I knew I was somehow fooling myself. At least it all culminated in probably the best St Patrick's Day ever, beginning with a big gay brunch (with a full Irish and a Guinness) at Lady Gregory's and finishing with an early 90s dance party at a friend's place in Albany Park.
In between, I spent several glorious hours at the Irish-American Heritage Center listening to music, chatting with strange women, drinking beer and cider, gobbling tea cake, shouting along to the old standards, and generally amusing myself. I meant to write up an account of the merry quest I undertook to find a cup of tea but I guess in the end I told so many people that I lost interest in concocting another version. (In a nutshell, every one of the half dozen people I asked was sure they had it somewhere but didn't know where and I ended up right back where I'd started out.)
The stroll from the Center to my friend's was interesting, and not just because Leland screws itself up upon crossing Elston and doesn't straighten itself out again until Pulaski. It felt so summery, what with the cookouts and the party flats blasting music out of open windows. (I confessed to her that I was very tempted by a Nigerian party going down two blocks west of her place.)
It's deeply disorienting. We're in intersession, so between the heat and the lack of bodies, I keep feeling like it must be over two months later than it actually is. I don't think there's a tree that blooms before June that isn't coming into flower these days. I was musing a couple days back that I hadn't seen any redbuds or Bradford pears, and damned if I didn't confront the inflorescence of pears on the way to work and the budding of redbuds on the way back from lunch.
So I guess Irish season is officially over; it has wilted in the heat. I did read a short selection from Kinsella's Táin on Monday but even then I knew I was somehow fooling myself. At least it all culminated in probably the best St Patrick's Day ever, beginning with a big gay brunch (with a full Irish and a Guinness) at Lady Gregory's and finishing with an early 90s dance party at a friend's place in Albany Park.
In between, I spent several glorious hours at the Irish-American Heritage Center listening to music, chatting with strange women, drinking beer and cider, gobbling tea cake, shouting along to the old standards, and generally amusing myself. I meant to write up an account of the merry quest I undertook to find a cup of tea but I guess in the end I told so many people that I lost interest in concocting another version. (In a nutshell, every one of the half dozen people I asked was sure they had it somewhere but didn't know where and I ended up right back where I'd started out.)
The stroll from the Center to my friend's was interesting, and not just because Leland screws itself up upon crossing Elston and doesn't straighten itself out again until Pulaski. It felt so summery, what with the cookouts and the party flats blasting music out of open windows. (I confessed to her that I was very tempted by a Nigerian party going down two blocks west of her place.)
It's deeply disorienting. We're in intersession, so between the heat and the lack of bodies, I keep feeling like it must be over two months later than it actually is. I don't think there's a tree that blooms before June that isn't coming into flower these days. I was musing a couple days back that I hadn't seen any redbuds or Bradford pears, and damned if I didn't confront the inflorescence of pears on the way to work and the budding of redbuds on the way back from lunch.