On the first good day of the year

Happy 2011!  Feel any different?  Me neither, so don't sweat it.  Like any voracious bibliophile riding a wave of literary bliss, I'm just anxious to crawl into bed soon with my latest read, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon.  I've owned this book for years but just yesterday got around to it.  (Now isn't that just the life story of anyone whose book collection expands at a rate far quicker than one's ability to chip away at said collection?!)  I don't want to reveal too much, but this book is awesome; it's one of those works whose reputation preceded it upon my first encounter with the title at Hunt Library a few years ago, and whose praise is well-deserved indeed.  It's proving itself a fast and easy read; I took it down from the shelf just yesterday evening and will finish by tomorrow.  The language is simple, direct, and flawlessly evocative in a very sympathetic way of the very spirit of our narrating protagonist's earnest, endearingly determined character.  I want to point out that it's the surprise this book delivered--the spectacular turn of events and resulting thematic blossoming of a story whose title and initial plot course suggested something more predictable, more crowd-pleasingly cute without much depth otherwise--that latched fast to my loyalty as a reader in the present and an enthusiastic praiser/recommender in the future.  Clearly, when I glanced the Boston Globe's front-cover pitch, "Gloriously eccentric and wonderfully intelligent," I was too quick to dismiss (at least the last half...), or perhaps just too jaded from such gluttonous literary praise printed on most best-sellers to pay these back-patting blurbs much attention.

Today was indeed a day to feel good about.  I had coffee at the 61C Cafe, relaxing to the sound of WQED's classical radio and reading in peace; when a couple of grumpy old stinkers who looked like professors but sounded like strung-out pundits came in and started to fill the place with their unbridled profanity and inflammatory political hate-talk (of the right-wing variety, I might add), I simply moved down to Te Cafe where I was the only customer for almost an hour.  The weather has been so unseasonably mild that one might be tricked into thinking that we've skipped ahead to mid-March.  (I even saw some tiny Dandelion blooms at the cemetery yesterday!)  One of the great disadvantages to such a dramatic and complete mid-winter melt-off is that it reveals just how much trash has accumulated on the sidewalks, streets, and front yards.  Whereas once I would've become infuriated to the point of violent anger and intense psychological despair, I now roll my eyes and simply accept that what I see merely confirms what I already know well of humankind.  However, as an obligation to my disgusted obsessive self, as a righteous duty to my community--and, perhaps, as a penance to counter my pride and my profound flaws of character--I spent half an hour in surgical gloves cleaning up Kamin Street and much of Wendover in the rain, enduring vapid stares from passers-by and receiving filthy ungrateful looks from two separate people who apparently find the idea of unglamourous community volunteerism positively repugnant or simply alien beyond reference to any reality they've ever inhabited.  (Those looks are part of my penance, I tell myself, part of my debt to society--and I sure as hell don't get down about it anymore!)

This afternoon, and into the evening, I edited all the photos that I took in the Homewood Cemetery yesterday.  In fact, I've spent more time on the computer in the past ten hours than I do on any given work day--but it has all been in the service of art and creative self-expression, by God!  I encourage you to check the photos out if you have the chance; you can find them at my Flickr page, www.flickr.com/photos/michaeljehn.  Below is one teaser photo that cannot be found in the collection.  Enjoy, and remember to try to find at least one way to make your today an adventurous one (even if the adventure is all inside your head)!