R.I.P. “Chucho”

Ecuador is sad today because Christian Benítez has died, apparently of a heart attack brought on by appendicitis.

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This could be my last entry posted onto Xanga. Please keep on reading and commenting at JUANPUEBLO 2 (Blogger).

I’ll miss Xanga — I’ve been writing on there for nearly ten years.

Home improvement

Today at IU I tutored someone who said, “I don’t think you should be getting paid to do this.”

Um.

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Wanna be my housemate/flatmate/roommate? Or know of anyone else who might want to be? My lease expires at the end of August. I’d like to stay around Keller Park, but that’s negotiable.

Funny, I care more about living near to my church than about living near to my job. (Yes, I’m very pious, but the main reason is that on Sundays the buses don’t travel.)

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More orbiting around those twin suns, Sabby. Their magnetism is irresistible. Last week I was with the male Sabby, the architect, and he was like, “I found some cool stone artifacts in the river. Let’s go haul them out.” And so we did that. I can’t remember what every cool stone artifact was, but one was a part of a century-old balustrade (I think the male Sabby said). We brought them to Sabby’s house and the male Sabby put them away. I’m not sure what he’s going to do with them. (His wife, the botanist, is like him: she’s always collecting leaves and flowers and things, which is a little strange and endearing.)

Then I saw their very old reel mower and felt a sudden compulsion to mow their lawn. And so I did that.

Then this week I was in Sabby’s kitchen, which they’re remodeling, and I had a sudden longing to help them to strip the floor. And so the next day I did that. I helped to tear out a thin layer of sticky stuff and a thin layer of wood and I pounded the exposed staples deep into the bottommost wood layer (see, I don’t know any of the technical terms). It was very extraordinary of me and I’m a little surprised. The female Sabby got me to help her to cook, an activity which wasn’t so extraordinary for me but which felt less effortful than usual.

Walter Ayoví

I’ve been trying to find out what some other philosophers think of the case of Mr. Edward Snowden (future refugee in Ecuador?). One philosopher I consulted was Robert Paul Wolff, more politically outspoken than most. Alas, he had little to offer beyond a few snarky comments about the NSA. But he did say quite a lot about how well he liked his own writing. Which was fine. In this merciless discipline, some light self-appreciation is refreshing.

The concluding paragraph really hits it:

Far and away the greatest contemporary cellist is Yo Yo Ma. He has so completely mastered the ferociously difficult technique of the cello that when he plays, he looks as though he is not so much producing the music as listening to it. There is something about the way he holds the cello, leaning back away from it as though it were playing itself, that communicates that he need no longer even think about the fingerings and bowings that absorb the attention of lesser cellists. The great Russian cellist Rostropovich used to play in much the same manner. God knows, I do not think of myself as a satirist in the same world as Jonathan Swift, say, but there are times when I feel like Fast Eddy Felsen, moving around the pool table with an animal grace, secure in the knowledge that he cannot miss.

Whom I kept thinking of was Walter Ayoví. Walter Ayoví.

I wondered if there were any good YouTube videos of Walter Ayoví “moving around … with an animal grace, secure in the knowledge that he [could not] miss.” Probably not, I thought. How many other people are there who sit around thinking of the animal grace of Walter Ayoví.

And then I found this video commentary by some Mexican dude. Here was someone who understood. Thank heaven for small mercies.

Listen to the commentator say: Siempre desmarcado.

If you don’t know Spanish, I feel sorry for you.

The groomsman

And so Kenny & Lara were married. The previous night, the groom and his men slept in a fancy rented house; it made me happy because for the second time this year I was able to sleep in a bed. Around 2:00am I was awakened when the other groomsmen brought in Kenny and put him into bed with me. (But why did Kenny need to be helped into the bed?) … Anyway, for one last time, I was his roommate.

The thing about being a groomsman is, there’s a lot of waiting around. I read some Murakami (1Q84). The thing about being a single groomsman, I discovered, is that people subtly (or not subtly) put pressure on you to hit on the bridesmaids. So it must’ve been disappointing when I didn’t do that. Forgive me, bridesmaids.

Another who felt this pressure was one of the ushers, recently returned from Afghanistan. Near the end I found him outside, drinking beers. He poured out his heart to me: “I’m twenty-six years old and I can’t talk to a woman.” I felt sorry for him.

In a way, he was the hero of the wedding: earlier he’d been escorting guests, walking with them from the parking lot, holding an umbrella over them while he was getting soaked by the rain.

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The best dancers were Kenny’s little sisters & brothers, including the children. I mean that.

I posed for many silly photos. I expect to be embarrassed when they’re leaked out.

I caught Lara’s garter.