Mahjong

An old monk remembering his novice days: "And she kissed me with the kisses of her mouth, and her loves were more delicious than wine and her ointments had a goodly fragrance, and her neck was beautiful among pearls and her cheek among earrings, behold thou art fair, my beloved, behold thou art fair; thine eyes are as doves (I said), and let me see thy face, let me hear thy voice, for thy voice is harmonious and thy face enchanting, thou has ravaged my heart, o sister, thou hast ravished my heart with one of thine eyes, with one chain of thy neck, thy lips drop as the honeycomb, honey and milk are under thy tongue, the smell of thy breath is of apples, thy two breasts are clusters of grapes, thy palate a head wine that goes straight to my love and flows over my lips and teeth....  A fountain sealed, spikenard and saffron, calamus and cinnamon, myrrh and aloes, I have eaten my honeycomb with my honey, I have drunk my wine with my milk.  Who was she, who was she who rose like the dawn, fair as the moon, clear as the sun, terrible as an army with banners?"--The Name of the Rose

Terry-Thomas (about to confront Stuart Whitman): "Are you sure that he's smaller than me?"--Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines

I've started playing Mahjong online, at the suggestion of a friend. (They say that Chinese people are the best players because they watch their opponents' moves!) I started playing the simple Hong Kong version, but I learned it to the point where I was winning every game.  So now I'm doing it by the more challenging international rules, and I'm winning about one game in four.

We have most of the garden planted.  Last week we went to Fiesta Farms and found most of what we were looking for. (Couldn't find cauliflower.) I couldn't find our hoe so Moira went out and bought another.  Friday I noticed a few snowflakes!

I'm reading some old Classics Illustrated comics I bought last year but didn't get around to reading before.  I've read Don Quixote and Food of the Gods, and Journey to the Center of the Earth is next.

I ran out of Cipralex last week and had to go to the drugstore and get some more. (That night I couldn't find the new pills, only to find out that I'd left them in the fridge--ah, the ludicrousness of getting old!) Before getting around to replenishment, I went without it for a few days and my dreams got vivid again.  One night I was dreaming about visiting England, as I often do.  Then I dreamed about meeting Giuseppe Macina, who ten years ago was directing the choir I was in.  In this dream he told me that I'd been missing rehearsals (which I rarely did), and in the logic of the dream world I decided this was because of my visiting England!  Then I woke up and remembered this wasn't real...

Friday night my historical movie watch party showed Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines, with the cad's cad Terry-Thomas! (I was seeing it for the second or third time). The following night I saw the sequel Those Daring Young Men in Their Jaunty Jalopies (a.k.a. Monte Carlo or Bust!), which was less successful but did also have Terry-Thomas, one of those actors who can make any movie worth seeing.  I originally saw it (in a cinema!) fifty years ago, but the only parts I remembered were the Italian men watching the French women bathing and Terry-Thomas in the inn rearranging everyone's shoes outside their doors.

The Name of the Rose is even better on second reading!

The dormant creature stirreth again...

"And beneath the feet of the ancients, and arched over them and over the throne and over the tetramorphic group, arranged in symmetrical bands, barely distinguishable one from another because the artist's skill had made them all so mutually proportionate, untied in their variety and varied in their unity, unique in their diversity and diverse in apta coadunatio, in wondrous congruency of the parts with the delightful sweetness of hues, miracle of consonance and concord of voices among themselves dissimilar, a company arrayed like the strings of the zither, consentient and conspiring continued cognition through deep and interior force suited to perform univocally in the same alternating play of the equivocal, decoration and collage of creatures beyond reduction to vicissitudes reduced, work of amorous connecting sustained by a law at once heavenly and worldly (bond and stable nexus of peace, love, virtue, regimen, power, order, origin, life, light, splendor, species, and figure), numerous and resplendent equality through the shining of the form over the proportionate parts of the material--there, all the flowers and leaves and vines and bushes and corymbs were entwined, of all the grasses that adorn the gardens of earth and heaven, violet, cystus, thyme, lily, privet, narcissus, taro, acanthus, mallow, myrrh, and Mecca balsam"--The Name of the Rose

Yeah, it's been over a month since my last post.  I really wish there was more to write about!  When this pandemic is finally past, I'll be on the move again and have more material...

I'm now reading Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose (for the second time) for my book club.  It's cleverly structured, working on more than one level:  both intellectual loftiness and more basic storytelling.  That's the one about a 14th century friar investigating murders at an Italian monastery.  His name is William of Baskerville, and that Sherlock Holmes reference gives you an idea of the book's sensibility.

Next month's History Meetup will be about the Roman Empire, so I'm also reading Matthew Denison's The Twelve Caesars:  The Dramatic Lives of the Emperors of Rome.  It covers the early emperors, from Julius Caesar to Domitian.  Suetonius' famous history of the same group is his main source, of course, but not the only one.

Moira and I have been watching HBO's Baltimore police procedural series The Wire again. (I still haven't seen the last two seasons.) It's a real classic!

I've been preparing the back yard garden for planting.  We already have three raised frames, and I've set up a fourth though without the wooden walls. (John also set up a small frame in the northwest corner and planted rhubarb in it.) We recently rebuilt the front edge of the lawn, setting up a low wall, and I used many of the patio tiles it replaced to set up a walkway around the new frame.

Yesterday I had lunch with Maria and Sergey.  We ate takeout on a rooftop at the Yonge & Eglinton Centre.  My scalp got sunburned! Because I was in that area, I ordered our Tuesday falafel wraps from a different branch of Ali Baba's.