Ingots

At the New York Times, Oliver Sacks on the consolations of the physical sciences:

Next to the circle of lead on my table is the land of bismuth: naturally occurring bismuth from Australia; little limousine-shaped ingots of bismuth from a mine in Bolivia; bismuth slowly cooled from a melt to form beautiful iridescent crystals terraced like a Hopi village; and, in a nod to Euclid and the beauty of geometry, a cylinder and a sphere made of bismuth.

Bismuth is element 83. I do not think I will see my 83rd birthday, but I feel there is something hopeful, something encouraging, about having "83" around. Moreover, I have a soft spot for bismuth, a modest gray metal, often unregarded, ignored, even by metal lovers. My feeling as a doctor for the mistreated or marginalized extends into the inorganic world and finds a parallel in my feeling for bismuth.

And another nice recent piece: "My letter from Oliver Sacks." (Links courtesy of Dave Lull.)

"Today..."

It was February and I was finishing Heidi Julavits's The Folded Clock on the train home from Philadelphia after a visit to sit with my mother by the side of her dear companion Jim Kilik during his final days in the ICU at Hahnemann. I was all at sixes and sevens: I came across a passage that shocked me with its aptness to my mother's situation, I am not sure if tears were actually rolling down my face or not but I think they probably were, and then somehow I left the ARC on the train and was thwarted in my compulsion to post the passage on my blog!

Heidi is my friend and neighbor and kindly gave me another copy so that I could post this unforgettable passage (it is about why we gossip about other people's relationships - and by now the book is actually out and I could have bought a replacement copy, I have not been on top of things):

The day's tagline was a simple one. One of three things would happen to us: we would stay married, or we would leave, or we would be left. We are in our forties, and this is what our futures have winnowed down to, these three possibilities. The purpose of the stimulating task in which we were involved was to help us figure out how to deal with this clarified future. How, as one man put it, to "best maneuver through the situation."

I don't maneuver. I distill. I distill from the many possible anxieties a primary one. I can imagine that point in time, if my husband and I stay together, and I believe we will, where our future will function like this: every night we'll go to bed wondering who won't be alive in the morning. When we kiss good night, it won't be as we kiss now in our forties. I won't be worrying whether or not I should be more passionate more regularly because if I'm not he might leave me for another woman. I'll be kissing him wondering if we'll never kiss again. I'll be wondering if this is not good night but good-bye. I can imagine, too, that this anxiety is somewhat purifying, because it is so simple, so unavoidable. You believe you can prevent your husband or wife from leaving you for another person--this is one reason we gossip in our forties. But someday we will leave or be left, and it won't be anyone's fault or anyone's choice. There is no available gossip to teach us how to avoid this fate.

The New Yorker also published an excerpt that gives a good feeling for this book's delicate and appealingly irritable treatment of marriage and mortality, and Becca wrote about Julavits and Manguso for the Globe.

In memoriam redux

Wheelmen is causing my jaw to drop: much of this story, of course, I know already, but even so, the revelations about the financial improprieties & interdependency of the UCI and the US Postal team in the late 90s are pretty amazing - makes me wish I were a financial journalist, there is much potential in that field for stories of Shakespearean dimensions.

Also, IMAX Gravity completely lived up to the hype!

Coming week got thrown for a loop: B.'s old friend J. died this weekend.

(He had a bad cancer diagnosis in fall 2009, but thanks to amazing surgery and radiation he was able to run a triumphant 3:23:40 in Boston in April 2010. B. and I went to Boston to spectate on that occasion; it was a celebration of life. He had a few good years of remission, and then a scary recurrence last summer, so that his death comes more as a sorrow than a surprise.)

Funeral in Toronto on Friday, we'll fly up Thursday and then back to NYC Saturday evening so that B. can make his Sunday early-morning flight back to Cayman. Ugh, let us say fervently what dressed-up friends and I were all saying to each other on the Metro-North train to Yonkers a few weeks ago for K.'s memorial: please can't the next time we find ourselves in our best clothes traveling out of town together be for a wedding or a christening, not for a funeral?

(The need to make travel arrangements and generally contemplate ramifications, mortality, etc. also means that I am way behind on work for the week, but one way or another it will all have to get done in the next few days, so there's no point worrying about that now! On a brighter note, I had a beautiful run yesterday and finally made it to hot yoga today after too long a layoff, so that definitely has a beneficial effect on the moral and physiological equilibrium.)

Closing tabs:

Nico Muhly's career as Baroque archetype. (Also: Nico's Reddit AMA!) We're going tomorrow night, I'm really excited....

Kipple

Is Jonathan Ames a stunted Grey Gardens bachelor drowning in kipple?