This won’t be a longwinded update because it is 1:42am and I have to work tomorrow. Just finished up slinging beers at the bar. Some things I noticed tonight:

A woman with a guitar is a force to be reckoned with.
Acoustic musicians are very supportive to the endeavors of others. This made the heart feel good. I gravitate towards that sort of comraderie in the creative world. Of course we do it because we love it and because of the process, but that feedback from others experiencing the same internal, creative struggles is certainly invaluable. What comes to mind is a woman tonight who was playing out in public for the second time ever. She laughed at herself for flubbing the last few notes of her second song. She covered “Jolene” and ordered a drink that I had never even thought of making. People were telling her left and right: keep playing out. Keep doing it. Get stronger with every go.

I learned that when someone literally falls out of their chair while getting up to come to the bar and order another drink, that means Cut. Them. Off.

I learned that I can take a very large man giving me a rough and unexpected shoulder. I stumbled, but kept the stride. Quite funny actually.

It never ceases to amaze me…how much alcohol people drink. I know I know, I should know better than to have such observations as a bartender but it’s true–I still find myself flabbergasted by the amount people can ingest, and buy for others, and on and on. It has me wondering about the lack of social ease that people feel with one another. That whole “social lubrication” thing. I’m not on the complete diss here, but I’m noticing the way a bunch of people lean on it–to the point of me, the bartender, wondering who they really are. You know, in their alone moments. Getting dressed in the morning, driving in the car somewhere. What songs they sing along with on the radio. At the bar I watch them sweetly request one drink, two, three, the fourth bought by their comrade, and then the walls come down–you can almost see them crumbling as people move closer to one another, touch shoulders, start confessing things during dialogue. It’s a fascinating scene to behold. I’m not sure what I’m getting at here..other than to reiterate once again that sometimes there is no better art than watching humans interact and try to forge their way.

I have a few more days in Pittsburgh before a long weekend back home, and while I love this city, I am glad to get a little break from it and see my family. No real reason, I think I just need one. I have plenty to do before taking the midnight Greyhound out of here. Like see my lady Renee read some poetry, and bob my head along to the Roots show. Oh and pet Abacus the amazing kitty lots and lots because I know she will be whining up a storm once I go.

Ha! And as if on cue, I must go and stop her from chewing on my papers. And that little thing called sleep. Think I’ll give it a shot.

Julio Cortázar’s Hopscotch remains one of the most influential and significant novels to appear in Latin America after the Second World War. It is, in part, notorious for its unusual presentation: it comes with a “Table of Instructions”. There Cortázar announces: “In its own way, this book consists of many books, but two books above all.”
The volume itself consists of 155 chapters. Cortázar suggests that the book can be read simply from the beginning to chapter 56, where the book can be considered to end — “the reader may ignore what follows with a clean conscience.” The alternative he proposes is to begin with chapter 73 and then proceed according to a sequence listed in the “Table of Instructions”. (For convenience, each chapter ends with an indication of the next that is to be read in this particular sequence.) Needless to say, this version does not end with chapter 56.
To many readers this sounds like a contrivance that is too clever by half. Rest assured: it is not. The book allows for these — and other — readings. Indeed it can even be read front to back in its entirety.
The first section — From the Other Side — (56 chapters in some 361 pages) is fairly straightforward. The “expendable chapters” that make up the second section — From Diverse Sides — are considerably shorter (99 of them in just over 200 pages) and include a variety of notes, embellishments, quotes, even an Octavio Paz poem. They can be considered as integral to the text, or merely as support for it (or, as Cortázar suggests, as entirely expendable).
The story centers around Horacio Oliveira, an Argentine living a fragmentary life in Paris and the Buenos Aires. As Cortázar makes clear, the text does not depend on any chronological order. The many episodes from Oliveira’s life can be read in any variety of sequences without altering the gist of the novel.

Happy 1st Birthday to Madelyn the niece

and happy 30th to Summer the sister