Summer Hotel Retreat Day 9

Here's a palm tree at the Howard Hughes Center, to give this blog that Southern California feel.  Of course they have palm trees in San Francisco, but they don't look this festive.  Spent the evening in the sushi place at the Howard Hughes Center, eating veggie sushi, drinking beaujolais, and reading student work.  I don't usually drink wine while reading student work, but sometimes the occasion just calls for it.  There were so many other fun things I could have done this evening, so many wonderful people here I want to see but won't have time for, but I was drooling with social exhaustion, plus my whole evening was geared towards my being able to sleep in tomorrow morning, which won't be that late because I have to get up in time to do my writing project before I head out.  I wore my new black sweater to the sushi place.  I avoid Nordstrom Rack as most things I've bought there instantly end up in the Goodwill bag, but this sweater is a find.  Here I am, via the wonders of my MacBook Air's Photobooth program, wearing my black sweater.  Note the abstract hotel art on the wall behind me, and the glamorous golden drapes.

I look mean in the photo, like I'm a serious writer.  This blog for me is the equivalent of an artist's sketchbook.  It's all about quickly putting things together in a way that appeals to me.  Often I could care less about the content, it's all about the quick formal coalescence.  Some people who have commented on the blog have gotten that.  I gave a seminar today and one of the students came up to me and said she was enjoying my Hotel Retreat.  I told her not to tell any of the other students about it.  I've never figured out how to teach and be fully human.  I sometimes feel like a figure, a functionary, not a person.

I almost went this evening to see Snow White and the Huntsman.  It sounded so luxurious to get lost in something large and colorful and loud.  In San Francisco I tried to get Kevin to go see it, and he was willing but he said he heard it was awful, so I gave up, and then we got busy and ended up not going to see any movie.  I rarely go to the movies alone.  The last one was Bridesmaids, in Fort Bragg, where I'll be going at the end of the month with Bett Williams.  I looked at the trailers to Snow White and the Huntsman, and just from that it was clear that a major problem with the movie is that Charlize Theron is gorgeous and fabu up the wazoo, and Kristen Stewart is like this tense little rodent.  No way would I ever buy KS as being more fair than CT.  Disney got it right, making Snow White cuter than the evil queen.  And what's up with Snow White wearing armor and going into battle????  What about the miraculous power of female passivity?  And a sexuality so powerful that when aroused it awakens you from the dead?  Flailing around on a battlefield isn't repressed enough; Kevin's right, it's awful.

This is the end of this round of aloneness.  Temporary aloneness is such a joy, knowing that tomorrow night Kevin will swoop in, in a huge metal bird and relieve it.