Second Breakfast

I really wanted to like this book. I admire Crowley as a writer, and “Little, Big” remains one of my favorite novels. Depsite this, “Love and Sleep” is a tough read.

The book continues the story started in Ægypt, and follows the same group of characters exploring pretty much the same questions that framed the first book. The book moves back and forth through two parallel stories, centering on the writer and historian Pierce Moffett in the present day, and on the mage John Dee and metaphysician and philosopher Giordano Bruno in the 16th century. The language remains beautiful, but this is much more of a character-driven book than a plot-driven one, and I found some interludes (particularly those from Moffett’s childhood) painful and difficult to wade through. I think Crowley is at his best when he’s not being autobiographical.

The novel is somewhat long (512 pages), and while the end brings many threads together in somewhat satisfying and lyrical ways, the payoff isn’t really there.

Okay, this is somewhat late, but apparentlythe actor Tim Choate died last year. If you’re a total geek like me, you’ll remember Tim as the fabulously-wacky, verb and wardrobe-challenged character Zathras from Babylon 5. He apparently bit it in a motorcycle accident.

Some memorable quotes:

• “Zathras is used to being beast of burden to other people’s needs. Very sad life. Probably have very sad death. But, at least there is symmetry.”
• “You take, Zathras die. You leave, Zathras die. Either way, it is bad for Zathras.”
• “But only Zathras have no one to talk to. No one manages poor Zathras, you see. So Zathras talks to dirt. Sometimes talks to walls, or talks to ceilings. But dirt is closer. Dirt is used, through everyone walking on it. Just like Zathras, but we’ve come to like it. It is our role. It is our destiny in the universe. So, you see, sometimes dirt has insects in it. And Zathras likes insects. Not so good for conversation, but much protein for diet. Ha! Zathras fix now, this way.”

Alas.

Scotty actor’s ashes head for space | Channel Register

Actor James Doohan, best known as Star Trek’s engineer, Scotty, is to have his ashes sent into space. Doohan died on Wednesday, aged 85, from Alzheimer’s disease and pneumonia.

Doohan will not be the first Star Trek alumnus to find his final resting place in orbit. Creator of the series, Gene Roddenberry, also had his ashes sent to space, and Star Trek writer, John Meredyth Lucas, who died in 2002, will have his ashes sent up on the same flight as Doohan’s.

The ashes are slated for launch in September, according to Space Services Inc. They will most likely take off from California’s Vandenberg Air Force Base on a Falcon 1 rocket.

William Shatner paid tribute to Doohan: “A long and storied career is over,” Shatner said. “I knew Jim when he started out in Canada and I knew him in his last years in America, so we go way back. My condolences go out to his family.”

Doohan’s agent said that the star had learned to love his role as Scotty, and the Star Trek fan base, although he added: “I don’t think people knew what a terrific actor he was.

Yesterday marked the tenth anniversary of the day that my husband and I met. As Alan points out in his blog “we’ve been together ever since”.

According to online sources this anniversary is the aluminum (or tin) anniversary, so gifts of cookware (Calphalon is acceptable) are appropriate, or diamond jewelry if you’re buying. Given that we also have a wedding anniversary to celebrate now (legal or not, we got wed, and we have the ecclesiastical charges to prove it), our custom is to “observe” the first date anniversary, but to celebrate the wedding one. Still, a gift seemed in order, so I picked up some great chocolates at this little chocolate shop in downtown Chelsea where we live.

Whenever I say I’ve been with my husband for ten years, folks often say “wow”, unless they’ve been with their spouse/partner for a while too. Ruminating about my relationships in my blog is out of character for me (for which my several readers are mostly thankful). But while being in a lifelong relationship is sometimes challenging (particularly for my selfish nature), its part of who I am, and thinking of my life without Alan is like thinking of my life without one of my limbs — its not something you can contemplate except in the abstract. You’re my touchstone, sweetie.

Oh, and honey, I’ll put away my shoes just as soon as you turn off the pantry light.

This is a high-concept book, which often as not don’t really succeed. This book, however, succeeds admirably. The setting is both the world of ancient Greece and today’s New York, and the story is a creatively twisted retelling of the end of the Trojan war. All of the usual suspects are here: Achilles, Phoenix, Odysseus, Philoctetes, and Νeoptolemus (aka Phyrrus “the redhead”). In this telling, Phyrrus escapes his privileged royal upbringing to make his way in “the City”, ultimately winding up as a hustler and go-go boy. After his father’s death, Odysseus (who is off prosecuting his war against Troy) receives an oracle that the battle will ultimately be won only when Achilles’ son and Philoctetes bow are brought to Troy, and Phoenix is dispatched to find the boy and bring him back. Phyrrus is ultimately asked seduce Philoctetes to bring him into the war.

Themes explored include questions of the construction of gay identity, masculinity, aging, AIDS, love, and the ways that gay men are called to reinvent and reclaim the stories of their own lives. This is really a fantastic and creative retelling of these familiar stories. Merlis’ prose is beautiful at times, and his characters are sympathetically and deftly drawn. I don’t read a lot of gay fiction, but this is I think one of those gay books that belongs in every gay man’s library, along with titles such as “At Meat Loves Salt” and “How Long Has This Been Going On?”. In a way Merlis is reclaiming these tales by making them modern, and raising up the homoerotic subtext that is so often ignored in reading these classical stories. I’m sure that scholars of these writings have much to complain about, but as a reasonably-educated reader, I found this book to be immensely satsifying.