Empire of the Signs

My damn GPS wasn't picking up a signal, so it took some luck, some of it bad, to find a Starbucks near my house. I like Starbucks, obviously, because of the free wi-fi. And I'll go against you both the uber-snobs and the reverse-snobs and admit that the coffee is pretty good, too.

I have my knock-off noise cancelling headphones on, listening to my downloaded music/fuel. Nice mix now: some early Springsteen, Entombed (good music to write to -- although I haven't given much thought why. It works well with the mechanical rapidity of typing), and Mahler.

I'm working on a few freelance articles to see if I can get into that game and supplement my income. Who knows? Maybe I can actually make a living doing something I enjoy?

So much of the afternoon was spend banging out a clean, clear piece on MMA, easy enough because it was meant for a general audience. I do well with that mythic beast, the general audience, because, deep down, I'm kind of an idiot and don't understand things well myself. So I always approach a subject from the perspective of an outsider, even if it's something that, on the surface, I have close knowledge of.

I'm planning another article that I'll start working on tomorrow on Massachusetts history. I figure I'll keep writing about what interests me: fighting, philosophy, history, food, sex, and culture. Nothing wrong with that!

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I did manage to get some reading time in, despite the long work hours yesterday and the UFC party last night, where a few of us went Martha Stewart and made it into yet another surreal BJJ event -- instead of chips and drinks we had Texas chili, Indian chicken, and what I see as somewhat Scandinavian pork, although perhaps only I saw it that way. Viking pork! There you have it. Add in cookies and cake, and mix in brutal fights with unassuming engineers, a curious eleven year old in the shape of the Dufflebag, and a living room scattered with children's toys and fitness equipment, you have some sort of postmodern grab bag at its finest. If we had all been speaking different languages, it might have even made more sense. An empire of the signs.

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No need to leave you hanging. What was I reading?

I got a whole whopping two chapters into Guy de Maupassant's travel book Afloat, a work that blurs the lines between fiction and reportage. It was put out by what is probably my favorite publisher, the New York Review of Books Classics, which specializes in releasing undeservedly obscure titles.

The introduction is about the cynical, overspending Maupassant and the creation of this book. And I love to laugh at how awful writers can be. In their day, worse than rock stars, it seems, and mostly because they could articulate their world in broader scope.

Here's how Maupassant begins. Classic!

This diary has no interesting story to tell, no tales of derring-do. Last spring I went on a short cruise along the Mediterranean coast and every day, in my spare time, I jotted down things I'd seen and thought.

In fact what I saw was water, sun, cloud, and rocks, and that's all. I had only simple thoughts, the kind you have when you're being carried drowsily along on the cradle of the waves.

I love the mix of understatement and poetry.