5.16.2025 - Weekly Digest

A loose theme this week.
One note: the site's domain name has been changed to make it easier to remember and share, so clicking on past emails may not get you there. Otherwise you should be able to access everything via this post or any future posts.
Cheers, and such.
-JA

5.13.2025

Theseus goes to Crete to sacrifice himself to save the sacrifices. He follows the thread and murders the cursed bull hybrid. The escape and the way back are full of treachery. Worse for Daedalus but thanks for the help. Could have given him a ride. They got Ariadne out at least. Could've left them all on Naxos to ponder their dynamic. Also what kind of project planning is that, D? Did he warn the boy about the physics of melting wax? And what kind of atmospheric science is that? It doesn't get hotter as you go higher. But the faster you go the heavier you get. Let's revise the story. The wings worked so well Icarus approached the speed of light and as he accelerated he got heavier and Gravity personified dragged him into the water. Plus with all the activity in the Mediterranean at that time plunging into the sea was hardly a death sentence. All manner of folk dwelt therein. He could easily have been borne up by Neptune's horses or lured into a bubble cavern by Nereids. Anyway when Theseus got home he was being chased by Minos' thugs and he forgot to raise the flag that told his dad he was still alive. His dad got sad that his son had died doing what he was destined to do and he threw himself into the Aegean which luckily enough was named for him. It was his destiny. Theseus got back and I don't remember what happened next but he probably married his mom and sacrificed a thousand bulls so the peasants all went hungry that winter and the next time we see him he pops up in Midsummer Night's Dream and the fae folk are all scampering about trying to interfere with his wedding.

5.14.2025

My favorite thing about Montreal is that cardinal directions don’t mean anything. If you’re going east along the St Lawrence River you’re traveling northeast by any standard anywhere else on the planet but these folks don’t care and besides what business is it of mine. If I wanted to make enemies fast I’d start correcting them about it. Freedom means having the freedom to define your own geography. In the Midwest it’s all by driving distance. Traverse City is four hours from Detroit. I was on a really boring date once who bothered to correct me on this, insisting that if you do the drive correctly it should only take three hours and forty-five minutes. I thought about going to hide in the bathroom until the place closed after that. Instead I just fell asleep in my mind with my eyes open until it was over. Most of Chicago, artificial monstrosity of urban planning that it is, is laid out on a grid. Makes it hard to get lost there but that doesn't mean you don't have to know where you are. Plus it’s pretty easy to tell where the lake is from most places. Eight blocks to a mile. Traffic lights and bus stops every four blocks, generally. Still, the locals will use their own reference points. Where I might say a place is 3200 West and 1600 North someone who grew up there will look at me like I’m stupid and be all, oh you mean the house where an illegal bakery burned down in the 1950s.

5.15.2025

I got lost in a village in Germany when I was a teenager. I had the wrong pants on for a choir gig and the director and I didn't like each other anyway so I headed back in the general direction of my host house. I expected not to find it and I may have seen it and kept walking. Petty rebellion but I'd been feeling confined by the trip's restrictions. I wandered the cobblestones and marveled at how Grimm's it all looked, ended up in a nature preserve where everything was lush and serene. Having taken up enough time to prove my point I approached a gentleman walking his fluffy dog through the woods. He knew right away that I was American. My dorky arts camp polo was probably a helpful clue, and that I didn't even know how to properly say Do You Speak English. I asked him how to get to the gymnasium which I knew meant high school. He took me to a nearby elementary school where the office ladies made a few phone calls. Not trusting me to not get lost again a friendly person gave me a ride there. I arrived to a commotion. Local cops outside, other fine arts camp choir singers in their blue uniform shirts, general alarum like I'd been kidnapped and just walked out of the woods with a traumatic story to tell. My girlfriend ran to me, crying, relieved, certain I'd been abducted by Nazis. Sorry, I told her, it was the best day.

5.16.2025

In Galway in 2006 I went looking for the house where Nora Barnacle (James Joyce's wife) grew up and within a minute of leaving my hostel with map in hand I was completely disoriented so I embraced it and got to know and appreciate the town and chatted with a couple of buskers and asked them why everyone says 'thanks a million' there and they didn't really have an answer but I hope I gave them a euro anyway, then I walked around some more and got impressions of the place, as you do, and found a little bookstore where I was pretty confident someone would be able to set me on the right path. I chatted with the owner, an affable guy in spectacles, and mentioned I was reading Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman while I was there and his response was, do ya get it, though? and I didn't know what he meant so I clearly didn't and I said I hope so, and he said yeah, but do ya get it and I told him if I could find my way back after finishing it I'd let him know if I'd figured it out. Then I asked him for directions to Nora Barnacle's house and this is what he told me: go out the door, take a left, then another left, go over the bridge, take a right, go past the church and take a left at the other church, take another left, careful now you don't fall in the water, and it's right in front of you, can't miss it. Three hours later I gave up and found a pub with a table on the sidewalk out front and drank a Smithwick's while holding the book open with one hand and drew crazy zigzag lines all over my notebook in an attempt to decipher the code I was sure I'd missed after the bookstore owner's prompt, coming up with equations like I'm trying to prove Einstein wrong, and as I sat there reading the sun set over the town and music floated from every direction and I finally understood what the bookstore owner was talking about but that's because it's explained clearly on the novel's last page. If I ever make it back to that store I will tell him this story but the more I tell it the less likely I think he exists.