of answering machines and jeffrey sachs
Thursday 22 January 2004 | I like a cookie
You know something? I’ve had my answering machine since 1989, and I’ve never replaced either of the cassette tapes in it. There must be some pretty wild stuff on there. Not that I’m going to listen tonight.
Instead I’m going to listen to educated guess which I bought, blenching at the shocking expense of $15 dollars. But as I tore off the plastic wrap with my teeth I reasoned that, in over twelve years of listening to Ani (ah, those $6 shows! I recollect oncet how I paid with a partial roll of laundry quarters sent me by my dad) I have never once bought a CD or tape. I figure whatever fragment of my $14.99 makes it to her, the Little Folksinger well deserves. Jesus, I’m a heel. And a cheap heel at that.
It’s 11:30 and I’m just now back home, weary and sciatic. The manuscript got a kick in the arse today courtesy of a nicely phrased yet pointy email from Herself. I spent three hours revising my own book, an hour freaking out and getting ready, and then two intensely compressed hours at my former alma mater St. John’s College distributing all forty-one chapters along the perimeter of a seminar table and then going around muttering to myself and weeding the rows, seeking organization, not finding it, staring out the window at an incessantly gorgeous Santa Fe day, snow on the foothills, bearded dudes reading Locke and Tolstoy—when suddenly Aggh! Eureka! I had it! I did a frantic silent leaping dance and a tutor came and poked his head in the room and gave me a Look. The whole structure of the book gleamed briefly out at me and now I only have to put in the slugging sodden grim thankless writing work. Lots of work. Lots. Did I say lots.
And there is a message from Mandarin, saying that the Scary Sad Bastard is lurking around the little domicile of her and the cat…and emails from her too, saying that she’s dreaming of a doomed imaginary Arabic lover and stacking firewood. I’m eating grape tomatoes, with a little cartoon on the box depicting “Tom,” “Matt,” and “Otto.” And I’m cursing my stupid new sciatica, and thinking about Jeffrey Sachs, whom M. and I and several hundred rapt Santa Feans heard speak tonight.
Jeffrey Sachs. Ah. I’d heard him on the Bill Moyers coverage of Jo’berg last year but never in person. Riveting, lucid, erudite, horrifying—all this AND he’s Bono’s chief economic advisor! An associate professor at Harvard at 29! Geek-sexy in a necktie quoting Adam Smith and Montesquieu! And helped Bill Gates vaccinate 30 million children for Hepatitis B! M. was dewy-eyed and intimidated and throttled with inspiration. Tomorrow he’ll hitch a lift up to the hill for more economic good cheer. Sachs was also quite outspoken about his dim opinion of various war efforts (”a lethal distraction…we are in a race against time!”) and the lefty SFers whooped and hollered. I had my hands cupped about my mouth to shriek “Run for President!” but M., who knows many of those present, stopped me.
I want to say something about Wesley and Howard (and his terminal war whoop) and John and John and Dennis, but can’t bring myself. Though I did just discover that I can vote in the NM Dem caucus! I’m pathetically jazzed. My one chance for a vote that might, just maybe, more or less actually count.
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