He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven
by W.B. Yeats

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with the golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet.
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

I’m not really sure what it means, but I like it. I did a paper on Yeats in high school, and I’d forgotten how quietly powerful he is. I’ll have to borrow another book of his and refresh my memory.

I’m taking a break from watching some Dead Like Me episodes to do laundry and catchup on the blog(s). Writing in my other blog, I used the word ‘glean’ – but I’m having a very bad speling day so I checked at m-w.com first if it was an een or ean. And one of the definitions was:

glean: 1 a : to pick up after a reaper

I think that sounds like fun, lurking behind Mason or Daisy or Roxy or Milly. Which reaper would you follow? (And no fair saying Rube– we all wonder what he does with his day. You know, besides looking for the guy with six fingers on his left hand.)

Of course, it doesn’t take long for the word glean to strike a memory:

…Something have you heard
Of Hamlet’s transformation; so call it,
Sith nor the exterior nor the inward man
Resembles that it was. What it should be,
More than his father’s death, that thus hath put him
So much from the understanding of himself,
I cannot dream of: I entreat you both,
That, being of so young days brought up with him,
And sith so neighbour’d to his youth and havior,
That you vouchsafe your rest here in our court
Some little time: so by your companies
To draw him on to pleasures, and to gather,
So much as from occasion you may glean,
Whether aught, to us unknown, afflicts him thus,
That, open’d, lies within our remedy.

It’s funnier when Ros and Guil recount it later. I still would like to see that play live, or see the movie version on TV again (it’s in my TiVo wishlist)

[ Ed Note, although this post is about J.K. Rowling's latest book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, it does not contain spoilers. Except the post title, which has nothing to do with the plot of the book. ]

Last week brought greatness into the world. On Wednesday, the space shuttle launched. On Friday, Starbucks opened at 5th and Green in Campustown, and at 12:01 on Saturday morning, the new Harry Potter book went on sale.

Well, two outta three ain’t bad. Maybe NASA should rename their website to be http://www.nasa.gov/stillwaitingtoreturntoflight/ I guess I’m just annoyed because I made a special effort to be in front of a TV for the launch that didn’t come. Instead, I got to watch Judge Judy and other terrible daytime TV. It sounds like they’re going to try for next Tuesday.

As previously blogged, I dressed up for Harry Potter Day, although I ditched the glasses before lunch because they were bothering me, and my scar sweated off before I left work. Afterwards, I met up with Mr. and Mrs. TL&EMK for mexican at “The Toro.” That meant grande margaritas and quesadillas.

Then we went home and drank out on the deck. Oh, yeah, Friday, July 15th, marked the one year anniversary of the house closing. So we toasted some brews outside on a nice summer evening. (”I HAVE A DECK” may not be as fun as it was a few years ago, but it’s still true. Maybe now it’s more like “I REALLY HAVE TO CLEAN AND SEAL MY DECK!”)

Then, it got late, so we picked up AJ and went to BW3s to hang with the Olsons and Steph in post-rehearsal-dinner-drinking, [ Ed Note: wearing Harry costume to the bar got me carded buying the drinks, and giggled at by at least two waitstaff and a table of girls that looked about Hermione's age. ] but only had time for a car bomb before heading down to a local bookstore around 11. (We didn’t even have time to watch Pujol’s 13th inning HR to win against the Astros.) After a not so good glass of butterbeer, and a very large mocha, and a meandering line through the bookstore – chatting with a GSLIS grad behind me, BTW…neat people you can run into at bookstores – I left with the four copies preordered (the Kresls got two, because, hey, who can share?)

When we got home, Tony started devouring the book like it was covered with melted real cheese and ranch dressing. I, on the other hand, was still a bit drunk and a bit wired from the coffee. Now, I’ve been drunk before, and I’ve been wired before – but I don’t think ever at the same time. I take that back; too many Baileys and coffee does that too me too, and although I love the potent potable, I don’t enjoy the upper/downer battle going on in my head. It makes me edgy, and possibly because of the Christmas Eve connection, makes me want to play board games.

I tried, very hard, to read the first page, several times, and just wasn’t ‘getting it.’ AJ pointed out the irony that the very first sentence of the book talks about reading something and not remembering it. I read that sentence at least four times and didn’t understand/catch it. I decided I could wait until the next day to start the book.

[ Ed Note: Okay, I said I wasn't going to spoil the book, but that's not a spoiler. It's not like I quoted the words from the book. And the first sentence isn't critical to the plot either. A spoiler is something that gives away something you care about, like Harry got caught with his [ THE FOLLOWING INFORMATION CENSORED BY THE MINISTRY OF MUGGLE UNDERSTANDING OF WIZARDRY AFFAIRS AND OTHER LONG BRITISH GOVERNMENT DEPARTMENT TITLES. ]]

But I was too wired to sleep. Too wired to put in a movie. (This would have been one of those times Mom or Aaron would have told me to run around the house four times. And I would have done it.) So, while we goaded Tony and forced him to sit downstairs in the papasan (which is Ikea for “uncomfortable,”) AJ and I played backgammon. We played a few rounds until he got the hang of it, and then the cribbage board came out. I think I played 20 or so games with AJ, Marc and Tony through the weekend, and it was great. I hadn’t played in a long time, and it felt good. Junior, we gotta dig out that old Cribbage program, and sound clips, and play again.

At some point in the night, I opened the book to a random page and yelled down to Tony the title of this post. A while later, after he Apparated several times to different areas of the house to read, he chuckled and told me he’d ran across that page. Sunday, when I read it, I laughed – and today, at about 12:30pm, Andrew sends me an IM with that message. He was reading it over his lunch break. [ Ed Note: That's not the only time that quote is said in the book. ]

More about the rest of the weekend, and what I think’s magical about Harry Potter in another installment. If I make this any longer, your RSS Owl will fall down.

Word of the Day for Saturday July 16, 2005

apparition \ap-uh-RISH-uhn\, noun:
1. A ghost; a specter; a phantom.
2. The thing appearing; the sudden or unexpected appearance of something or somebody.
3. The act of becoming visible; appearance.
4. (Astronomy) The first appearance of a star or other luminary after having been invisible or obscured; — opposed to [1]occultation.

Dictionary.com can be such a Zeitgeist sometimes. Tony has finished HP6, while I was too drunk/wired to focus on it last night, so I’ll start it sometime today and probably finish it during the week. I’m always amazed how quickly he can read and still absorb/enjoy things.

Congratulations to Steph and Steve, who are getting married this afternoon. This one’s going to be fun.

“On the other hand, we denounce with righteous indignation and dislike men who are so beguiled and demoralized by the charms of pleasure of the moment, so blinded by desire, that they cannot foresee the pain and trouble that are bound to ensue; and equal blame belongs to those who fail in their duty through weakness of will, which is the same as saying through shrinking from toil and pain. These cases are perfectly simple and easy to distinguish. In a free hour, when our power of choice is untrammelled and when nothing prevents our being able to do what we like best, every pleasure is to be welcomed and every pain avoided. But in certain circumstances and owing to the claims of duty or the obligations of business it will frequently occur that pleasures have to be repudiated and annoyances accepted. The wise man therefore always holds in these matters to this principle of selection: he rejects pleasures to secure other greater pleasures, or else he endures pains to avoid worse pains.”

I always wondered what that meant…