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Monthly Archives: January 2025

“At Last the Secret Is Out”

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Poet Wystan Hugh Auden (1907-1973)

I would like to carefully read several poems a week. And then re-read them until I can wring every particle of sense out of them. A good one to start with is W. H. Auden’s “At Last the Secret Is Out.”

At Last the Secret Is Out

At last the secret is out,
as it always must come in the end,
the delicious story is ripe to tell
to tell to the intimate friend;
over the tea-cups and into the square
the tongues has its desire;
still waters run deep, my dear,
there’s never smoke without fire.

Behind the corpse in the reservoir,
behind the ghost on the links,
behind the lady who dances
and the man who madly drinks,
under the look of fatigue
the attack of migraine and the sigh
there is always another story,
there is more than meets the eye.

For the clear voice suddenly singing,
high up in the convent wall,
the scent of the elder bushes,
the sporting prints in the hall,
the croquet matches in summer,
the handshake, the cough, the kiss,
there is always a wicked secret,
a private reason for this.

Our Salvation Lies in Robots?

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Some of the Food Offerings at India Sweets & Spices

About once a week on the average, I drop in for a quick lunch at India Sweets & Spices in Culver City. The vegetarian curries are tasty and not overly expensive, and one does not have a order a meal too big to finish.

As I entered the store, I was greeted by a garrulous retiree who was sitting at one of the outside tables. As is my custom, I answered him politely, but in the 1930s Hungarian rural dialect which I adopt when trying to avoid a chatty individual.

He took the hint quickly while I passed inside to order a samosa and lentil fritter. When I came out with my food, I had to sit at a table within earshot of him. He was regaling one of his captives with an encomium on robots and how they were going to replace surgeons. Someone looking at my face at that point would have guessed that I had just smelled something foul.

You can’t talk about robots without talking about computer algorithms. And I was a person who had just spent an hour explaining to my pharmaceutical mail order firm—three times—that I am not Hispanic (marque dos) before getting to speak to a human being. If most companies cannot reasonably handle automated phone attendants, why would I submit to a computer algorithm with my body for surgery?

Fortunately I was able to finish my vegetarian snack quickly and vanish from sight before hooting derisively.

Back to the Books

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Enjoyable Books: Just the Thing I Need!

After a month of illness, I have finally returned to my first love: reading. I started with a reread of Lawrence Durrell’s Balthazar (the second volume of The Alexandria Quartet) and then picked up John Le Carré’s Agent Running in the Field.

On Thursday, I plan to resume my weekly visits to the Central Library in downtown Los Angeles. The combination of a guided Mindfulness Meditation session with access to the vast circulating holdings of the library is my indication that things are returning to normal. Plus, I have seven overdue books to return.

This January has been my worst month in many a year. Add to that the fact that it was Los Angeles’s worst month in thirty-one years. What happened in 1994 that was so bad? The Northridge Earthquake on January 17 of that year.

Send Us Rain, But Not Too Much!

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Finally Some Rain to Put Down the Wildfires

Just within the last half hour it has started to rain. It has provoked some strange news stories in which the hope is expressed that there won’t be too much. Yes, if there is “too much” rain, there will be mudslides. But then it is all part of the cycle of wind, wildfires, mudslides, and earthquakes that has formed (and will continue to form) the Southern California landscape.

I’m just happy that the air will be more breathable and that the increased humidity will relieve us from painful peeling hangnails. If there are mudslides, that will just be part of the cost we will have to bear for living in this strange and beautiful place.

The rains are expected to last for the next couple of days.

The Way Things Are

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English Poet, Writer, and Novelist Walter de la Mare (1873-1956)

Usually, during the month of January, I concentrate on reading the work of authors that I have not read before. Due to illness and wildfires, my reading this month has been mostly nil. As a result of reading an article in the New York Review of Books, however, I have decided on my next new “discovery,” Walter de la Mare. The following quote comes from his Memoirs of a Midget (1921).

Not that in an existence so passive riddles never came my way. As one morning I brushed past a bush of lads’ love (or maidens’ ruin, as some call it), its fragrance sweeping me from top to toe, I stumbled on the carcass of a young mole. Curiosity vanquished the first gulp of horror. Holding my breath, with a stick I slowly edged it up in the dust and surveyed the white heaving nest of maggots in its belly with a peculiar and absorbed recognition. “Ah, ha!” a voice cried within me, “so this is what is in wait; this is how things are”; and I stooped with lips drawn back over my teeth to examine the stinking mystery more closely. That was a lesson I have never unlearned.

Winding Down

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If you know anything about me, you know that I read a lot of books, something around 160 per year. This month, to date, I have not read anything. I just didn’t feel good enough.

To make matters worse, my apartment will be inspected by the City of Los Angeles a week from today. Not only did I not read anything, but Martine and I have been preparing to donate upward of a thousand books by January 29.

It breaks my heart to donate books that I had spent big bucks collecting, including Folio Society, Library of America, and other premium hardbound editions.

I only hope that the people who get these books appreciate their quality. In the end, it’s probably best that I don’t think too much about this. It would be even more grim if I were given a warning by the city to gut my personal library.

Return to Life

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Two Weeks of Acid Reflux!

If I have not been posting much lately, it is because I have been ill. The month started with an Addisonian Crisis (lack of adrenaline). No sooner did I get discharged from UCLA Ronald Reagan Hospital than Los Angeles damned near burned down. Then I started feeling week with a severe pain around my sternum. That turned out to be acid reflux.

As a result, I lost nineteen pounds because it was just to painful to eat. Even when I put myself on the BRAT diet (Bananas, Rice, Applesauce, Toast), any food make my stomach hurt for hours.

Finally, my doctor put be on a drug that relieved the pain. Now I have to be able to build up my strength after lying on the couch for weeks.

Hopefully, I’ve seen the worst and am on the mend. Wish me luck!

A Fond Farewell to Will Rogers SHP

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The Will Rogers Ranch House—Gone Forever

One of my favorite places in the Los Angeles area was the Will Rogers Sate Historical Park in Pacific Palisades. It was the home of Will Rogers for many years. On the grounds was a polo field where in the summer polo games were played. There were also hiking trails and a horse barn.

Now all are gone, burned in the Palisades Fire. Martine and I will no longer be able to relax in the shade of the oak trees in rustic rocking chairs or tour the ranch house to see the western memorabilia of one of my favorite actors.

Will Rogers was a genuinely good person as well as one of the most popular actors of the 1930s. There was not a contentious bone in his body. What the political divided United States needed was another Will Rogers, but alas it is unlikely we will ever find one.

The 5,000 Fingers of Doctor T

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Still from The 5,000 Fingers of Doctor T (1953)

I suppose I could continue to write about the disasters wildfires that savaged Southern California last week, but I decided to take a break from that.

Last night, Martine and I watched The 5,000 Fingers of Doctor T (Columbia) on television last night. I have seen it several times before and regard it as one of the most entertaining movies ever made., mainly because of the creative genius of Doctor Seuss, who designed the production.

The film is about a little boy played by Tommy Rettig who dreams that his piano teacher (played brilliantly by Hans Conreid) has designs on his mother. He is assisted by a friendly plumber to foil Doctor Terwilliger’s megalomaniacal plans of having 500 little boys simultaneously play his compositions on a giant piano.

Particularly good are the scenes in Dr. T’s dungeons, where players of non-standard (i.e., non-piano) instruments are imprisoned and kept in check by hire goons.

Leapfrogging Embers

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Flying Embers Being Carried by Wind Gusts

One of the reasons this week’s Southern California wildfires were so devastating is that the wind gusts were so powerful that flaming embers were being carried up to five miles by the winds. And some of those gusts approached the velocity of a category 2 hurricane (up to 100 miles per hour or 161 km per hour) without benefit of the moisture that usually accompanies a hurricane.

Typically, January is a wet month in Los Angeles. This year, the relative humidity levels were frequently 10% or even less.

One of the reasons the Palisades Fire was so devastating was that the wind gusts would send flaming embers leapfrogging over the hills and valleys and starting new fires. This is what happened along the Pacific Coast Highway (Route 1) where dozens of beachfront homes burned down as the waves of the Pacific Ocean gently lapped over the ruins.

Martine and I remain sick at heart following the news and seeing nothing but devastation everywhere.