July 5, 1999

"Oh the Pleasures of Peace are infinite and they cannot be counted -"

I referred to this poem yesterday, might as well quote it today.

One of these infinite Pleasures of Peace is buying a firm mattress and boxspring from a salesman named Frank Micelli. Frank is no slacker, unlike the other sales louts who ignored me and Dom for minutes and minutes. Frank loudly offers, "Can I help anyone?" and I loudly respond, "Yes, I want to buy a mattress." This is how business should be conducted in America. I weep for the ruined people of Kosova who will not be able to buy a firm mattress and boxspring for quite some time - and never from Frank Micelli, unless he decides to take it on the road.

Just back from dinner at Redwoods across from Diamond Lake, a big steamy pond with swimmers and boats that looked like a black and white photo for some reason. Dinner was fine for the four of us (Murray, Jay, Dom, and me); but I ate too much, so I sit here scribbling rather than jumping into my jogging shorts and hitting the track. Maybe I'm procrastinating a bit on the jogging because my shorts are JCA shorts and it might be indelicate of me to prance around this Corsair turf decked out as a Hillman. But the natives will just have to bear it for a while.

Another fine Pleasure of Peace is to sit in a room full of boxes and silence with a cat somewhere in the background dreaming of sparrows. I think about the stuff in these boxes and imagine it will never see light of day again. I'd like to declare a moratorium on displaying this stuff...but the ostentatious display is also a great Pleasure of Peace. So I've been thinking about bookshelves. I need a quick, simple, cheap solution. Maybe those metal utility shelves at Menards could do the trick. They're certainly cheap, and they claim to hold 250 lbs. per shelf. I remember Colleen's Used Books on Telephone Road in Houston. She had aisles and aisles of these metal shelves loaded with her precious hoard. Which reminds me...I wonder if there are any musty old used bookstores around here...another spectacular Pleasure of Peace.