071909

I now have a good neurologist looking out for me. He's kind, attentive, knowledgeable, concerned, and generally on top of it. He's at the NYU Hospital for Joint Diseases Multiple Sclerosis Center. Thank goodness I feel cared for again after a couple of months of not. I'll be going into the hospital this week, as an in-patient, so that we can take care of a number of things: steroids (I'm in desperate need of a boost), a spinal tap (the risk of developing PML, a brain infection, while miniscule, is greater after two years on Tysabri; I've been on it for 2.5 years), and for speech therapy, writing therapy (I might have to learn to write left handed because I can't even sign my initials anymore with my right hand), and walking therapy. I'm very grateful that I'll be getting the care I need.

_____

Please look at a few photos of my new apartment, in the Places gallery:

http://gallery.me.com/adam69

I'll post more soon. One has to admit it's a pretty snazzy place. I am fully settled, and very happy.

*Perfume*

So, here I thought I was almost done--and another company registered opposition to my trademark application on Eros Aromatics. This one is a maker of vaginal lubricant also named Eros. With this latest opposition, one thing becomes very clear: Eros is a word everybody and his mother wants to use, especially in commerce. I will instead use some sort of eponymous name. The main problems with that idea are that Adam will run into the same problems (but worse) as Eros, and Gottschalk is just too complicated. My first real personal assistant said she thought an "exotic" name like Gottschalk was perfect; I'm just not so sure. Big names in perfume like Annick Goutal and Serge Lutens are still at least pretty straight forward; even if you get the pronunciation wrong it still sounds all right. Maybe some variation on "lord's jester," the literal meaning of Gottschalk, is in order.

My current assistant and I did our first perfume experiment this week: we made an air freshener. The idea came to me to make a non-citrus citrus type spray using kaffir-lime petitgrain and may chiang/litsea cubeba. The first go was okay; we'll give it a few days and see. But clearly it's too strong on the allspice; the lemony scents don't have a chance to develop under its grip. Nothing a little tweaking can't fix. I've found, though, that having a clove-type ingredient (clove, allspice, cinnamon) really helps an "aromatic ambient mist" come alive. This, when finished, will be part of the package I send to the Natural Perfumers Guild in application for the title of Professional Perfumer. Which perfumes I send in is still up in the air, though Anthea, my solid-perfume ode to jasmine, will almost certainly be in there somewhere.

*Quotations*

I reprint these because they're great:

I don't want to live. I want to love first and live incidentally.

--Zelda Fitzgerald

When we have faced down impossible odds, when we've been told that we're not ready, or that we shouldn't try, or that we can't, generations of Americans have responded with a simple creed that sums up the spirit of a people: yes we can

--President Obama

Don't ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.

--Howard Thurman

We make a living by what we get; we make a life by what we give.

--Churchill

A writer is someone who can make a riddle out of an answer.

--Karl Kraus

I have lost the consolation of faith though not the ambition to worship.

--Forrest Gander

The noblest worship is to make yourself as good and as just as you can.

--Isocrates

There is not one big cosmic meaning for all; there is only the meaning we each give to our life, an individual meaning, an individual plot, like an individual novel, a book for each person.

--Anais Nin

Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.

--Oscar Wilde

Chaos is the score upon which reality is written.

--Henry Miller

*Park*

This week I went with a new friend to a huge concert on the Great Lawn in Central Park. The Philharmonic played two symphonies, followed by fireworks. In my entire life, I have never seen so many people in the park. Word is that some 80,000 were there. From the moment I got to 5th Avenue all the way into the center of the park I was reminded that when I was young I spent much of my life in the park. I know every nook and cranny, every twist and turn, every hill and every valley. Things which were close together last I was there I now see are quite a distance apart.

I really felt at home among the teaming masses, shoulder to shoulder with people, butting in. I had a blast and was more than happy to be watching history unfold in front of me. The best part for me: I wasn't alone! I've been around the world and back a couple of times and all those worldly experiences were witnessed by me alone. There is no one to remember them with, there are no photographs (a very small number), there is hardly any proof at all that I did the things I did. My Chinese fluency may be one of the only bits of evidence.

*Top*

Top five NY delivery options:

5. Turkey burger

4. Turkish (falafel, humus, kebabs, etc)

3. Barbecue (short ribs, pulled chicken, creamed spinach, etc)

2. Italian (pizza, calzones, lasagna, etc)

1. Breakfast

*News*

Ten Things we didn't know last week (from the BBC News Magazine):

1. A new element cannot be named after a living person.

2. Plants that smell of almonds or marzipan are more likely to be poisonous.

3. The UK's median gross annual salary is £20,801.

4. The best Italian saffron is made from crocus flowers picked at dawn.

5. The world's longest bench is 613 metres.

6. Testicular cancer only accounts for 1-2% of male cancers.

7. Brahms liked his audience to clap in between movements.

8. Zoos in China use female dogs as surrogate mothers for baby tigers, lions and bear cubs.

9. Some lizards are so light they fall to the ground like a feather.

10. Buzz Aldrin received Holy Communion on the moon.

My one question is this: if Mr Aldrin received communion, who gave it to him? Wouldn't that be cool if it was an angel of some kind, standing on the moon looking down upon the earth?

*Index*

Adam's Index

Number of times I've been in Central Park: utterly incalculable; it would be comparatively easy to count the days I _wasn't_ in Central Park

Where everyone in Manhattan goes on weekend days in summer: Central Park

Number of times I've seen anywhere close to the 80,000 people in the park who were there last Tuesday: 0

Number of people who refused to scoot over and give me room on a bench last Tuesday: 0

Amount of fun we had just being there, without even hearing the music: inestimable

Degree to which I am comforted by being around so many people all the time: impossible to guesstimate

Amount the MS affects my daily interaction with the City: 100%

Amount of similarity between my old life and my new life in the City: hardly any

Amount the City cares: 0

Degree to which I like it that way: unknowable

*Wiki*

I find the story of Wikipedia fascinating, especially the part about it only recently getting bigger than a Chinese encyclopedia created in the 1400s. This is from The Writer's Almanac:

"The collaborative user-edited Web site gets its name from blending the words "wiki" and “encyclopedia.” “Wiki” is a recent edition to the English lexicon, and made its way into the authoritative Oxford English Dictionary in 2007. “Wiki-wiki” is actually a Hawaiian word, meaning “quick” or “fast.” A wiki is a Web site that uses a certain type of software (the software is also called "wiki" software) that enables users to quickly and easily edit the Web site, create content, and interlink various Web pages. A wiki is easy to edit because it uses a standard mark-up language, which is a series of notes and tags that describe the layout format of the Web site. Often the mark-up language is HTML, which stands for "hypertext markup language."

"In the mid-1990s, a computer programmer was developing this type of software to make Internet Web site collaboration fast and easy. He went on a vacation to Hawaii, and at the Honolulu airport, he needed to get quickly from one terminal to another. He asked an airport employee about the best way, and she told him to take the "Wiki Wiki Shuttle" — it's the shuttle that links the airport terminals there, the quickest and easiest way to get between terminals. The computer programmer, Ward Cunningham, adopted the name of the Honolulu airport terminal bus to describe his software, which was meant to be quick, straightforward, easy to use, and to interlink things, because he liked the alliterative sound of "wiki" when used with the word "Web."

"Larry Sanger and Jimmy Wales launched Wikipedia, the collaborative user-edited encyclopedia, in January 2001; it's now the largest wiki on the Web. To publicize their new creation, they simply sent out an announcement to an e-mail listserve. The new collaborative encyclopedia was to have no process of formal peer-review, which made it very different from any other encyclopedia, including online encyclopedias. At first, Wikipedia was only in English, and there were almost no rules except that articles were to present information in a neutral, non-biased point of view.

"By the end of its first year, Wikipedia had grown to about 20,000 articles in 18 languages. Today, less than a decade from its inception, there are more than 13 million articles in more than 260 languages on Wikipedia. It's the largest encyclopedia in the history of mankind; in 2007, it surpassed the encyclopedia that had held that distinction for 600 years, the Yongle Encyclopedia, commissioned by the emperor of China's Ming Dynasty and completed in the early 1400s. Nearly 3 million of Wikipedia's articles are in English. There are about 75,000 people who actively contribute to Wikipedia, creating articles or making edits to existing articles. It's the most popular reference work on the Internet and one of the 10 most visited Web sites in the world.

"The slogan of Wikipedia is "The free encyclopedia that anyone can edit." Because there aren't any requirements for expertise, the reliability of Wikipedia's articles are often called into question. Wikipedia is constantly coming up with new rules for user-editors, to try to ensure the encyclopedia's reliability and credibility. These rules are often explained under such subheadings as: "Wikipedia is not a soapbox," "Wikipedia is not a crystal ball," and "Wikipedia is not a democracy" nor "a bureaucracy" nor "a battleground" nor "an anarchy" nor "your Web host." But there's also an overriding rule, known as "Ignore All Rules," which is, "If a rule prevents you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia, ignore it." In addition to a committee of watchful editors, there are also a bunch of automated software programs to detect and delete problematic edits and correct misspellings and formatting errors. Articles that are prone to "vandalism" are sometimes locked, including the profiles of political candidates during elections."

*Music*

I realized that there is a set of 70s music that is my essential, fundamental soundscape. The names which make up that soundscape include:

James Taylor

Cat Stevens

Crosby Stills Nash & Young

Roberta Flack

Aretha Franklin

and many others.

_____

Josh Rouse--I must reiterate that Josh Rouse is one of the very best peri-millennial singer-songwriters. He had a long series of records every single one of which was good enough for a listen every day, a really phenomenal and somewhat idiosyncratic output. His last record, Country Mouse City House, was the first failure of his I've ever heard. The music on the following albums is classic (no particular order):

Chester (with Kurt Wagner)

Nashville

Subtitulo

1972

Dressed Up Like Nebraska

Under Cold Blue Stars

Home

Smooth Sounds Live

Smooth Sounds Rarities

Bedroom Classics Vol 2

_____

I came across a video this week of Joe Henry talking about his music:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_D8Hxou9PQ

I like it when he speaks of himself as an auteur who was trying to look at the songs he had prepared and make it so the listener could see the songs alone and not be aware that there's a "production idea afoot," so the music is comparatively stripped down. I also like his describing the song Time is a Lion as "just old-world enough, just trashy enough, just bluesy enough, and just Tin-Pan Alley enough" to hold his attention. I also really appreciate his talking of keeping "a certain amount of smoke in the room sonically and lyrically without forsaking the clarity; boldly available, even if they might be might be difficult lyrically, or dense lyrically," he wants the songs to be "shockingly available" (they are I can assure you). And, "People always ask 'If I go into a record store, what section would I find your music in?' I say the Joe Henry section. I don't know where else it would be."

A lyrics sampler:

"I saw Willie Mays at a Scottsdale Home Depot looking at garage-door springs at the far end of the 14th row. His wife stood there beside him. She was quiet and they both were proud. I gave them room but was close enough that I heard him when he said out loud: 'This was my country. This was my song. Somewhere in the middle there, though it started badly and it's ending wrong. This was my country, this frightful and this angry land. But it's my right if the worst of it might still somehow make a better man.'"

"Pray for you, pray for me. Sing it like a song: life is short but by the grace of god the night is long."

"God may be kind and see you like a son but time is a lion when you are a lamb."

Peace, love, and ATOM jazz