The List

of things I didn’t finish in 2011. When I think about it, I probably relish this, the idea of listing unfinished things, a little too much. However… onward!

  • 10. Fall yard work – never finished (a sub-theorem of You are NOT free!).  at least it’s this fall. By the way, a question: is it more more bourgeois to own a leafblower or to pay someone to use one on your leaves?
  • 9.  Handle of spiced Rum from Holiday cider – at least we won’t have to buy any next year, because this stuff is going nowhere.
  • 8. Museum of Innocence, by Orhan Pamuk. After very much enjoying Snow and My Name is Red, I baled on MoI earlier this fall, about 2/3’s of the way through, not least because I was reading about five other things. But c’mon, the competition is always stiff and honestly, I hardly ever stop reading a book I start. There was something about this one that was a little too indulgent about the inferred exoticism of Istanbul, if you know what I mean. Which is that even the great city loses its appeal under the duress of his infatuation with small things – including the suffocating obsession with a cousin by him/his protagonist. And yet, a return and finish is just as likely as not in the coming months.
  • 7. Recording project with a friend – 11.11.11 was a nice goal, but…
  • 6. The movie about Venice I’m working on – try to leave out the work-related, could be an entire sublist here. Filmed in 2011, at least.
  • 5. Interview show – more on that later.
  • 4. Plans for an arbor-pergola over the patio. Only rudimentary drawings at this point, plus a wisteria vine about knee-high.
  • 3. Green opus – tying all of the ecological, linguistic and economic implications of one multi-versatile word into a grand unified theory that explains it all in less than 400 words. Well, there’s always next year.
  • 2. Listening to Beefheart.
  • 1. The dishes.

and you? Happiest of best laid plans in the New Year ahead.