For the first 25 years I pronounced awry as ow-ree.

Today I realized that I’ve been writing demure when I mean demur.

As in “I must demur, as I have no knowledge of phlebotomy.”

The end of World War I was reported prematurely on Thursday, November 7, 1918. Two days later the New York Tribune reflected on what followed:

The Thief of Joy

It was the absolute spontaneity of Thursday afternoon’s explosion of joy that marked it off from every other celebration we can recall. No one had really dared face peace. It was too good to be true—it and all the gains which it signified for human beings the world around.

So when it burst unexpectedly upon us—through a giant hoax—there were no preparations, no set attitudes, to greet the glad tidings. There was only a spontaneous eruption of long pent-up feelings, gushing forth to find their own natural channel of outlet. For those first early hours after the supposed news arrived the doings were an utter improvisation. People laughed and sang and wept and cheered and talked to strangers and marched and countermarched and waved, and altogether dumped their emotions out upon the highway exactly as they flung papers from their office windows.

Can such a celebration be repeated? When the real news of peace arrives shall we have another celebration as good and joyous as those first hours? Hardly, we think. The edge has been taken off. What is more, even on Thursday the celebration had become formalized, had begun to run in routine channels, by nightfall. Broadway became more and more like an election night as the hours passed. To be sure, the doubts cast upon the news undoubtedly damped some spirits and took the thrill out of the evening. But, even more, the first spontaneity had worn off. Hearts were still aflame, but there was need of forced draft and fresh fuel from new recruits to keep the thing going at full tilt.

Anticipation is, in truth, the real thief of joy. The best times are always the unexpected ones. It is not the parties that you plan for weeks and look forward to that come off. There must be surprise and novelty and freshness to yield the last word in happiness and thrill. That we had on Thursday afternoon. The real thrill has passed, never
to return.

That is a beautiful piece of writing, and the final paragraph provides words to live by that have proved true, time and again, in my life. 

I found my way to this having read a quote attributed to Theodore Roosevelt, “Comparison is the thief of all joy,” as a piece of advice to those in polyamorous relationships, upon meeting their partner’s partners for the first time. I wanted to understand the context in which Roosevelt was speaking and, instead, found that he was likely misattributed as the source. 

Which, in itself, is a lesson similar: the most interesting learning happens when you wander accidentally in the side door of something.

My copy of Berlin Typography arrived at The Bookmark this morning; I learned this because I happened to walk by the shop and was enthusiastically waved in.

There is a large part of my heart in Berlin, and if I was granted the wish to live elsewhere, it would be at the top of my list. We spent the balance of the summer of 2011 living, printing, exploring, drinking, eating in Berlin; not a spring has passed since when I don’t have thoughts of doing the same all over again. The book is a photographic love letter to the city’s typographical wonders, and leafing through it hasn’t done anything to stanch my longing.

It’s lovely to see a book like this packaged in an affordable 5 by 7 inch format; what might have been a $60 coffee table book is, instead, a $23 everyday book.

I’ve always hated standard picnic tables: they’re hard to get in and out of, and uncomfortable to sit in.

Today I spotted this design, which seems to have a lot to recommend it.

Paul Graham, in Fierce Nerds:

To be a nerd is to be socially awkward, and there are two distinct ways to do that: to be playing the same game as everyone else, but badly, and to be playing a different game. The smart nerds are the latter type.

❦

One long afternoon in my mid-20s I got into a debate with my friend Stephen about the two sentences:

Cynicism has to do with exercising innocence.

Cynicism has to do with exorcising innocence.

❦

In my final year of high school I received a failing grade for turning in an assignment in comic book form. 

❦

In the coffee shop this afternoon I spotted a fetching person sitting across the room with a Hudson Records sticker on their laptop. This struck me as odd, as Hudson Records is a small three-person record label in England. I’d assumed I was the only person on my block to have heard of it.

❦

On the bottom of Stewart Brand’s website is the following:

Anything written by me here is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.  (Please don’t ask permission to borrow my stuff: just do it.)

❦

Working from Home, by Aurynn Shaw, is a rich early-pandemic guide to doing just that. I especially like:

You take lots of breaks at the office. You get up. You wander around, you talk to co-workers, go to the kitchen for water, etcetera. This is normal. So do it.

You don’t have to do any work-from-home presenteeism, so, don’t. Really, really, really don’t.

You need to step away, have normal lunch hours, sit on your couch and recharge while watching some TV, the things that help you disconnect and refocus.

Doing those things is stepping out of the made space. You leave the work space, you do the not-work things, you re-enter the work space, and can do work things again.

Having my house across the street from my office has been a terrific lever in this regard: I only realized last week that if I went out to pick up lunch there was no earthly reason I needed to eat at my desk in the office when there’s a perfectly wonderful place to relax just across the street.

From the front window at The Gallery on Great George, a quick ballpoint pen sketch of a painter at work.

Every now and again I find myself in need of something from the hardware store, and the handiest, Home Hardware, is conveniently a short cycle from home.

The challenge of cycling there from my house is that it means cycling up either Longworth Avenue and St. Peters Road, or up Kensington Road, none of which are particularly cycle-friendly (there are wide cycle lanes on St. Peters Road, but also a lot of sneaky sunken sewer grates).

I discovered a much quieter “back way” to Home Hardware on the weekend:

Take the Confederation Trail from Joe Ghiz Park, then, after you pass Kensington Road and are running in back of the How Bazaar building, veer right onto a dirt trail that connect to a parking lot that connects to the intersection of Belmont Street and Dresden Court.

Take Dresden Court north as it turns into 2nd Street; when you get to J. Frank MacAulay Park, take the paved trail right through the heart of the park, emerging onto Owen Terrace. Take Owen Terrace north to St. Pius X, turn left, and when you reach St. Peters Road it’s a quick jog up to Home Hardware.

Here’s the GeoJSON of the route I took (one of a growing collection of GeoJSON Collectibles).

For the route back, I opted to brave the sneaky sewer grates and fly down St. Peters Road to Euston, Euston to Prince, and Prince to Home.

The cycle out to Home Hardware took 12 minutes; the cycle back home took 9 minutes.

In my early days and weeks on PEI, in the spring of 1993, I sold my Ford F100 pickup and replaced it with an aging Nissan Sentra wagon. I asked around for a good place to have the Sentra inspected, and I was directed across the Hillsborough Bridge to a place that was cheaper and more flexible than what I’d find in Charlottetown.

Which is how I found myself coming across the bridge in a taxi a few hours after dropping off the car to pick it back up. My taxi driver pointed out that just off the bridge to the right was a collection of playful seals.

Every single time I’ve crossed the Hillsborough Bridge in the 28 years since I’ve looked for seals in the river, and since that one time, in the taxi, I’ve never, ever seen them again.

Until Saturday: [[Olivia]] and I were out cycling, and on our way back we were stopped by a couple sitting on a park bench in front of Friendly Pharmacy who pointed out a collection of playful seals, in exactly the same spot I’d seen them oh those many years ago.

This time I had a camera in my pocket to document the scene.

My therapist and I were talking about relationships—romantic and otherwise—and she offhandedly mentioned that an important part of the bedrock of relationships is sharing common interests.

This came as something of a surprise to me, and that fact helped explain why I got flummoxed trying to describe the nature of what I quest to Bumble: it never occurred to me that it might be as simple as revealing what it is I like to do, what makes me happy.

(As a side note: if there were as many beach bonfires on PEI as women who list beach bonfires among their favourite things to do in their online dating profiles, there would be a lot more beach bonfires. I have never been to a beach bonfire.)

This revelation led my therapist to ask me to describe what I would do if presented with an unfettered day.

My answer: I would be in a European capital city; there would be a lot of eating; and wandering about so as to cultivate happenstance; the public library would be visited, perhaps an art gallery or a museum; multiple book, magazine and stationery shops; stops for coffee and reading the newspaper; an open-air cinema to close the day. No bonfires.

This, in turn, reminded me that public libraries exist, something I’d all but forgotten (contact tracing at the library entrance, understandable given COVID, rains on a fundamental conceit of public libraries: free and open anonymous access).

So I decided to unforget the public library, and ordered up a copy of Needing to Know for Sure: A CBT-Based Guide to Overcoming Compulsive Checking and Reassurance Seeking, a book possibly recommended to me by my other therapist (she recommended the authors; I guessed at the book).

I picked up the book this week, my first library loan in many many months. It turned out to be one of those books the details of which didn’t scratch my particular itches, but the broad strokes of which were very helpful. Witness these section titles:

• Living in a World of Maybe and Good Enough
• Living Well Although Bad Things Happen and We All Die
• Without Uncertainty, Creativity is Lost
• Excitement and Anxiety are Related
• Certainty is a Feeling, Not a Fact
• Learning Mindful Acceptance of Discomfort

Writing those out, I’m thinking maybe it was the book recommended to me after all. At the very least, “Learning Mindful Acceptance of Discomfort” is a notion that will feed me for some time.

I returned the book this afternoon and, the library die now being cast, I went hog wild and borrowed four more:

• “You’re in the Wrong Bathroom!”: And 20 Other Myths and Misconceptions About Transgender and Gender-Nonconforming People — to help me understand more about the context into which Olivia emerges.
• A Happy Life in an Open Relationship — I’ve never been able to grok open relationships, and don’t find myself drawn to the notion, so an opportunity to learn, unencumbered by an actual relationship as I am.
• The End of Normal: A Wife’s Anguish, A Widow’s New Life — an autobiographical book written by Bernie Madoff’s widowed daughter-in-law.
• Tools of Titans — although The 4 Hour Workweek was an important and helpful book, the expanded Tim Ferris cinematic universe that has followed has been of little interest; borrowing this hefty tome is my attempt to put that to a conclusive test.

In the meantime, what with all the bonfire-loving Island women seeking bonfire-loving soulmates, I’ve decided to try to get better at simply being single, and to that end, I’ve booked myself dinner and a room for one at the Inn at Bay Fortune for the end of the month. I’ve no idea how a romantic seaside dinner for one actually works. But I’ll find out.