No doubt it's time I said something about the tiger. I should mention, perhaps before I recount the particulars of how it escaped and how its escaped prefigured the momentary tragedies and enduring triumphs of our silent March, that several anniversaries ago R and I were able to travel, slowly, up to Philadelphia by way of Baltimore to cath a remarkable exhibition of maps at the Walter's Art Gallery. At least one of the maps contained a tiger, but I can't recall itf it is the map I've ben proccupied with lately.

The exhibition was so transporting we spent at least an hour wandering through the meandering narrative of what humans have made of maps for centuries upon centuries. It contained everything from the stylized graphic art of a London Underground map made in the early 1900s to a craggy lenght of polished wood which an Eskimo would run his hands along while kayaking along the shoreline in the dartk, navigating by sense and counting outcroppings and inlets.

One map from Edo period Japan though traced a pisirutal pilgrimage. Rather than being strictly representative of taking this road or that road to and from a holy city it stressed spiritual exercises at particular points and was illustrated with drawings to aid the pilgrim in achieving the full measure of his pilgrimage. Well, I've been doing something which can be considered some fashion of pilgrimage, but doing it without benefit of a map. I realized recently, and with a healthy measure of shame, that I had never read LORD OF THE FLIES by William Golding. It is one of several conspicuous and surprising gaps in my literary education,m suprising especially for a student of English literature. Well, as a remedy to this problem I've been reading my way through everything that Golding published, finishing of course and in true pilgrim's fashion, wirth the object which precipitated the journey in the first place, Golding's first published work, LORD OF THE FLIES.

Well, I mention this I suppose not because it is particular to the focus of this month, but because it isn't. I have been reading through Golding's books on the train for two months or so, and am happy to report I am most of the way completed with them. no, I mention it because it is an area of interesting accomplishment I have focused on in the last week.

But this last week has, apart from my adventures in Golding been notable for its deviations, actually. R and I listened to two British radio shows, and I should like to add that British radio is simply better than our American radio. Say what you want about whether the federal government should be funding NPR, but recognize simlutaneously that it is the only thing we have that approximates worthwhile radio in America. I don't really want to debate that, not here anyway. But I will say that we listened to two episodes of THE UNBELIEVABLE TRUTH, which is possibly the funniest and smartest radio show going st the moment. It is currently in its 7th season and I am enjoying listening through it a great deal.

We also notably broke our strict fast this week to draw the blinds and enjoy an episode of the new PBS UPSTAIRS, DOWNSTAIRS. Don't judge us too harshly, we had a long day in the car with all three kids before hand and when evening came around we were rsather downtrodden and a little desperate.

That;'s all for this week though, which the exception of the tiger story, which, sadly, will have to wait. My sincewrest apologies.

April 11th...2011

Later on we'll explain and apologize appropriately for whatever it was that happened or didn't happen here on this blog in the month of March. I'll just tell you up front that it was a totally justified silence, and involved an escaped circus tiger, a missing suitcase and a hidden message detected in the hem of a ball gown for an understudy in the New York Ballet. Like I said, we'll get to it, and it's not a very interesting story anyway.

We're here to talk about this month. This April. This cruelest month as what's his name described it in Thanatopsis WRONG WRONG WRONG it was Eliot in THE WASTELAND and fie on me for my faulty memory of lines which have tumbled in my head for a decade (wet blanket that he was.)This remains true...Eliot was a wet blanket...though he did like the Groucho Marx a lot...apparently. Not in the way he meant it, April is turning out to be a cruel month indeed though. We've altered our schedule a bit for a couple reasons, chief among them that we really coudn't manage without alcohol this month. More on that later.

This month we are doing without digital media. Sort of. Well, it's our media ecology month anyway, an experiment in decreasing the amount of time we spend in our lives gazing into the flickering firelight of a computer screen. Our distant ancestors who spent their lives pitched in ceaseless combat against the whips and scorns of outrageous nature (see escaped circus tiger above) knew better than we do that it is simply a bad survival tactic to stare INTO the fire. It ruins the eyes for night work, Likewise, staring into these screens that have become in so many ways principle arbiters of the world seems like it must be a bad survival tactic. At any rate it is good to acknowledge their power over us and take a closer look...away from them.

The other day I was at a research panel review meeting, where diffierent institutions were highlighting their work in a number of fields (chiefly blowing things up and measuring the effects of this or that modelling software in predicting what blows up and how). The man running the show spoke late in the afternoon on the final day of the conference and announced that the results would be made available in an online tool because, as he put it blatantly, nothing is real until it's on the internet. He paused after he said it, so I think it was a joke, but no one laughed.

There's been enough diatribe and doomsay against the internet, and we're not about that here. I'm not anyway. Anyway, I'll let R write about it more since she's read THE SHALLOWS and Neill Postman with more assiduity than I. But on the other hand, I've read Verner Vinge's wonderful book RAINBOWS END, which I highly recommend and will excerpt and write about later.

Essentially that's all I can report today, that I will write more about some other stuff later (see escaped circus tiger above). Well, that's not entirely true. I can tell you about the rocky start we had to this month, which began with the difficult admission of just what this month meant. Drastic reductions in internet and no watching movies or television shows. There are essentially four websites i ever visit, so I didn't anticipate the first being difficult or feeling drastic (http://google.com , http://forum.dansimmons.com , htto://www.audiotool.com , http://facebook.com ). Well, for the first week or so it's been more of an exercise in undoing habitude. I have consciously checked myself quite a bit, stopping myself from checking my email more than once or twice a day, from looking at facebook....at all....which isn't a great loss...I still hate facebook...and from weighing in on political discussions etc. But I have been a bit intentional about it and not Draconian. I still research on google books, I still check my email, but the intent has been to decrease and examine and it's been interesting.

The movies are brutal though.

I realized that I tend to come home from work, having already read on the train for at least an hour, having cudgeled my brain all day in the office, having sat through or run meetings, having jostled and bumped against people on trains heading this way or that way through the city, and the thought of doing anything other than cooking, getting the kids to bed and then having a thoughtful or provacative or funny or interesting story told to me, while I sit and enjoy it...is overwhelming.

I'll say this much, after the first few days of it, I got more into the groove of writing in evenings, and I've written more consistenty in the last week, adding several pages a night almost to my novel (which is totally at sea and I'm not feeling all that great about it and don't want to talk about it). That's been good. But not watching films really feels like a fast, feels privative. I think in terms of really examining how we spend our days and nights, I am feeling the impact of not watching films more than anything else. It hasn't been terribly pleasant, but a little unpleasantness was I think, part of the purpose of this week, to understand, appreciate and be aware of each thing we do in our lives.

Now, about the circus tiger....