I hadn't seen this many stopped squads and copSUV's since a squad ran me over five years ago. The cop made an illegal turn. Then his partner told me I shouldn't be living in the neighborhood anyway. The doctor said at least I didn't get a concussion. (There is no "at least," my body's a genius, I rolled.) No real moral to the story either. Accept that it's hard to reprimand a cop, should you need to.
My lack of imagination for holding people accountable is one of those things I dislike about myself. It's the civil equivalent of taking out the trash and putting in a new bag.
My reading list for writing school included a bunch of books. A few of the recommendations from friends were approved by my teacher. Matt Svalina told me to check out The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini, written in the late 1500s. Or transcribed from Cellini's mouth to his servant boy's hand, which probably makes it better anyway.
It's entertaining, but his life falls into patterns that turn the adventure into a crawl. So he's a famous sculptor, etc., contemporary of Michelangelo, only he keeps getting in trouble for threatening to murder people. Brianna liked this summary so I'm typing it to share.
A duke* will commission a sculpture and tell Benvenuto he'll be paid 700 gold ducats, give him a receipt, ask him to see the treasurer to get his loot. The treasurer says that's way too much money for a sculpture, the duke's crazy. Benvenuto says something like, "If you don't pay me right now, I will cut you down where you stand. I am one of the greats." Then the treasurer runs to the duke to say he's been threatened. A price is put on Benvenuto's head and he must flee. I have 60 pages to go. A few times Benvenuto is referred to as Malvenuto.
Another book I'm reading, with the intimidating title The Poetics of Space has a wild mix of brilliant and funny lines like "[the] imagination surpasses reality," and "It is always diverting to see a destroyer of fables become the victim of a fable," and "... a casket is closed, it is returned to the general community of objects; it takes its place in exterior space." Then, three times on the same page, the word dialectics will appear.
Things unrelated to school and police. Brianna and I adopted a greyhound. Her name was going to be Pickles or Sarsaparilla, but on a compromise, and because this dog is so stoic, we settled on Lorca, which my mom and sisters like, and which I think Lorca the poet would understand, if not Neruda. We took her running at a dog park and she cut past us like a cheetah on a nature show. I ran so hard to keep her going that later on I was nauseous.
*I can't think of dukes and not remember both Disney's Robin Hood and also a scene from Orwell's Down and Out... wherein the narrator gets stuck with a bar tab by a former duke: "Even in exile," Orwell writes, "a duke is a duke."
