Late Decadent Modernity Should be Preserved Somehow

The doors are locked, and the windows are barred. It's getting late. Soon, they will be able to be heard. Our heroine goes from room to room, turning off lights and turning them on as she proceeds. She goes down to the kitchen and by the light of the stove hood boils water for tea. She hears the first shout: distantly. A second sound, much like a howl, follows. She pulls the kettle off the element before it can make too much noise. She pours boiling water into her tea-filled teacup. She had another night to get through; the days were easier, but they weren't carefree. Who knows when you could run into one of the beasts in broad daylight? It happens often enough. The calls and screams and groans wander outside. At some points, they are very close, perhaps walking right in front of her house. The Mad own the night, and doors are all locked and windows are all barred. She wonders how it could be that she was the prisoner there in the city. Why weren't the Mad incarcerated rather than herself and those like her? Alas, that wasn't a question that could be asked aloud, ever. Taste Dear Abby. I can't escape this dilemma. I'm caught in a contradiction that is harming my life. I cannot get any pleasure from art. Why is that? It's because my husband is a hundred times smarter than me. If he says something is worthwhile, then, totally true, it's worthwhile. He has a genius for genius. He tends to the best, somehow, in music and books and film. All that said, I'm in a pickle. I want to hate him, for he has illustrated to me the worthlessness of my existence. So, to spite him, I have to watch or read or listen to the most useless rubbish that can be imagined. He, of course, can find anything usefully interesting, so he goes along with it all. Meanwhile, I can't myself find any satisfaction. This evening, I thought through Last Year at Marienbad, Mulholland Drive, and The Last Picture Show, but because he approved of them all, we wound up watching this trash movie called Second Coming. So, Abby: how can I make my husband mediocre? I want to be above him, so how do I do that? You must know how to respond. What's your response? Respond now please. Photo Cary found a photograph of her; it seemed to be the only known photograph of her. The photograph of her was from the cover of a women's monthly; it seemed unlikely there would be only one photograph of her if a photograph of her was on the cover of a magazine. He contacted the publisher of the magazine that had had the photograph of her on the cover of their magazine, and he got the response that there had been an industrial fire in the building where they had been keeping all their photographs, including an unknown number of photographs of her. "We have no other photographs of her." He had a photograph of her; it was evermore likely now it was the only photograph of her. In the photograph of her, she is smiling, full-face, clean-complexioned, in daylight, with a bush of red flowers behind her, out-of-focus. The flowers had been present, and entirely ignorant they were participating in the only photograph of her, and they never learned about it either. She has blue eyes in the photograph of her, and blonde hair in the photograph of her. She never learned it was the only photograph of her. Demonetization A curious email came to me yesterday. It was from AdSense. (When did I ever have any contact with Adsense?) The email told me (so I thought at first) they were suddenly refusing to put advertisements on my site because I had said something pro-Russian. Now, I have nothing to do with AdSense, so naturally I thought I had been hacked in some way. So, I tried to log into AdSense to see what was happening. However, I couldn't log into AdSense because I didn't have an account with them. (Though it appeared I had at one point tried to set up one, for whatever reason, in the distant past.) I went back to the email (text in appendix below), and I realized it was a warning not to post anything pro-Russia, because then I'd be demonetized. So, it had all been a glitch. However--what kind of censorship is this before me? Last time I checked, war had not yet been declared against Russia. Was AdSense in a war against Russia? Is that why they were taking a side? Let's see if AdSense comes to kill me: Yay Dostoevsky! Bravo Tchaikovsky! Hurrah Pushkin! Go Anna Akhmatova! Praise Stravinsky! APPENDIX Important Notice: Update regarding Ukraine Dear Publisher, Due to the war in Ukraine, we will pause monetisation of content that exploits, dismisses or condones the war. Please note, we have already been enforcing on claims related to the war in Ukraine when they violated existing policies (for instance, the Dangerous or Derogatory content policy prohibits monetising content that incites violence or denies tragic events). This update is meant to clarify, and in some cases expand, our publisher guidance as it relates to this conflict. This pause includes, but is not limited to, claims that imply victims are responsible for their own tragedy or similar instances of victim blaming, such as claims that Ukraine is committing genocide or deliberately attacking its own citizens. Sincerely, The Google AdSense Team Cassock "I often get extremely tired of getting things right all the time," I said to the prostitute. She was still in bed, and smoking a cigarette. A neon light somewhere nearby made the room red every other second. "I'm always too good." "You are good," the prostitute replied. "I don't mean in that way. I mean that I want to fail, spectacularly so, to let everyone know I'm not the greatest priest ever." She pointed to my clothes, saying: "I thought that was just some kind of fetish outfit. It's not?" I looked around the floor in search of my undies. I picked them up and pulled them on. What was there not to see? I said: "No, it's my calling, and I love my calling." "I got a sister who's a novitiate." "Ah." I picked up my cassock and pulled it over my head. "Best of luck to her." "The light outside makes it look red." I went to the mirror to check it out. "Mind if I turn on the light?" "Nope." While her legs fall open when I turned on the light, I looked in the mirror. It had turned slightly red. The light was right. Fabulous This has been told in many ways, and here comes another one. The Rabbi was taking it easy one day, walking his New York City streets, when he was stopped by a young man from his neighbourhood. They walked together for a while. The Rabbi asked him about his family, his school, his baseball. All was very well, quite well, in fact. The young man said: I've been troubled, though. About what? It's about the Book. I know the Book, I'm familiar with it all. But still: It's so full of things that are, I don't know, allegorical, or of little interest to me. Burning bushes, and women turning to salt, and then there's the Red Sea business and the Noah's ark; how does any of it matter? Kings and more kings, and prophets major and minor, the whole thing with the Garden.... What are you getting at? the Rabbi asked. It's just that: I can't entirely believe in it. It doesn't make me feel anything. So: how can I make it relevant? A: The question is not how to make the Book relevant to you; rather, it's a question of how to make you relevant to the Book. Text We were driving over to her parents' house. It was a fine summer evening, just getting dark. I would be meeting her parents for the first time. That was all right with me, because I was a rather normal young man and her parents were, as far as I could tell, normal too. She said: "Be sure you mention your prospects in your line of woerk. I know you're not into blowing your own horn, but tell them something about the probotion you're expect ing to get, it'll show you're some kind of a go-gettierr because dad likes to see that kind of stuff, that initiative as he call s it. Don't worry so much about nom, you know how moms are, she'll like you right from the get-go. She'll tell me you're fine, and all the time she'll be in competition with me, fo r you. That';s they basic way it all works, you know, I've read about it in places, not just magazines but real books. And for God's sake dom't start messing with the dog, playing and stuff, just leave the dog alone, you know how?" I said: "You're very cute when you're nervous, you know." Aries YOU have received a worthwhile offer from an unknown and distant land. YOU look at a couple maps, and YOU discover the land on most of the maps, but not all of the maps. YOU pack up your car and start the long drive to the semi-known and distant land. YOU stop for lunch when YOU believe YOU're only some fifty miles from the land, and YOU ask the waitress for directions. She doesn't know what YOU're talking about. She's never heard of such a place. YOU show her YOUr finest map. She looks it over and says: "I thought there was a lake there; yes, I remember going to that lake and swimming there. This land doesn't have the same name as the land YOU're seeking, but whatever." She gives YOU directions to the lake (which is now a land). And so YOU pay the tab and set off to the lake that's now a land. ARIES. YOU cannot be stopped easily. YOU're not especially bright, but when YOU get an idea in YOUr head there's nothing to set you awry. YOU'll find that land in just a couple hours. YOU know it's going to be there, right? Laws Time slips away like a thief in the night, and that's why I find myself at nine in the evening writing. The task: "How does book-law impact upon the actions of the plot and of the characters of the 1963 novel Suzanne Leaves? (2000 words)" It was due this afternoon. I'd considered skipping the whole project, failing the course, and making it up in the summer: but then time would have continued slipping away in the night, and my life would forever be behind the clock. So now I am writing; writing to warm up; writing to get into the mood to invent material from a high-wire. I figure so long as I write something with some style, I can't get less than a D, even if it's clear I haven't read more than a synopsis of Suzanne Leaves. It will all be fresh and unplagiarized. I'm not trying to get a good mark; merely a passable one. The sense of panic I've carried all day has now left me, and I can consider things from an artistic point of view. This doesn't have to be accurate, or good: simply colourful is what I'll be after. Two thousand words.... Award Places decided it was about time to give me an award. "I have to hang up now, I've got my lieutenants here in my office, agreed, I hear you, but what? Okay, lads, we've got to come up with an appropriate award for him, it's about time." "Mum, I've gone through all the awards books on the surface of the place, and I've found nothing except to reward him for his body mass index result." "Not good enough, is it?, no, it's not good enough, invent, lads, invent!" "He hasn't done anything, mum, and that's the problem." "Protocol, protocol!, everyone has to get a prize some time or other, and we're running out of time, the hammer is going to come down." "I've gone through his files, again and again, and there's nothing there, he is an empty shell devoid of anything noteworthy." "No grand adventures?" "Nothing not done a thousand times before." "Diplomatic or artistic success?" "Nothing eight-year-olds can't do." "He must have invented something, anyone can invent something." "Nothing, not an invention not already invented." "That's it, it's settled, I've got it." "Wonderful!, a solution!" "We'll give it to him for nothing." "Nothing?" "Nothing!" "That will work!" Window Charlie was looking out the living room window of his home, into the living room of the people opposite. "Look at then, Ag," he said. "Can you believe it? How'd they get into our neighbourhood anyway? They're totally hopeless." "Who's hopeless?" asked his wife Ag. "The people over there, who else do you think I mean? You look at them, and you can understand them in an instant. Like you know their thoughts." It was true: over there, the man was doing nothing at all. Charlie continued: "They've got secrets, anyone can see that. Dark, unspeakable secrets not to be fathomed or sounded. All you can do is guess at them." Ag got up. "Um...." "Where's the joy in their lives? How do people like that not wind up killing themselves or each other? Absolutely pathetic. I don't see how they keep going." "I think I understand it, Charlie." "No, Ag, I'm saying it's unfathomable and utterly opaque. But they're one evil mystery." "But, Charlie, that's not a window you're staring at. It's a mirror." Charlie raised a hand, and the man opposite raised his. "Well, if that doesn't beat all. Why doesn't anyone ever tell me these things?" Time "I was young then, in how I dealt with time. Maybe I've grown somehow since, I don't know. Use to be--and I thought this was clever--if I had something terrible to experience, and exam or something, I would tell myself: 'It'll be over in two hours. Time will pass on its own. All you have to do is endure.' That worked in all sorts of ways. That was all when I was young, and I thought I was pretty clever. For the time, at least, I thought I was a genius for coming up with it. "That was all a long time ago, as I said; now I'm old or nearly old. I had no experience then, when days were weeks; now I have experience, and weeks are days. I can no longer put things off like that: I had so much time back then! but that's no longer the situation. I eat time and time eats me. Here's a way to put it: I used to deal with time in a particular way but all the time time was dealing with me in an ordinary way; and time will win in the end." TO BE CONTINUED??? Classiculification Singulationarily, one fore-noon-taste, I was perventualating on a superbilical solubindial autobus, when I occasionated to apperceptualize a comtemporalialistical passagenatorial individuatingly hominon, e.g. a suitationally attributated officialatist who had perhaps mistributed a singulational gravation-filling buttonment on his care-calibrated externalationary habilimental dressage. I condited or conpressed an ideationalistical extribulation to confronticate with the gentilhomme, perhapsationally to invicticate his miniscular errotation of the perfictional imagolicon concernating the problemistical naturalismism in re the absentuated unluckilation of his coat of great coat; in the happenation of my proposism, however, I declamitated that I was at my caesuralation imponticated, and it was chronoscopically my oppornation to leftimate the vehicularizational apparatism. Some continuatically contiguental horologics later, I espectabled the homination in a way that must be descriptedly entitulated 'later', on the outvirons of a simplicatical refreshmentary estabilication, a coff-shop. The hom was accompatated with an acquaintenation, cognometically unknowsticatal, and this tertiational existacor increated a lenticulary of a digitaliasm, directionalically at the absentuated pository, and vocalizated: "You're missing a button there." The recipiator of this inforzaliamation diverlimated his cranicality to obsate that, indeed, he was lackimating the superioralated ungigatulate roundational that should have been affictionated to his gravulantal outerwardrobing, and I persevicated upon the mystericalations of chancifulisation. Time "I was young then, in how I dealt with time. Maybe I've grown somehow since, I don't know. Use to be--and I thought this was clever--if I had something terrible to experience, and exam or something, I would tell myself: 'It'll be over in two hours. Time will pass on its own. All you have to do is endure.' That worked in all sorts of ways. That was all when I was young, and I thought I was pretty clever. For the time, at least, I thought I was a genius for coming up with it. "That was all a long time ago, as I said; now I'm old or nearly old. I had no experience then, when days were weeks; now I have experience, and weeks are days. I can no longer put things off like that: I had so much time back then! but that's no longer the situation. I eat time and time eats me. Here's a way to put it: I used to deal with time in a particular way but all the time time was dealing with me in an ordinary way; and time will win in the end." TO BE CONTINUED??? Sizes The world, as we all know and as we can in a sense prove, if extremely large, with plenty of places and thousands of acres of trees and a vast amount of ocean, and yet we shall never know even the smallest part of it, little more than the size of our own two feet. And, as we know, time stretches so deeply into the past, back to a hypothetical point, and it stretches forward into the unimaginable future, which again contains its own hypotheses, and yet what can we be said to know except for the powerful infinitesimal sliver of now in which we are communicating? A man's life, so it can be argued, has a certain beginning, and it has a certain end, and in that span he plays every part possible, as the poem goes; and yet all the parts are shared by all men who pass through them in a repetitious sequence. And you, you've travelled a great distance, haven't you? It can't be otherwise, can it? Everything moves even when you're still: and yet you haven't moved, really, from where you are; the scenery has changed, but only through replacement, of this, for that. Kriminalroman Book One 1. The Big Bang. Formation of galaxies, stars, planets, and moons. (75p) 2. Geological time on Earth. Single-celled organisms, amphibians, mammals. (75p) 3. Rise of Man. Agriculture, calendars. Formation of cities. (75p) 4. Babylon, Egypt, China, India, Greece, Polynesia, civilizational contacts. (150p) Book Two 1. Rise of Europe, the Dark Ages, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, various wars, focussed on Germany. (150p) 2. Rise of Germany, literacy, plays and poems, the troubadours, Goethe, Schiller, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven. (150p) 3. The Romantic period in all cultures across the world, and Wagner. (100p) 4. The twentieth century, imperialism, Nazism, the Second World War. (150p) Book Three 1. Reconstruction, a fresh beginning, the fifties and the sixties, modern politics, the United Nations and the European Union. (100p) 2. Characters introduced, and traced back through time: the criminal, the detective, the victim, various police officers, many others. (200p) 3. June of 1978, a robbery, a conspiracy, old complicities, forgotten antagonisms. (250p) 4. 1989, fall of the Berlin Wall, character experiences, another crime. (200p) 5. 2010, the murder is committed, police get involved, detective called into the case. (250p) I looked up from my outline, thinking: "Man, this detective-story double-plotting is really involved!" Dogs Our neighbours were quite ordinary. They both had jobs downtown, somewhere or other, with something to do with finance. They kept to themselves, and hardly ever made any noise except sometimes on Saturday nights. They were quite ordinary until they decided they'd sometime become dogs. Both of them would bark to be let out into the yard, and one of them would temporarily re-assume a human form to open the door to outside. We would see them running around the yard, just a couple dogs playing and fearing shadows. They had to become humans again to work, but when they were at home, they were almost always a couple dogs. She became pregnant, I heard and I noticed. When she was human, she had the bump, and, when she was a dog, her belly hung low. Finally, she had puppies, four of them, and they were pure-breed dogs without a hint of human in them. As if dissatisfied, she became pregnant again. I think they felt she'd had enough puppies, so this time they made sure they had a little baby girl human instead. Her brothers and sisters loved her. Everything's fine now; and Saturday nights are much quieter. Living You can't get out of it, no matter what you do, no matter all the graves, no matter all the empty horses, and no matter the renewals of spring. You're in for the whole thrown-in-ness, you know how the story has to end, and you know how the sun got to be where it is appearing now. The cats you've got you looked at this morning as they cried to be fed, and you knew they are using the position of the sun to know when they are to be fed. They don't know the earth is tilted and season-causing. They don't ask why the nights are sometimes long and sometimes short. It's you--your curse--it's how you know about the matter. You know about these matters, and you have a profession, and you have interests, and a cultural warehouse, and you have an 'I'. The cats think you're simply an unusual cat, that's all, or they think everything is secretly alive; they can't comprehend why you stare out the window at the trees under the sun. All this will go away some day, and if something is unpleasant, you know it won't last forever. Tomorrow is tomorrow. Kids We were just a couple late-middle-age kids out on the town, enjoying a first date. After the stunningly-idiotic movie we both swore we'd liked, we went to a bar to get a little acquainted. She asked: "Did you really like that stunningly-idiotic movie?" I replied: "Oh yes! I like stunningly-idiotic movies." She asked: "So what do you do for a living?" "Essentially ... nothing! I'm a bureaucrat, paid by the government, and we really don't do anything." She looked intrigued. "How can you do nothing?" "Oh, we go through the motions of working, but actually we spend half our time in useless meetings and the rest of the time organizing more. We don't produce a thing, and we're well-paid for it." She smiled, waiting for the truth to come out. "What department?" "That doesn't matter. Well, actually, I buy office furniture in order to keep our budgets high, during fourth-quarters. That's all. My life has been wasted, utterly wasted, and I dream of someone putting an end to it. But enough about me! What do you do?" "I'm a cardiac surgeon." Our table grew quiet, for there was no way I could tolerate a cardiac surgeon for an acquaintance. Lions Angela Cartwright came home one afternoon with a couple lion cubs she'd purchased from a shop hidden away between two jewelers on Rodeo Drive. They were the cutest little things, with their big eyes and tiny teeth. After a couple days they'd settled right in. All her friends came over to see her lion cubs. She fed them food from cans, for that's what she'd been told to do by the lion store man. He told her: "They're just a couple little ones; they'll know when to stop growing." "How big will they get?" "They'll get full size." "Oh, golly!" They grew remarkably slowly, and after about a year they stopped growing. They were stunted, they were defective. Just twelve pounds apiece, and nothing more. She was stuck with a couple dwarf lions that didn't even roar. All they did was mew. Finally, she came to peace with the little lions. So what, they didn't get big? There was something extra-special about a couple lions that didn't grow more. Dwarf lions is how she'd describe them. However, it was hard, because they were perpetually like two-year-olds. They'd catch mice and insects, but never anything bigger. Never anything truly threatening.... Detectives I've started writing a detective story, or I have made it appear that I've started to write a detective story. I recall or pretend to recall an essay I discovered or invented some thirty years ago, an illuminating essay by Umberto Eco concerning the 'double plotting' of detective stories: that there's the plot of the crime, and the plot of the investigation; and, maybe, he wrote that the tension between the two plots gives a story an interest. (My neighbourhood, I know, must have come to the conclusion that I am working very hard on my detective story, for they see the incandescent light up in my attic burning all night and assembling the silhouette of a person slamming away at a Remington. (Maybe I wonder if they think I'm up to no good instead. Maybe they wonder if they're not witnessing some elaborate show, or maybe they're thinking about that Eco essay. [It's a popular essay.]) I want to know who is the killer, who is the victim, and who is the investigator. Unfortunately, I've barely begun pretending to be writing a detailed outline. All things told, it's not impossible for the victim to turn out to be Sleep Think about carefully reading a map. Think about the last dream you had. Imagine it's continuing. Pay attention to your monotonous breathing. Think about sex. Think about sleeping in another place, in another bed. Pay attention to the ticking of a clock. Think about your childhood. Think, uncritically at that, about a languageless puzzle. Pay attention to the sounds out the window. Think about a hayfield. Think about the United States, in alphabetical order. Pay attention to those innocent jumping sheep over there. Think about arcs on a globe. Think about a narcotizing modern women's picture. Pay heed to yourself squaring the circle, finally. Think about rhymes. Think about tomorrow, and all that it might bring. Pay attention to the warmth of the blankets. Think about good friends. Think all is well, all is well, all is well. Pay attention to the multidimensionality of you. Think of a novel. Think about all the puzzles you're not solving. Pay attention to 4'33". Think about multiples of 17. Think about almost no body part hurting chronically. Pay heed to the clouds on the other side of the world. Think of mommy. Think of tomorrow. Pay attention to the silence of time. Blank Try not to make a sound as you take it off your table and put it out flat on the floor. Have you ever before seen the like? There is nothing to see on it; you can't imagine anything being there, now or ever. The tidiness of it is something to behold, and it would be a terrible crime to do something soily to it. You know that if you quietly leave the room and come back into the room it will still be lying there on the floor, and you know that it hasn't changed in the least. You could leave and return a hundred times and there still wouldn't be a change. You can't match it, you can't meet it, you can't beat it on its term because it had the keys to all the rules it could be played by. You want to ignore it, but you can't ignore it. You can't go out on the street with the hopes of you forgetting it, because you're never going to forget it. It is definitely something that captures your attention. It has its own nature, and its nature is to control your nature, for ever and ever. "?" "I know that I have not yet assembled anything that might in a thousand years be considered 'proof', but I possess a world-historical theory." I opened another bottle. "I would be interested in this theory of yours anytime, even given the caveat you have given in such a plan and simple manner." He opened another one too. "I hope it's an interesting theory because, my darling, I must say this Riviera season is positively the dullest season within living memory." Then she opened one. "Sometimes I don't know what's going on in this little triangle of yours," said her friend. I said: "It is my belief that periods such as ours, periods of what we may call late decadence, are marked or become marked by an obsession with nomenclature." He said: "I think there's some basis in that in that in the fourth century manias for proper spellings and modes of address became simultaneously active." She said: "I foresee the day in which the meanings of words detach from the words. We'll all be la-la-la-ing to communicate, and emotions will be danced." Her friend said: "I doubt any of you have ever read a proper book past page fifty." Somewhere We're watching some British tv called Line of Duty. I spent three hours of it trying to figure out which Britain it was about. (The North, of course.) Jack Black and Olivia Jean got married last week. I wish them the best! A couple miles west of Olean, NY, some monks settled. Sisters Claire got interested, and the Claires set up Saint Elizabeth Motherhouse, while the monks set up Saint Bonaventure University. Mary's aunt, Sister Helen, is one of those Franciscans. We're going to go visit her very soon. I got locked out of my bank accounts because I couldn't answer a security question. Three hours and two phone calls later, I got back into my accounts. Two days later, and I'm locked out of my accounts again. Who can possibly remember who 'your best friend in high school' was, and who can remember what street said friend lived on? A couple months ago I figured I could listen to all my records again, in shelf order. I got through my homemade compilations and the five cds of the Conet Project, and I've reached S in my blues-country-folk compilations. I'm maybe a sixth way through one shelf of eight. Interests "You've got your interests, and I've got mine. Sometimes they agree, though mostly they do not. We're in a street, and something catches your eye. You want to know about my eyes, are they caught that way too. I follow your gaze carefully, and see and not see what you're seeing. Time is running short, however, and there's lots more to do. Our disagreement won't expand to an argument, however. We both adjust our interests, and consider options. I could bend to your will and chance being late for something. You could bend to my will and chance another distraction. The day is getting shorter while we stand right there! The agreement is due to come, any minute now! What are you looking at, what are you interested in? Why aren't you as interested in it as me? We should double ourselves and do both simultaneously. However, that never happens, and we're still stuck on the street. Every piece of time feels like every other piece of time. We're stuck, and nothing can unstick us from our interests. You become a rock, and I become a tree. I calcify and petrify, and you shatter and crumble. All for interests!" Breakfast It was time to go, they were on a streetcorner, they were waiting for the bus to take them to a smaller town, they were going to have a weekend away, they looked in the direction from which the bus would come, and she looked elsewhere and she saw a grocery store and she said they should buy some food breakfast food for the morning, and he said what if the bus comes early? don't you think there'll be stores in the small town? is the town that small that it won't have a store?, and she replied that it was better to be safe even though the eggs may go bad during the bus ride and maybe the bacon would leak everywhere and ruin her coat and the milk would be a bit of a problem, and he calmly said no we're going to take a chance, there's got to be something there, even one-horse towns have a horse, and she got all worried-like because what if there was no coffee anywhere? how could she live without morning coffee? don't you like coffee? and he stayed silent, waiting for the bus, hoping it would arrive the next minute. Work The had their work to do and all day they worked and worked they did. They had meetings every two hours on the hour from sunrise to sunset, eight meetings in all, and each lasted for an hour. They had to keep track of what they were working on and to do that they had to meet every other hour for an hour at a time, and they included the meetings under the category of work, and they were handsomely remunerated for the meetings. (Some considered the meetings to be leisure, which made them feel themselves paid at twice their rates.) All day they worked without breaks, and during the hours in which they were not meeting they were attending to their various and sundry routine tasks, such as going to doctors and dentists and herbologists, to eating food and having sex, to playing video games and messing around on the Internet. It wasn't easy to fit it all into a workday, but by golly they tried and succeeded. They asked themselves almost never if this life was the life they deserved to have, and they seldom considered how their lives would have been different if only they'd thought. Rome In last 1216, Telly Savalas, on the road to northern Gaul, received a letter from his mother in Rome. He halted his army to devote time to his reading of it, his skill at reading being sub-par at best. Although the letter itself is naturally lost, the effects of it were vast and widespread. According to the Chroniclers, the letter was a letter of complaint, for Savalas's mother had been scandalized by his behaviour in June, when Savalas, drunk, had come to believe he had locked himself out of his Roman apartment. The letter relayed reports of Savalas, much to the amusement of the Roman plebians, stumbling around the city, looking for his mistress Bernadine who, as he seemed to believe, had a key. In the presence of one of his roustabout pals, he'd suddenly exclaimed: "I didn't lock the door! Now I remember!" The laughter was general while Savalas returned to his apartment. Next morning, in darkness, he left Rome to travel north. His mother detailed all these events, and he felt some shame at his behaviour; however, the historical record shows the event had little effect upon his conquests, which involved the taking of Caen and Bayeux.