Vertiginous Pottering

I expect that somewhere in Being and Time Martin Heidegger declares that "Dasein, in his average everydayness, will sublimate the angst of his liberation in care for the ready-at-hand,¹" the footnote stating that, "In the British condition this is primarily manifested in pottering about house and garden in woollen sweaters. Yes, I'm talking about you, Russell."

Obviously this is just speculation as I haven't actually gone to the trouble of reading it, but, presuming that it's true, he certainly had a point. With Rachel and Ethan dispatched to New York for the week to visit his great-grandparents, I was simultaneously assailed by feelings of anxiety and emancipated, vertiginous possibility which I then frittered away in a melange of trivial and totally put-offable tasks whilst wearing a sweater. Note that I use the term "sweater" in place of "jumper" in order to ensure that my American readers do not have to imagine me engaged in anything as racy as transvestitism (a jumper is a pinafore dress here) - indeed I was not. And not because there's anything wrong with that, either - no, it was simply due to a lack of imagination on my part.

I'm sure I never used to feel guilty doing eff-all. I wonder if I am turning into my mother. Still, I did take enough time out to go to the cinema twice, have breakfast with Joe and his charming new girlfriend Shar, and have a couple of steins of bier at the disconcertingly Germanic Widmer brewery. Mind you, now I come to think of it I find everything Germanic a little disconcerting. It's partly due to The Great Escape, but then again I am only too eager to eat sushi despite The Bridge on the River Kwai.

The highlight of course was a trip to the Rose Quarter to see Portland's very own Winterhawks play Tri-Cities, wherever that is. This was my first professional (ice) hockey game and I have to admit to being mildly disappointed by both the terrifically sporting and well-mannered performance and the unsullied, youthful appearance of the players, who presumably had to be driven to the game by their parents. Where, I ask you, were the ranks of mauled, perturbingly agrarian, indiscriminatingly violent Eastern European types, proudly exhibiting broken noses and missing teeth as badges of their machismo prowess? In the major leagues, that's where. Still, it's not the way you play the game but the winning that counts, and the home team took the match 3-2 whilst I screamed myself hoarse over a couple of $8 beers, so I must have had a good time.


Yay - Go Hawks!