"The lost eyes of a thawed caveman"

(quote: me; video: Ricky's "Meaning of christmas")

Xmas party season. Everything more or less a persistent hang-over for the last few days. And I have little to no actual responsibilities. My classes ended spectacularly. A great grade and excellent feedback in one class, an epic bar-crawl with the members of my other one. Last night had my xmas party for work, which is always excellent. And then two of my bosses and their wives genuinely wanted to 'hang out" and we went to the bar and listened to music and I talked to them about writing. These guys are saints. I'm bringing in stories for them to read in the next few days. And the conversation served as a glowing preamble to the awkward, bent-ear explanations I'll have to give to extended family next week. quoth a boss: "in the annals of history, how many people have gone from engineering to english?"

The world is different walking through it late at night and waist-deep in winter. Everyone is hid out, in front of their screens. Everything is slick or jagged, and smells older than it is. Blackened snow clinging to everything looking fungal and nefarious in the arc-sodiums. And cars tumble along testing brakes and mingling cigarette-smoke with the vapor of their words. And front lawns broadcast to no-one the christmas mythos and Bosch-like populate themselves with jarring juxtapositions such that Frosty waves to Rudolph and Santa lords over them both disproportionate. And a frazzle-haired romantic that listens to BRMC steps from his 70s-era duster and snaps a pic with his gadget. And at some point I sit at the head of the table and drink the bottom-third of fancy cocktails and forgive people in my head. And when we're back out the doors the cold is treatment of an overdose and I gasp and run and clamber half-up a statue. Cut my hand and it bleeds like eyebrows in bar-room brawls. My own blood on the snow, dilute in the ice.


Reading through Gravity's Rainbow again. I made it 2/3rds of the way through, but lost the plot in Africa. This time around there is a certain cognizance of deliberate density. It's wonderfully complex, the detail rich, and every one of them distinct and well-executed and beautiful. But I think I'm seeing some cracks in Pynchon's methods. An immense and complex narrative that does not pause for stragglers, which has an integrity to it. But the big-picture . . .something is missing there. And reading Warren Ellis's Crooked Little Vein which I'm loving. But there's also a problem in his rendering, a sort of chaos for its own sake, covering Burrough's territory but trying to maintain lucidity. The images don't hang together like they could. Well, that's only 10 pages in. So who knows. Anyway, I really like both of these books.