All is quiet

Things are better, now, I think. Incrementally and slowly, but better. There are bad days, but there have always been bad days. There is work to do. Time to take the field.

So.

I miss her. 13 years ago, I held her as she passed. My life has no answers to her last thought. Have a Good Life. How? I am lashed to another survivor, and there is no land to be seen, and we turn on each other like rats. I miss her. Miss the idea of her. Miss everything she was.

Love, would you laugh, to see me now? What counsel would you give.

In which we are overtaken by events.

Where has a year gone? Or the one before that? I have friends in Japan who I owe a thank you letter to, and have for 4 years now, for letting me stay with them. The letter has grown increasingly hard to imagine. A lot has happened since, and started happening the day I waved - we waved - good bye at the station. They were expecting our next meeting to be a wedding. Cities have fallen, risen again, and been smashed anew in the time since. Pieces have been swept off the board, the board has rearranged itself like a living thing, and it would be the work of a novel to describe it all.

New Year's Day. The day of deaths and renewals. Quite literally, in my case.

N and I saw TRON yesterday, and it was fantastic, nostalgic and elegiac. There's been a lot of criticism of the film, but almost all of it baffles me, babbling on about underdeveloped ideas and implausibilities. Look, this isn't Dostoyevsky. It's a fantasy story set inside a computer. A boy is drawn into a magical land and must go on a quest to save his lost father. It is beautiful and it is simple, and some people are seriously overthinking things.

Say Hello, Remain

I dreamt of my brother last night.

Dreamt of him, the dream fragmentary, warm, being in PG, in the old house, him stumbling in, on the heels of Christmas, needing me to drive him down to University, him starting classes on Wednesday, he would be late but the twelve hours on the road would be a delight, a chance to catch up, give him advice on school and his future lying ahead of him.

Stirring, half awake, in bed, then dreaming of dropping him off at the old SAC residence, seeing him to his room, making sure he had his key, fetching it off my keyring. Touselling his hair, letting him sleep, knowing he'll do all right this semester, his future ahead of him.

I awake, my shoulder less in agony today, drive N to work in a rocky daze. As I do every day. N is working three jobs now, rails at me nightly for reassurances I cannot give. We must talk, she says, planning will make her feel better, she says, counting the stark numbers will make her feel better.

The numbers do not make her feel better. I did not tell her so. Did you really not see that? Why did you need it said out loud? Why do you hunger so for words, always, always? You do not want to hear this tongue.

But my brother lingers. What am I trying to tell myself, what is it yet that I do not know?

The key, or its successor, lies in a box somewhere, packed, unmissed, all but meaningless.

But I don't think that's what this was about.

The wolves are outside, not within.

I must not forget that.

Consummatum Est.

It's been a long and draining 10 weeks or so. More tomorrow, I think. Saw L this week, and she flies out for Korea in about 5 hours. We both agreed not to do the airport thing, as we would both likely lose it entirely. Tonight I'll be over at N's place. I look forward to telling you about her. I don't understand how so much happening can be layered on top of a single ten days or so. Toddled through Liquidation World with C today, stuttering and sleepwalking like a ghost, deep in the throes of the physical crash. Trombones at fire sale prices? Why not.

It was better today. It will be better tomorrow.

Just so very very tired.

Deep and Crisp and Even

Dec 26th

Woke at midnight on the 22nd, the snowfall breaking, and, unable to sleep, gather my things and finally the cat, bundling them into the car at 4 to catch the 5:15 AM ferry. The trip was cold, even the boat's interior icy, and I stayed in the car most of the time. driving south off the terminal was a revelation, the sky dark blue with dawn coming up in the Southeast, the strange geometry making it seem that I was driving south into the sunrise, staring down on the ecliptic, straight at the gorgeous last tiniest sliver of the waning moon. The landscape gorgeous, clear and frozen, deep blues and the predawn, climbing the mountains behind Nanaimo, the snow and the streetlights showing the shape of the land in ways I hadn't seen before.

It's been harder writing, lately. I've had trouble sleeping at night the last couple months, and my mind will not be still. L finally phoned today. She's home to visit, until the 10th, and at some point in there we'll hook up and she'll get her things out of the apartment. (Also at some point she'll be coming out to at least part of her family, something I am glad I'm quit of). I wish I knew some secret to make this less stressful. It is all strangely surreal. Not having any real experience dealing with a living, breathing ex is not helping here. I'm trying to put myself in her shoes and understand what's going through her mind, but it doesn't seem to work. She seems restrained somehow, guarded. I was upset and wondering why she didn't phone me when she got in, but she thought I was still up in PG for Eckhart's Dad's funeral. Why does anything she does upset me, still? How can it be that I have any expectations left, by this point.

Charlie Brown kicks Dennis The Menace's Ass and always will.

From Edge of The American West:

1968 in the Peanutsverse.

What's odd is I don't specifically remember the first Franklin strip, and certainly didn't register its topicality as a child (Vietnam should have jumped out at me, I would have thought), although our elementary schools were packed with Peanuts anthologies, so I certainly must have read it. And once I hit High School it was all Doonesbury and Bloom County, of course.

Still, well done, Chuck.