okayI woke up cold this morning, feeling the autumn in all my bones, aching, stiff, half dreamsick. Feeling -20, instead of only -02. This house can be a dark hole. A very cold dark hole. So we ate breakfast, then got dressed and had a good walk out to Freedom Park. Lots of sun, but not much warmth in it. It was good to get the muscles moving, though, the blood pumping, to drive the shadows out of my head. There were three huge crows in the park, and we watched the local trio of red-tailed hawks riding the thermals over L5P. A male and female and one of their offspring. I said something to Spooky about hawks being monogamous and mating for life. The trees are brilliant. Winter is much too near.
Thanks for all the comments the last couple of days. They've been appreciated. I don't know much about how anyone else writes, but I do it a state of isolation. I think I pretty much assume it's this way for most writers, though it may well not be. You sit alone in a room all day and stare at a computer screen and talk to yourself, telling yourself stories you hope others will want to hear.
Also, my thanks to David Kirkpatrick (
corucia), for Volume One (1935-1936) of The Komplete Kolor "Krazy Kat." I've been wanting to read these for quite some time, so it was a wonderful gift. Also, thanks to Setsuled (setsuled) for the new Yoshitako Amano icon.Byron met us yesterday at Midtown Cinema for the 5:15 (CaST) matinee of Terry Gilliam's Tideland. I was going to post about the film last night, but thought perhaps I needed more time to digest what I'd seen. Now, I think I may need much more time to digest. But this I will say. I found it brilliant, beautiful, terrible, heart-breaking, wild, and deeply disturbing. And, as Gilliam explains before the story begins, innocent. Profoundly innocent. I think, in the end, the film's innocence is why it's pissing so many people off. More on that later, perhaps. Afterwards, I tried to imagine this film pitched via "high concept" to some studio executive: Alice in Wonderland meets The Texas Chainsaw Massacre; We Have Always Lived in the Castle meets The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe; and so on, and so forth. I could probably think of a hundred these combos, but Tideland is entirely immune to such absurd acts of reductionism. It is what it is. Which is quite a lot more than I think most people are prepared for. Do not go to this movie expecting something which is merely whimsical and pretty and maybe a tad surreal. That's like taking mescaline and only expecting to get stoned. Come at this film the wrong way and it will fuck you up. It'll probably fuck you up anyway. Wow.
I have another spider bite. A few inches up from my left knee. It was red and hot and angry last night, a little better today. I should probably put a compress on it. I don't know why these guys always get me and never Spooky.
Oh, and there was absinthe yesterday, for the first time in a while, because it seemed the only right thing to do.