SEASONAL STATES

Neighbor's lawn in the snow.

I wasn't being a deadbeat, kids. I did not have the requisite address book to force this upon you, so I ended up not writing very often. I was gone for a week, but it certainly seemed like about five minutes.

I did lots of reading, mostly Alice In Wonderland for my class. I still have to finish Through the Looking Glass tonight and then figure out how to write a short paper. I observed that the Mad Hatter, the Dormouse, and the March Hare rather set a precedent for the likes of Johnny Carson and Jimmy Fallon. They sit around and bullshit and insult one another, ask rhetorical questions, and come up with non-sequitars.

The kittys are happy to be home. And boy did they not like the drive today. Emmylou managed to escape from her Sherpa bag. One of my windshield wipers got broken in the snowstorm somehow and, of course, it is supposed to rain tomorrow. Oh well. I made it home without needing them and I can figure out something tomorrow.

Have cranked up the new Richard Thompson, Electric, and am actually liking it more than I thought I would. It usually takes me a few years, (yes, years), to really "get" but this one is grabbing me a little more. Perhaps a higher degree of familiarity with the material is helping, as I had heard several of the cuts even before the Joe's Pub gig.

I finally ordered my new laptop. I have spent entirely too much time fooling around with the old one. The end of an era.

I finally finished reading Joe's War. I wish I had had more time to focus on and quote from it. I do recommend it to y'all. I would share more but I must return it and I do need to get to the rest of my work...

"I think of how the Prussian Bismarck saw Poland as a 'seasonal state,' one that was there sometimes and not at others, like snow, or roses. He had a political interest in seeing it that way, because this diminished its territorial solidity, making it ripe for trampling on. Yet I wonder what it must do to your psyche, to belong to a place which is sometimes there and not at others. Apart from anything else, it must make part of you go underground, waiting for the right season to come."

Cooder chilling on the bathroom chair.