![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
So. Past week has been snow. And work. And snow. And work. And snow.
Did I mention snow?
Snow.
As recently as Thanksgiving it was still in the fifties, but then in the mid-December the Big Freeze hit. White outs on the highways. Roads slick with black ice. “I’m not driving in this,” I told Ben flatly.
He got pissed because it means he has to chauffer me to work and on trips into town, but hey! he’s not working right now, he has the time.
I’m going to have to get over myself sometime during the next month since he leaves for Kelly Miller around the 14th of February, but that’s still a good five weeks off and who knows? Maybe this new-fangled global warming thang I keep reading about will kick in.
I think this summer I move into town. Ithaca’s good about keeping its streets ploughed and brined. An interesting thing about Ithaca is that it has none of those satellite rings of suburban development circling the town that similarly sized population centers elsewhere have. One mile outside the city limits and boom! you’re in rural America. Where the snowplough only operates on alternate Thursdays of months that end in W. Yes, yes, the recession has hit those tiny municipal budgets hard…
Anyway, I have been writing a lot although not here, and sadly not on the Book either, picking up tiny copywriting jobs which are woefully underpaying but again, hey! money is money. I figure if I can earn enough through it to make sure Robin has his walking around money – $150/month – and pay for all the dentistry work I need, that will be a major accomplishment. Although right now I am working on paying actual bills: the Cornell job is hourly, not salaried, and Cornell was closed most of the month of December.
Ah, the exciting theme park that is poverty!
Things will get better.
Or they won’t get better.
It’s bad for my ego to realize that I am among the 25% of the population that the United States of America is going to have to shed if it really wants to make an economic recovery, there being no real prospects ahead for heavy tank warfare to oil up the machines of commerce the way there were back in the last Depression. I’m expendable. I’m disposable. As a statistic I don’t matter. Ouch.
On the other hand a good case could be made – both in the Buddhist and geo-political senses – that no one person ever matters.
Anyway, I have cabin fever and I’m a bit lonesome. But I’m not depressed particularly.
Read Christopher Priest’s The Extreme – he is my favorite sci fi writer. I suppose there was nothing particularly original about this book from a speculative fiction point of view, but it’s so well written who cares? Book is a meditation on the old National Enquirer conundrum – Lincoln had a secretary named Kennedy! Kennedy had a secretary named Lincoln! What does it mean? – staged against a virtual reality shooting gallery backdrop.
Also finished a book of Jay McInerney short stories. Some day I’m going to have to investigate the mystical connections between Jay McInerney and F. Scott Fitzgerald – Fitzgerald was married to a woman named Zelda! McInerney played a video game called Zelda! – because I must say they have almost identical styles which is to say they write like angels about the stupidest, most banal, superficial things imaginable.
When I read this passage from McInerney’s story Philomena, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up as they do whenever I hear a particularly beautiful and compelling piece of music:
This was the metropolis as it was meant to be seen, in the flattering aphrodisiac light of eminence, a brilliant republic compounded of wealth, power, accomplishment and beauty. The atmosphere of festive mutual regard extended even to tourists, like Collin, on the happy assumption that their applications for citizenship were pending.
I mean that is just an incredibly wonderful bit of figurative writing.
Did I mention snow?
Snow.
As recently as Thanksgiving it was still in the fifties, but then in the mid-December the Big Freeze hit. White outs on the highways. Roads slick with black ice. “I’m not driving in this,” I told Ben flatly.
He got pissed because it means he has to chauffer me to work and on trips into town, but hey! he’s not working right now, he has the time.
I’m going to have to get over myself sometime during the next month since he leaves for Kelly Miller around the 14th of February, but that’s still a good five weeks off and who knows? Maybe this new-fangled global warming thang I keep reading about will kick in.
I think this summer I move into town. Ithaca’s good about keeping its streets ploughed and brined. An interesting thing about Ithaca is that it has none of those satellite rings of suburban development circling the town that similarly sized population centers elsewhere have. One mile outside the city limits and boom! you’re in rural America. Where the snowplough only operates on alternate Thursdays of months that end in W. Yes, yes, the recession has hit those tiny municipal budgets hard…
Anyway, I have been writing a lot although not here, and sadly not on the Book either, picking up tiny copywriting jobs which are woefully underpaying but again, hey! money is money. I figure if I can earn enough through it to make sure Robin has his walking around money – $150/month – and pay for all the dentistry work I need, that will be a major accomplishment. Although right now I am working on paying actual bills: the Cornell job is hourly, not salaried, and Cornell was closed most of the month of December.
Ah, the exciting theme park that is poverty!
Things will get better.
Or they won’t get better.
It’s bad for my ego to realize that I am among the 25% of the population that the United States of America is going to have to shed if it really wants to make an economic recovery, there being no real prospects ahead for heavy tank warfare to oil up the machines of commerce the way there were back in the last Depression. I’m expendable. I’m disposable. As a statistic I don’t matter. Ouch.
On the other hand a good case could be made – both in the Buddhist and geo-political senses – that no one person ever matters.
Anyway, I have cabin fever and I’m a bit lonesome. But I’m not depressed particularly.
Read Christopher Priest’s The Extreme – he is my favorite sci fi writer. I suppose there was nothing particularly original about this book from a speculative fiction point of view, but it’s so well written who cares? Book is a meditation on the old National Enquirer conundrum – Lincoln had a secretary named Kennedy! Kennedy had a secretary named Lincoln! What does it mean? – staged against a virtual reality shooting gallery backdrop.
Also finished a book of Jay McInerney short stories. Some day I’m going to have to investigate the mystical connections between Jay McInerney and F. Scott Fitzgerald – Fitzgerald was married to a woman named Zelda! McInerney played a video game called Zelda! – because I must say they have almost identical styles which is to say they write like angels about the stupidest, most banal, superficial things imaginable.
When I read this passage from McInerney’s story Philomena, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up as they do whenever I hear a particularly beautiful and compelling piece of music:
This was the metropolis as it was meant to be seen, in the flattering aphrodisiac light of eminence, a brilliant republic compounded of wealth, power, accomplishment and beauty. The atmosphere of festive mutual regard extended even to tourists, like Collin, on the happy assumption that their applications for citizenship were pending.
I mean that is just an incredibly wonderful bit of figurative writing.
