01.02.02 - 10:48 p.m.

when the iceburg hit,
well they must've known.
God moves on the water,
like Casey Jones.

damn. i love gillian welch. i wish i had more of her albums, but this one absolutely totally rocks. omg. it's so lazy and aching and keenly observed. it lodges in the back of your throat like a sunset - full and feeling and nostalgic, but not in that manufactured way.

it just feels like the end of a good day. aching, tinged with grief but not consumed by it. a smiling sort of ache, the way you feel remembering good times now past. or good friends now gone, or at least far away.

i wanna reach that glory land.
i wanna shake my savior's hand.
and i wanna sing that rock-n-roll.
i wanna 'lectrify my soul.

cos everyone's been makin' a shout,
so big and loud it's been drownin' me out.
i wanna sing that rock-n-roll.

hee.

i wanna 'lectrify my soul. oh, that's just lovely. i want to llllllllectrify my soul. it makes my toes curl inwards.

and even though we aren't on the subject, last week (just after christmas) i snuggled down into a cozy apartment full of candle and christmas-light and vowed not to take down my christmas decorations until february. at the earliest.

(okay january)

but now, no more than one week later, i'm already a little sick of the decorations. or maybe, i'm not really sick of the decorations, i'm sick of the vacation i've given myself for like, the last month from rules i wanted to otherwise (sort of) enforce. i also need to do my thank-you letters. thus far, my vow to do them during my lunch hour has resulted in NONE being written. gulp.

and, i managed to plow few a few more books this weekend while i was sick. over christmas, i finished the risk pool by richard russo. i really enjoyed the first 3/4 of the book, particularly when the main character was describing his life with his father when he was 12-13 while his mother was in the loony bin. i was totally absorbed by that portion of the book, and part of that is undoubtedly because i have an unremitting fascination with closely observed accounts of childhood like that -

(tangent - it just occurred to me that i might like such accounts of childhood (aka - this book, or a tree grows in brooklyn, or - really - think of something. hell, the early mercedes lackey novels, and indeed a lot of fantasy that i've enjoyed) because i like the progressive arc of the story of childhood. i understand and enjoy that arc. childhood has a beginning, a distinct beginning. it has a middle during which things are slowly, and certainly, revealed over a period of days/weeks/months/years, and it has an end, when you join the adult world and presumably get the key to the book that holds all the secrets you'll need to know for the rest of your life. that i never found that key, and that, indeed, i am still hung-up on the lovely, perfect arc defined by such narrative matters but little. reading such narratives i can believe in the path of that arc, all over again.)

- though i found the last quarter quite disappointing. and, i thought that the main character's father - and his portrait of the town, Mohawk, HY - were much more nuanced than his portrayal of his mother. and, like, i thought the love affair was, like, unnecessary. etc.

so, i finished that, and then i sort-of starting reading the barbarian book, which i think i'll be reading for awhile yet. while i was sick, i finally finished that stupid lene gamalgaard book. whatever it was called. i can read even the most dry accounts of mountaineering and still find enough things that fascinate me that i absolutely plow through the pages, without pause. not in this book, which was so. FUCKING. boring. that i could barely catch my breath. i finally finished it only because i was 1. sick; and 2. punishing myself for buying the damn thing by making myself read it.

honestly, this climber needed a ghost writer to help her shape the narrative, and coax something more descriptive out of her than her mantra, to the summit and safe return. i'm sure this was a very honest account of what she did, what her plans short and long-term are and were, and what she thought about what happened, but because lene gamalgaard wasn't a good writer, or at least observer of details, the account is stripped of almost any specificity and becomes repetitive in the extreme, and thus feels utterly false.

and finally i read the damn sonja blue vampire novels (all three of them) that alr lent and had been bugging me to read. eh. they were okay. had i not had all three on loan, i would've stopped with the first one. but once again, i was sick and plowed through them. i guess the concept was kinda neat. i mean, it's been done, but i still like it. and i think that in another's hands, it could've been REALLY good. but as the novels stand, i found the main character (whom lotsa people apparently love) to be wooden and not particularly compelling. the author went for shock so often it failed to shock, and quite frankly i have no desire to read page upon page upon page of graphic, gross accounts of fights between supernatural creatures.

and, really, finally, at least the first novel had some sort of rhyme to the structure and story. the last one was sort of three crappy short stories strung stupidly together, interspersed by one larger storyline that wanted to be profound but just made me giggle.

and, i wanted to think about hermits tonight too, but i think that's gotta wait. still need to answer an email, and then i'll happily crawl into bed.