And we’re on to the second day of Christmas. No one left turtle doves on my porch today so I suppose I can take that as a win. If they had, the cats would probably have eaten them. Now that Edward, the ghost cat, has decided to come out of hiding, he and Binx are spending time together under my library table, likely plotting my demise. My Christmas was low key, and I celebrated in the traditional Jewish fashion by going out for Chinese with some friends and following up with a movie upon which I fell asleep. I suppose it’s another sign of aging. If I sit still following a meal, I will start to snore within minutes. I’ve grown accustomed to people elbowing me at work, at choir rehearsal, during classes etc.
This last week has been mainly about getting everything caught up so I can roar into 2025 without too much hanging over my head. My ‘to do’ list for the last ten days or so has been rather long but I have managed to winnow down to a few stray odds and ends that don’t have a specific deadline attached. I can now head off across the pond tomorrow without feeling guilty. A bunch of the usual gang are off to hang out together in London for a week, once again under the benign presence of Richard Polley who should keep us out of too much trouble. I’m driving to Atlanta tomorrow afternoon to catch my flight. For reasons I cannot explain, I am being routed via Copenhagen adding about five hours to the trip. I am less than thrilled. Suffice it to say that this space will become travelogue with the next entry for a bit and I’m sure I’ll have something acerbic to say about Scandinavian airports.
I’m looking for topics to take on in my next batch of writings about the after effects of the pandemic. If there’s anything anyone wants to learn more about or is dying for my pronouncements regarding, drop me a line. I think I’ve got enough material on paper for about half of the new book and I’m trying to get a full draft done by March sometime. As I don’t have anything major theatrical coming up, I should have enough evenings free to jot a bit more down. My publisher is also working on a number of ideas for repurposing the original trilogy in time for the fifth anniversary of the arrival of covid which happens in a couple of months. Just which of the ideas that have been bandied around will come to full fruition, I’m not wholly sure but I’ll keep everyone posted.
My late night just before I drift off TV viewing this last month has been a rewatch of Six Feet Under which I had not seen since it’s original broadcast on HBO a couple of decades ago. It holds up. It’s ability to deal head on with the messy issues of family and human biology really hasn’t been equaled. I’m waiting for an artist to take on the intersection between the Baby Boom and their belief in eternal youth and the realities of morbidity and mortality in some sort of form that transcends the mundane. I think there’s an opening there – not for me, I’ve never been able to write sustained fiction and I haven’t the vaguest idea as to how to construct a well written screenplay or television series. Six Feet Under still has perhaps the best finale sequence of any television series ever. Of course, you have to watch the whole dang thing, all 65 hours to get it to resonate properly.
Lest you think I’ve lost all culture points, I just finished reading (or more accurately listening to as it was my car audio book) Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita. It’s one of those books that ends up on all of the ‘hundred books to read before you die’ lists so I figured I better give it a whirl. But then Paulo Coehlo’s The Alchemist also ends up on those and I found it rather twee when I finally got around to it a few years ago. Bulgakov was a writer in Soviet Russia and this, his major novelistic work, is a strange juxtaposition of Soviet social satire, magic realism, literary kerfuffle, and religious allegory. The devil and his minions come to 1930s Moscow and turn the lives of various writers and theatrical types upside down. There’s a very human cat, an execrated novel about Pontius Pilate, a satanic witches ball, and various episodes of mass hysteria. It’s one of those ‘glad I read it but I doubt I’ll ever reread it’ novels. I have moved on to my once a decade reread of Dorothy Dunnett. I have completed all six of The Lymond Chronicles and am on number five of eight of The House of Niccolo. I’m alternating these with other things plus have a few other books going at the same time including a Stephen King and a gay murder mystery. Eclectic is my middle name and I am looking forward to paying a visit to Foyle’s next week to pick up a couple of things that might appeal to the very British streak in my sense of humor (thank you mom).
Presuming all goes well, the next check in will be from some 4500 hundred miles away on tither side of the Atlantic. I must remember to pack tomorrow morning.
Life, The Universe, and Everything 