Things are good. Spring is here, and I've spent the day working on the (very small) yard. My two cats are healthy and shedding like crazy. The new job is really going well, and I might have an update on that later this spring. And hey, I just bought my first electric car -- a Hyundai Kona. I'm loving it so far.
Longer term, I'll be going to the Outer Banks with my sister and her family in July. It's been a while since I've had a real beach-y vacation, so I'm stoked.
"'Let's talk about mythology, Lobey. Or let's you listen. We've had quite a time assuming the rationale of the world. The irrational presents just as much of a problem. You remember the legend of the Beatles? You remember the Beatle Ringo left his Maureen love even though she treated him tender. He was the one Beatle who did not sing, so the earliest forms of the legend go. After a hard day's night he and the rest of the Beatles were torn apart by screaming girls, and he and the other Beatles returned, finally at one, with the great rock and the great roll.' I put my head in La Dire's lap. She went on. 'Well, that myth is a version of a much older story that is not so well known. There are no 45's or 33's from the time of this older story. There are only a few written versions, and reading is rapidly losing its interest for the young. In the older story Ringo was called Orpheus. He too was torn apart by screaming girls. But the details are different. He lost his love -- in this version Eurydice -- and she went straight to the great rock and the great roll, where Orpheus had to go to get her back. He went singing, for in this version Orpheus was the greatest singer, instead of the silent one. In myths things always turn into their opposites as one version supersedes the next.'"
-- Samuel Delany, The Einstein Intersection
"The old man is still. On his old thatch hat with its round crown there is a stain where in earlier days he had worn some sort of band, but the collar of his khaki shirt is clean. In the low sun of late afternoon, the silver hair over his ears dissolves in filaments of light against the sparkle of the water, and the ear lobes seem illumined from within, as if his skin had gone transparent.
From the companionway behind comes the faint sweet smell of manure. The green turtles lie belly up, each with a neat turd pile by its tail. One breathes its hollow gasp, and Buddy sinks beside it, on his knees.
You watchin us? Dat what Athens say. He say dat you watchin us die.
The turtle watches him, unblinking.
Dark noddies cross the swift colors of the coral bank, toward the cays. The cays astern disintegrate in the sun's mist."
-- Peter Matthiessen, Far Tortuga
RIP to Blondie drummer Clem Burke, an underrated drummer in a very underrated band.
