Like I Was Saying Before This Stupid Apocalypse

From Bergman's Persona, one of the films I've enjoyed of late.

I watch the ripples change their size
But never leave the stream
Of warm impermanence and
So the days float through my eyes
But still the days seem the same
-- From Changes by David Bowie

I wanted to write something today. Something memorable. Something that would hang in the air taking solid form. Something I could climb up and repose on and dance with and shimmy down the hall in the company of. I wanted to write something big. Something that The New Yorker would pay me double for. That Forbes magazine would take notice of. That would be featured on the PBS NewsHour. Something that pundits would discuss. I wanted something that anti intellectual right wingers would rail about. I wanted to write something that would be compared to the best of James Joyce and at the same time to Hemingway and somehow to Descartes and to The Beatles, of course. I wanted to write something that would be hung in the Louvre and would be credited with reviving literature. I wanted to write something that would cause a national holiday to be declared so that people could take the time to read it. I wanted to write something that was translated into 100 languages. I wanted to write something that would soar to the heavens. With wings. I wanted to write something that you could taste, feel, smell and hold.

I wanted to consequently be hailed a genius and awarded a special Pulitzer Prize and an extra special Nobel Prize. I wanted to receive long standing ovations and parades and I wanted to be celebrated by the rich and famous and to have beautiful women throw themselves at me. I wanted to be hailed and feted and honored and applauded and acclaimed and extolled and given encomiums and kudos and hosannahs. I wanted the writing to earn me riches beyond my wildest dreams.

But

All I could come up with this:

If have pondered life eternal and suffered people infernal and moaned about moments lost and cried over great costs. I have been alive for much of it although at times I was a man under the influence or was brain dead from anti depressants —

I write about the same things over and over and never seem to get around to writing about films anymore. I watch a lot of them too. It makes me happy to watch movies and it enriches my mind and my soul and inspires to me greatness — I should say the illusion that greatness is ever in my grasp and the complimentary illusion that greatness can be defined and codified and explained and experienced and lived and that I am capable. Ain’t I a kick in the pants.

Also the watching is a wonderful escape. I get to into another world. I forget for awhile my life and my troubles and my past and my struggles and see the world through the people and stories in the film. I am not hiding from my life, just taking a respite. I am not bored with my life but I need to spend time away from it. I face my life head on so thoroughly and aggressively these days. I need to run. I need to read. I need to write. I need to watch movies. This completes me and encapsulates the world and brings meaning and trust and hope and happiness and relief and wonder.

But writing about movies is not something I’m feeling these days. Soon again I am sure.

So what else.

We’re in a terrible drought these days. There’s little worse. You literally can’t do anything about it. You can’t even write an angry letter to the editor. We’re also having a very warm winter and look here Spring is right around the bend. Me, I like what other people call bleak weather. Cold, gray days. Mist, fog, overcast, dampness. That’s my thing. These endless days of dirty blue skies feel apocalyptic.

Enough about me.

Now I’m reading Pynchon’s latest book, Bleeding Edge. I have trouble at times following the story but my god the way the man writes who cares? His earlier works deserve my future attention and shall receive it. I’ve only previously read The Crying of Lot 49 by him before. I am a reading junkie. I must always have a book that I'm reading. Sometimes two or three. I do not apologize for this. Not that I would expect anyone to ask me to.

The clocks have been moved ahead so I will literally have to get up an hour earlier than usual and will thus be even more tired and even more grumpy -- horrors! -- than usual. Can we dispense with this? Or at least go back to starting daylight savings time in mid October and ending in mid April as during my perfect youth? Unlike the weather, this is something we can do something about.