Requiem and Errata

Well, I'm back, flew in yesterday. Picked up my car (which didn't start at first -- it worked fine when I brought it in last week), did some laundry, went for a ride, then went to Which Brew for dinner. Ah, home... Today was early-morning yoga, then the gym; later in the day I rode the towpath out to Sals, did a short lap there and got home just before dark.

Requiem for the Midwest in the Key of Vanilla: Southern Illinois is a pretty weird place, or rather I should just say it's not like here. That's for sure -- I wouldn't want to live there, and I didn't even like visiting... Farms, a prison, the plant, an interstate and not much else. Plenty of white bread, string beans, you know you're in trouble when the hippest things around are the corporate chain restaurants.

So It Goes: Rest in peace, Kurt Vonnegut -- his peephole closed while I was away.

When Lilacs Last In The Dooryard Bloomed: John Wilkes Booth shot Abraham Lincoln on this date in 1865. Out in the Land of Lincoln, spring had already arrived, at least in the southern part where I was, and lilacs were blooming in the dooryards.

They Will Fly Towards Grace: My friend Joe's sister passed away while I was gone; she'd been very sick for a while (cancer of some kind, I didn't pry). I also ran into Doug and Lori today at Sals, and Lori said her grandmother had passed away last night. It's been a tough week.

Reading: I finally finished Against the Day. After becoming disinterested and putting it aside for more than a month, I brought it along last week as airport reading and was completely engrossed once again; I just finished the last five pages (of 1085) today. Like Mason & Dixon it had a bittersweet ending: "they will fly towards grace" was the final line of the book. (I've heard it said that Against the Day is sort of a prequel to Gravity's Rainbow: flip the last page and you get "A screaming comes across the sky.")

Requiem For A World: I also re-read The Road recently, even though it's a tough, heartbreaking book. There's a payoff in multiple reads though, since I now know that it was a nuclear war that brought on the hellish world in the book, and that the mother was pregnant with the boy when it happened. I hear the book is now on Oprah's book club list, or something.

"Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent." Go in peace.