And This Was A Saturday Fit For a Villain

Not much excitement to report. Yesterday, I worked then came home. The left knee was truly bothersome. I worked on my pretrial detention journal, I am still transcribing my notes on De Tocqueville's Democracy in America. My niece called. She will be coming up from Tennessee today.

The cat showed up last evening. Fed him and sheltered him and then no sign of him this morning. I am wondering what will happen when it gets to be freezing. He likes people, is certainly housebroken, but I have no room here even for a cat.

I went down to McClure's around 9 pm, that was the only time I left the room last night.

HBO did distract me with a Liam Neeson movie. Run All Night — great cast.

I sent “Road Tripping” off to Driftwood Press. No word on its other submissions. (No more rejections this week.)

More music downloaded.

I am up a little earlier than expected. 

Today was when I meant to start again on “Love Stinks” that is pushed off a week. Getting through the journal is taking too much time.

In a tighter grip is my email inbox. I am only now catching up with The Brisbane Times book review. 

I started with Christos Tsiolkas’ new novel is the sparest, most direct he has ever written, and found a cheering message.

Age need not rob you of fire and fearlessness. What if it merely complicated your relationships, and coloured all opinions with awkward equivocation? What if compromise was an ungainly condition of growth?

As for the novel, let us hope it finds it way here (and I find time for books, again):

The novel is among other things about love, trust, and family, but also not “about” these issues in a didactic or tediously preachy manner, nor does it disclose a clear or instructive moral to the reader. The book’s title is purest philosophy – everything is somewhere between left and right, dogmatism and permissiveness, care and abandonment.

This desire to build an entire work out of indeterminacy permeates the book’s structure. Instead of the short, choppy scenes of much modern fiction, novels written either with future adaptation in mind, or perhaps with Netflix lazily streaming in the background, most of The In-Between consists of long, deliberate, and patient scenes in which power and knowledge carefully move and shift between people. 

And that is where I am at 7:30 AM. And I take a break from the computer.

Back at 9:08 — for a few quick notes.

I am not trying to get stressed out about not being able to keep up with my reading. In the old days, I would be feeling anxious. Instead, I will just point you to Dorothy Parker's Ashes is featuring Father as the subject.

Collecting, not submitting, magazines. West Trade Review

I caught the 9:45 bus downtown and then caught the Northwestern Plaza bus at 10:15. I got my haircut and picked up some items for today's cooking. I also found one way to get through my reading: lose the magazine that was meant to be read while waiting for the haircut. There was no waiting. I mislaid The Indiana Review. Well, one of them, anyway. The 11:15 was a little late, so I missed the 11:45 Whitely bus. Instead of waiting, I rode the Mall bus to The Muncie Shoppes and walked home from there.

The afternoon was more music downloading, more email, creating another version of “Road Tripping”, and doing the research that I out into this afternoon's post Reading Around For Chasing Ashes. Now, I am waiting on my niece and to do my laundry. I forgot about that. 

The yellow cat sleeps on the bed. The lamb breast is in the slow cooker.

4:33 Laundry is washing. Niece says she is almost here (about `10 minutes ago). The Library of America's Writer of the week is Kurt Vonnegut. 

10:32

The niece showed up along with her mother and the niece's boyfriend. We worked on the niece's Tennessee divorce papers while the boyfriend walked his dachshund. I also got my laundry done and downloaded music. The boyfriend never came in.

Then we went in search of dinner and rooms for them. I watched them from the backseat of my niece's car look on their phones for discounts to motel rooms. I thought I head my arteries harden. Finally, we set for some place to eat. I directed my niece to The Dumpling House. The boyfriend kept babbling. Later, she told me he was not on his meds. Oh, boy. I told her to rent, not buy. She could do better. On the way back, I took them through town. Pointing out the low points. They had given up on finding a room. The boyfriend decided they would drive back to Tennessee tonight. 

I came back here and decided to reformat “Road Tripping” for one publisher. That wore out my eyes. I will do the cover letter later.

“Walls, Lines” got its rejection; of which I am unsurprised.

Thank you for sending us "Walls and Lines." Although we appreciated much about this pieces, we must decline your submission at this time, and we appreciated the chance to consider it.

We hope you are well and wish you and your work all the best.

Sincerely,

-Pangyrus Literary Magazine

TJ came to mind today while riding the bus downtown. Except for Joni, I do not think I ever trusted another woman as much as I did TJ. Except I did not trust her to stick around. When I went off to law school, I thought she was going to stick around. Only she took up with someone else. She has been married to him for about 40 years. I blamed myself for losing her. I blamed myself for not giving her enough security. Except something her mother told me years after we broke up, TJ liked to be in control. She never quite felt like she was in control of me. She was too accustomed to having everyone falling over themselves for her. Like a damned fool, I let my guilt over losing her run my life. Only ion prison, when I was forced to stop and look and think about my life, did I see what a fool I had been over her. She is a great person. Our break-up was not all my fault. The lack of good communications ran both ways. It is good she found her happiness. That I am living a more lucid life is a good thing for me. That the guilt colored my other relationships is a fact which I can regret without any means of atonement. 

Strange, having discovered what would have benefitted my life when it is completely irrelevant.

The world thinks me a villain. I know the truth of my villainy. I will let the world's opinion stand. It gives me a bit of freedom — I can go ahead with my life without diversions in the form of other people crowding into my life.

Since it is Veterans Day, my grandfather who served in World War I:

And there I go into the night.

 sch