For Kim’s birthday this year I got her a stand-up Tiffany Lamp. She had asked for one a long time ago, and we always talk about more lamps, and how we needed one in the living room. So I ordered it and was worried that it would get broken in transit, but it didn’t, and I set it up in the living room and it was beautiful, really illuminating the room with colors. I knew that it was dangerous, because the shade is heavy and we have three puppies, so I tried to tuck it between the couch and the window where it would be hard to knock over. Today they still found a way, and it is destroyed. I am super bummed. It was a present, and now Kim doesn’t have it anymore. It’s too expensive to replace, and I really liked it. Bill and I were going to work on Kim’s door, but now Bill is going to a movie with his wife (as he should.) I just don’t feel like doing anything. Oh yeah, and I got a rejection letter from JABberwocky. So it’s been a great day.

Still, it’s a day off, and it is really nice out. I finished my garage project. It has been snowing a lot in the mountains and so I’m halfway through waxing the snowboards. This weekend we’re going to see the Vikings in Oakland. Jay and I went the last time they were there in the regular season, in 2003. Now Kim and I are going. All in all, I’m pretty blessed. I have to get it together and enjoy my day off.

I am going to sit and work on chapter four. It will make me feel better, because when I create something, it stays created. No one can destroy it, or break it, or sully it up but me. It is there, done, new, like no one else in the world would do it. I can use this blog to remember that Alvaiinen has a golden amulet pounded into the shape of a flower, and that Kavela’s father’s name is Kovalaainen. I can use it to remember that the linearists in Birrigat shave their head into three narrow concentric rings, and that they represent the past, present, and the future. I can use it to remember that the brunos have trephinations to let the wisdom of Chalcis access to their brains. I just found a mention of Giordino Bruno in Joyce (papraphrasing) “he was a terrible heretic–well at any rate we burned him terribly bad.”

I just watched a documentary about Billy Joel’s concert tour in Russia in 1987. He said it was the politicians who had us so scared of the Reds, that there was no hatred in the Russian people. That’s important to remember in my world of Malvada. When he sings “The Times They are A’Changin'”, with, and I’m paraphrasing here, “it’s easy to see that the waters are rising/you’d better learn how to swim or you’ll sink like a stone”–that is Kavela’s relationship with his mother Kala. I have to remember to have her walk away when Kavela rides out with the Celestine cavalry, not because she is angry but because she can’t stand to see him go.

And then I have to remember that every day is just one day, and tomorrow will be better.