...not water but hair. Yesterday afternoon at work when I began to notice my hair--shoulder length and not thick--I knew I was in for a bad spell. When I got home I made myself tea and prepared to nap over Inkheart until JJM picked me up. I didn't sleep but did feel more rested, and was able to break Blake's heart by getting dressed again in street clothes (he whined when I shucked my robe, and the hours I spent last night inhaling him counted for nothing, I guess.
I am better. If I had gone to DU, particularly lovely old Mary Reed building, and to a short story reading, in one of my pits of despair, I would have waxed all self-flagellatory about Wasting My Life. Being properly drugged means that I just don't mind wasting my life! Or something. The stories were good, or serviceable, but I was glad to get home. Despite the late hour, Blake needed some snuggling before he would go to bed, so it's a good thing I prefer Inkheart to Thief Lord.
This morning my hair weighs several tons. Let us not consider that my crippled head is probably due to this week's inactivity. I almost always take advantage of RDC's absence to drive to work and this week has been no exception. I excuse it with errands, like looking for kitchen rugs during Monday lunch and acquiring pounds of buddy seed during Tuesday lunch (at the African Grey I met a pied cockatiel who sounded more like Percy than any other bird I can remember, right down to the tone of his wolf whistle) and Wednesday, well, just going to the dry-cleaner after work.
However much exercise might have staved it off if I had exercised, I am somewhat sick: I have a canker sore inside my lower lip, and those never flare up except when I am sick or stressed. So I am hanging out at home, writing letters and ruining Blake's pleasure in my company by cleaning his jowls--I just removed desiccated corn molded exactly into the shape of his lower mandible.
I wrote a note to Haitch's in-laws, thanking them for wedding photographs they sent. This reminded me to write to the person who hosts the B&B in Old Lyme the in-laws enjoy, and also to her daughter; also to KREL, whom I dreamed of last night; and also to a friend whose pregnancy has turned tragic.
I think I need more tea.
Last night's reading was four stories read by four actors not their authors, which worked well. The authors were local, though I don't know how well known the three who aren't Connie Willis are supposed to be. Connie Willis lives in Colorado? JJM and I mostly enjoyed them but also were waiting for each to be over.
Margaret Coel's "Lizzie Come Home" had such the tropes of, as a DU colleague said looking at earnest cheese in Santa Fe, "Honest Injun crap" that it was difficult to discern any merits of story within the Women Who Run with the Wolves names and the descriptions of hair and skirt and particular beauty. Still, its theme was compelling and I liked it fine even with its plot hole and unlikeliness. How does the sister justify spending however much time with Lizzie if she's not the woman she seeks? How could a woman orphaned at the age of 10 make a good enough marriage that now as a widow she had no financial worries ["You can have whatever you want"]. Also, the Sand Creek massacre happened after Gettysburg, which is too easy, if not too significant to the plot, an error to mess up. (Yes, I had to confirm it, but my hunch was right!)
James Van Pelt's "Home" was funny and funnily read. Then after the second occurrence of the phrase "Pack your things," his use of elements of "Solsbury Hill" gelled for me and at least the author admitted his debt to "a Peter Gabriel song." So I knew approximately what would happen in the last third of the story and its last line.
Connie Willis's "A Letter from the Clearys" typifies what I dislike not necessarily in science fiction but in clumsy fiction. There are clues to The Big Mystery all along, and then you figure it out long before the author is done with her smokescreens--which makes the remaining smokescreens before the Unveiling more annoying--and then has to hammer home the Message of the Mystery. This happened in The Da Vinci Code and, Climbing Tree help me, I noticed it in Absalom, Absalom! too: Quentin's pacing of his storytelling to Shreve suits Faulkner's purpose more than Quentin's character. But her name did remind me to find The Domesday Book, which is the most recommended of her titles besides To Say Nothing of the Dog, which I think was fine Twinkie-ish writing that Jasper Fforde has obviously overread.
The writing in the first three was fine, as much as I can harsh on their other elements. The last, Chris Ransick's "When the River Runs Red," went on far too fucking long. And what was the deal with the wasps beyond the beginning short-story writer's technique of Honoring the Catalyst? Bah. The narrator's rich voice nearly but not quite made up for it.
Except for the one weeny little instance where I thought one weeny little bit of story-unfolding suited Faulkner's narrative goal rather than Quentin's character and got some water in my lungs, this entire novel swept me away. The story, the characters, the history, the themes. I will need nine rereadings, but I loved it.