Well

I'm officially well and truly drunk. So. What's next, eh?

Oh yeah. I think I have reached the point on the scotch bottle where the line would be below which I will ignore the lower line below which I must not drink. So ... it'll probably be time to switch out from the scotch after this glass.

Anyway, while I'm on the line here ... I'm reading Siobhan's sgtuff tonight I and I think I don't hink I can write narrative while I'm drunk ... which, well, obviously narrative is the main thing people were supposed to be writing when NaDruWriNi was supposed to be a thing ... but anwyay it reminds me that one of the things I've kept meaning to say someting about for years now is what Nick XCave says, I guess in One More Time with Feeling but maybe somewhere else, about whow he doesn't write narrative songs anymore--he says something to the effect that he doesn't feel anymore like the world makes the kind of sense that can be caputured in narrative ... which prompts me to think that One Might Say that people write narrative to impose sense on w a world that doesn't make sense in itself, or to create a world that does make sense as opposed to the real one that doesn't ... I mean, I feel like I may have heard someone or other say something like that at some point or other, and it's the kind of thing you can certainly imagine someone saying because it sounds wise without necessarily having anythign to do with the turuth. But the guess I would hazard is you don't stop writing narrative because you no longer believe the world makes a narrative kind of wsense; you stop sriting narrative because you lose faith in your ability to believe in your own imposition of sense on thew orld.

Belated triolet

See the sun across the water
Rising rippled through the waves -
So at last the youngest daughter
Sees the sun across the water
And to he who lately brought her
Here half-crazed in twilight raves:
See the sun across the water
Rising rippled through the waves

Coming into this here NaDruWriNi I didn't much know what I was goin g to do, so I started out by writing out some patterns in my notebook, villanel,le, sestina, triolet, sonnet ... also thought I might try to come up with some lyrics to a bit of music I'd noodled my way into lately ... and then surprised myself with what I cam eup with so far ... but here's a triolet at last at least.

NaDruWriNi 2019 wrap

It's overcast again. I went outside aroudn midnight EDT and the stars were out and I thought maybe it will actually get cold, but it didn't. I went outside twenty minutes ago and the trees were still dripping. Around 11 EDT there was a drumming outside and I said I wonder if that's rain or ice pellets, cuz it sure isn't snow ... and the ice pellets are still frozen on the deck and the cars, but everywhere else there's liquid water still. I'm surprised to see it was two years ago and not last year I said "Wasn't a single night this mid-fall before this first bout of real cold that I'm sure the pump would've frozen if I hadn't been getting up to run the water ... which means there were no clear nights and early mornings". That's pretty much the way it was again last year, and very much the way it's been again this year. The forecasts had it cold last night, but they also had it cloudy, and those two things don't work together. It's a delicate art, interpreting forecasts around here, but you can pretty mnuch bacnk on this: if it's cloudy, the nighttime temperature will be a few degrees above forecast, and if it's clear, it'll be a few degrees below. And if it's calm, and then the wind blow seven a little, the temperature will bounce up a little at least. One of the thigns I worry about is that the wind will blow around the pump, which I still haven't gotten around to sheltering with anything more than a tarp and some twoels, when the tempreature is significantly below freezing, but that's just not very likely this time of year. The thing I worry about is that the power will go out with the temperature below freezing, and that very nearly happened yesterday. But it hung right around zero and a little above for the whole eight-ish hoursthe power was out, and an asteroid nearly hit Earth on Halloween so the google news says.

Three Fridays ago I found my water softener and one of my two water heaters dead on the same day. I'm not sure whether that's more or less unlikely than the road team winning nine straight Weorld Series games--no, wait, it's obviously more unlikely; it's, you know, basically impossible, but they're both basically impossible, but then so is winning the 6/49, and so forth--but anyway it was the Friday before I was a deputy returning officer for the election and talked to, I'm pretty sure, more humans than I have talked to in the whole nearly last four years, in one day. (Only one of whom filed a written complaint about my behaviour, which, well, I guess is actually worse than my typical teaching record, insofar as n o one ever went so far as to actually complain about me, but typically 10-20% of them would avail themselves of teh opporutunity to give me whe worst possible review. Look, objectively speaking, there is a good deal of evidence that I am a terrible person. The preponderance of evidence suggests I'm kind of OK. And there's also, it must be conceded, a good deal of evidence that I'm pretty great. So, on the whole, I really don't know what to believe.) So anyway I was already extremely freaked out about the fol.lowing Monday when, on the Friday, I found both my water softener and one of my two water heaters dead.

The hellmeter, as I say, was very high.

B. and I have been watching THe Good Place, at kest's prompting, and it has fallen right into that slot formerly occupied by Doctor Who (which, gah, that's a whole 'nother story) of making me feel like this is trying to tell me I am actually in hell, or a dream crab is suck ing on my brain, or who even knows what. (Also, *I am not Chidi*, but that is also a whole 'nother story.) But: I keep thinking these last years, I have learned so much, and I learned so much after my water heater died, including that replacing the element and the thermostat on a water heater are unbelievably easy, and that fucking-voltage-detectors-how-do-they-work are crazy awesome things, and that safety switches sometimes have fuses inside them that may sometimes work themselves loose over decades of the safety switch jolting on and off (knowing which may save you a good deal of bother and expense--funnily enough I did think to check the fuses first; I just didn't know there was a fuse inside the switch, until all else had feailed and I turned my attention to teh switch).

I don't know where I was going with that because it's 5:27 EDT, and 4:27 EST is bad enough, but I do know that I have been reminded tonight among other nights of Nietzsche's saying that we write tragedy to make pleasing aesthetic objects out of horrible horrible life. And I do not accept that. Not as a general principle because being alive on Earth is a bloody miracle. But the train service from here to there is, to say the least, for the time being, unreliable. So, general principles notwithstanding, it seems, almost everythign else having abundantly failed, like there's nothing for me to do but write about it.