It was a dark and stormy day in Oak Park, Illinois . . .

. . . nine years ago

The old fella was sitting in the Red Hen coffee shop in the center of town, at 9:07 looking out the window, and the bus opened right in front of him. Out of it poured boys and girls heading for the high school a few blocks away. The girls, he had to admit, one cuter than the other, four or five of whom entered the Red Hen, meeting up with four or five others, one of whom began regaling the others of a man, "old guy, like 30 years old," who asked if he could call her. Giggles all around. (And the old fella thought, close call, girlie)

This old fella like 80 years old, had the day waiting for him —

Help the wife with the store room — ?

Clear up the email

Check bank, pay bills

Write column on social justice (great idea, if a bit soggy on the edges)

Discuss politics with Dem friends!!!

Whoa, put that off — Pardon my insouciance, but I'd rather not get excited about politics, even if we are at a turning point. I refer to the move toward or away from a new U.S. I get excited just to say this much, so disturbing do I find it, but must go on. Smile through it, you know, like Mrs. Miniver-style English people after Dunkirk, taking time for deep breaths along the way.

"Candid confectionery" -- H. Walpole's Castle of Otranto is given credit for inspiring romantics, including Sir Walter Scott, who went overboard in praising it. Thus Hugh L'Anson Fausset, Times Literary Supplement 5/17/1923

Demands of writing: #1, some sort of detachment (even as I recycle, regurgitate my notes and observations over the years); #2, willingness to undergo, enter upon, remain within periods of thrashing about, as in writing my Jot Plus Daily in a continuing Word perf or Word Press or other doc.

Project: The grandfather, James H. Bowman, 1855-1935. Research required. Check with nearest (and dearest) genealogist.

'Come, Gentle Tripe, the Hungry Carter’s Joy'

No form of writing is so evanescent as journalism, unless it’s blogging.

Think about it.

The death question . . .

              A friend concerned about the noncommercial aspects of Blithe Spirit asked if I have gotten any work from it, meaning corporate work, which pays more than work for publication in most cases. (You should read Ben Jonson's correspondence with his lordly patrons. "Drink to me only with thine eyes," he told Celia, but he still had to live.) No work from it, I said, and he wondered what people will say when they bury me, implying they would not say much if I'd gotten no assignments from it.

              Actually, it will little affect me one way or the other at that point, which he surely realizes, but like most people insufficiently. Indeed, even if by slip of lip, it's strange to speak of point-of-death achievement in terms of work for hire. I love work for hire, but Blithe Spirit is the sort of thing you squeeze in before you die.

              The night cometh, after all, when no man stirs, which I just made up. No woman either.

Now you see me, now you don't . . .

              Do not assume that I am rushing to beat a short deadline, though in the scheme of things we all labor under a short one. Neither the day nor the hour has been announced to me. I await the thief in the night like the rest of you.

              Still, the uncovered manhole is out there. Ditto drive-by machine-gunning by drug-crazed hippies -- the usual assortment of Sudden Happenings. Eternity lurks at every corner. Or as Hector says in Chapman's Homer, in his goodbye to wife Andromache before the final battle, "the solid heape of night."

              Well, when the solid heap of night o'ertakes me, will people bemoan my getting few or no assignments? Or will they happily recall the nonsense here displayed under guise of art and journalism, to name just two of many possible cover stories for all this?

              The Shadow knows, but who else?

More to come of this craaaazy stuff . . . .