Ouch.

Still Life With Woodpecker (Tom Robbins):

"Three of the four elements are shared by all creatures, but fire was a gift to humans alone. Smoking cigarettes is as intimate as we can become with fire without immediate excruciation. Every smoker is an embodiment of Prometheus, stealing fire from the gods and bringing it on back home. We smoke to capture the power of the sun, to pacify Hell, to identify with the primordial spark, to feed on the marrow of the volcano. It's not the tobacco we're after but the fire. When we smoke, we are performing a version of the fire dance, a ritual as ancient as lightning."


"Who knows how to make love stay?

1. Tell love you are going to Junior's Deli on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn to pick up a cheesecake, and if love stays, it can have half. It will stay.

2. Tell love you want a memento of it and obtain a lock of its hair. Burn the hair in a dime-store incense burner with yin/yang symbols on three sides. Face southwest. Talk fast over the burning hair in a convincingly exotic language. Remove the ashes of the burnt hair and use them to paint a moustache on your face. Find love. Tell it you are someone new. It will stay.

3. Wake love up in the middle of the night. Tell it the world is on fire. Dash to the bedroom window and pee out of it. Casually return to bed and assure love that everything is going to be all right. Fall asleep. Love will be there in the morning."


Last night there was a brief instance of this:
will I die before I dance?

Can't say that I didn't see it coming. Which is what she said.

Ungh. Still, unfortunate. But necessary. For the best.

There's so much to do. The world keeps on turning. Reviews to write, books to read. Befriended the neighbors late last night...was up 'til 1 AM talking to them on the porch.

Life's revving its engines up, and this'll be my city yet.
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Postscript:

The more I watch this, the more obsessed with it I become:

Florence and the Machine, "The Dog Days Are Over"