March LionsAnother St. Patrick's is done. In this town, that's major. The town shuts down; most employers (mine included) close for the day. Last I heard, we're second only to Boston in the size and scope of our celebration.
This one was pretty subdued, partly because it poured rain every day but Sunday (on which day no liquor is sold, natch.) The rain didn't stop the drinking, though; neither did the 48-hour ultimatum given Monday night. My bar was ready: admire the beer fort. This shot was taken from the top of the bar while the guys were on their own beer break midway through building the fort. This beer was gone by Monday night.
The day after St. Patrick's is always cool in its surreal quiet. This year it was a Tuesday. Everyone at work is hung over (if they went home when the bars are forced to close at 1am; usually they close at 3) or still drunk (if they went home and broke out their private reserves.) All the bars & restaurants downtown close the Day After, for the most part. The employees lock themselves in, clean up, and drink. I got to hear all the war stories. My own involved tonsillitis, Jack,
Tekken 4, and a chainsaw. Theirs involved big tips, bare breasts, and guys getting strung up by hooks through the flesh of their backs. Business as usual on all counts. Nothing worth translating into fiction, anyway.
And we're at war again. I can't even begin to get into that topic, certainly not here. I'll leave that to the likes of John Bloom (sharp & considered commentary) and Geoff Cooper (blazing guns.) I will suggest that the precedent the administration's set by selling this to us as "preemptive action" is likely to have disastrous repercussions worldwide for many, many years.
Our administration is building a track record of dangerous imprudence. They don't seem to consider the far-reaching impact of their words.
As far as a stance on the actual war itself or the reasons for it: I'm not getting into that. (And with regard to the rest of it - Israel, Palestine, China, Taiwan, Indonesia, Vietnam, North and South Korea, Japan, Russia, the whole of the Middle East sitting physically right between the European Union and China - I play real-world
Risk in my head until my ears ring.)
Fiction: I'm having a real problem keeping things short these days. Everything wants to be bigger and more intricate, and each story in progress wants to fold into the others. The last thing I want right now is to write a book of interconnected short stories; I enjoy reading books like that (Tina Jens'
The Blues Ain’t Nothin’ was great) but for the most part, such books aren't as marketable as a single unit of ficion, be it a short story or a novel.
Such logic doesn't seem to remain solid when the stories themselves start pulling the strings, though. I guess the best I can do is wait and see what the stories want to do.
Everything seems to be "wait and see" these days. This takes a forced stillness of soul that I can barely tolerate.
Good things I can count on: gorging myself on buffalo meat. Marlboros and iced tea. Tony. China's new novella,
The Tain, waiting for me on the coffee table (it's so blindingly fucking brilliant so far that I must read a page or nine, then put it down and reel.) NASCAR. And... bed. Mmm, bed.
posted by Mehitobel Wilson at 10:08 AM 
