Jun 17, The Calm Storm Before the Something Else

I awoke to a grey day, the greyest yet, dark in fact. It was neither a trick of time, nor a forgotten shutter; even with the ‘zombie apocalypse shield’* opened to its limit, my room was still a dismal den of despair. (And that’s on a good day anyway.) No, the greyness was a natural motion of Gaia, a thick, steel-wool blanket of cloud wrapped around the sun, the sky preparing for Heaven’s dam to burst.

I haven’t shaved since I left home five days ago and I look like an old dog, its muzzle peppered with white hairs. I set aside a razor and some slippy stuff with which to shave, and hopped into the shower. While lathering my albino walrus body, a thought popped into my head, like toast exiting that hot thing that makes toast: “Bloody hell, there are laundry machines downstairs!” Thinking now, half-lathered, half-rinsed, that if I had such a thought, surely the other dozen-plus UHTC savages would be thinking the same. Shirking the shave, I pronounced to the mirror, “Fuck you beard, clothes first,” and quickly dressed myself in the cleanest duds I had and made downstairs to find (cue the angel choir) laundry facilities waiting for me, as if I was the star attraction on the opening night of that Shakespearean classic, Laundry in the Basement.

As thunder clapped, and lightning zapped, I opened my window wide to let in the gorgeous sounds of Gaia’s tears, embracing a perfect day to sit in and write; I’m working on my novel today for the first time in over a week.

Giving the gargantuan dog poo the thumb’s up — the smell still haunts me

After a time, when the clouds parted for the sun, Dan knocked on my door and we went alunch to the Turkish place near the hotel; afterward we visited the alimentation up the road, to get some fruit, nuts, and fizzy water, passing huge dog shits along the way. Rejoining the solitude of my room, I continued to write, while Dan performed science in his room in the form of keyboards, synths, and other kinds of digital sock puppetry.

After a satisfying session of fiction, the rain came back; perhaps in time to accompany us to dinner at the Indian place nearby. As I write, the thunder prowls overhead and the tarmac spatters below; my brain, in need of a break from its own creativity, needs some olde tyme entertainment, and for this, I have supplied myself with a download rental of — drum roll — Battlestar Galactica: Blood and Chrome.

Tomorrow is another opening night in the Leonard Cohen Old Ideas tour. Best be rested; good night.

*Thanks to Dan, for the perfect description of the mechanical window shutters we often see in this area of Paris.

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