There’s a new Fleetwood Mac album, called “Say You Will.” Good stuff.

And so it goes, and so it goes,
and you’re the only one who knows
(Billy Joel, And so it goes)

or, as Vonnegut observed in SH5 …

… so it goes.

If you’ve seen my book, or if you’ve looked at this site much, you know I have a thing about quotes.

I’ve started working on a site that will talk about some of the quotes in my book, where they are from, why I chose, them, and so on. No, this does not in any way contribute to the usefulness of my book, but I had very little else to do today, so I started on this. And, just maybe it will encourage someone to buy the book. But I doubt it.

play of light
a photograph
the way I used to be
some half-forgotten stranger
doesn’t mean that much to me

trick of light
moving picture
moments caught in flight
make the shadows darker
or the colors shine too bright

(Rush – Available Light – Presto – 1989)

If they were right, I’d agree, but it’s them they know, not me. (Father and Son, Cat Stevens, Greatest Hits)

… where the old lady still lived … in company of several other old ladies of both sexes.

(Little Dorrit, Chapter XVII, Charles Dickens, 1857)

What’s Christmas time to you but a time for paying bills without money; a time for finding yourself a year older, but not an hour richer; a time for balancing your books and having every item in ’em through a round dozen of months presented dead against you?

— Ebenezer Scrooge. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens.

This year, I seem to find myself more in tune with the first chapter of A Christmas Carol than with the last.

Tonight was the Christmas fling in Wilmore, where all the town folks turn out on Main Street, and all the downtown businesses open their doors and have snacks and hot drinks. I just did not feel like staying very long, and I got very cold, so I just came home. I’m trying to work on my book, but I’m having a hard time concentrating.

Tomorrow night is another Christmas party. I’m not even sure I’m going. Perhaps I will make the requisite appearance. I suppose folks will expect me to do a Dickens reading, and I’m just not sure I have the heart for it. I’m more inclined to read about Scrooge walking home through the foggy streets of London and up his broad staircase – wide enough for the coach-and-four! – than I am to read about Fezziwig and how the small things we do for one another mean so much.

Perhaps I should not write things like this in such a public medium, where I am supposed to be all jolly and positive. However, this year has worn me down as no year ever has before, and I’m just not sure I have the energy to do the Christmas thing this year.

tell all the friends who think they’re so together
that these are ghosts and mirages, all these thoughts of fairer weather

Indigo Girls — Love’s Recovery

Meanwhile, declining from the noon of day,
The sun obliquely shoots his burning Ray
The hungry judges soon the sentence sign
And wretches hang that jury-men may dine

–The Rape of the Lock, Alexander Pope, 3:19ff