Sitting in stillness on a Monday morning. With a new pope in place apparently the Catholics are going to worry less about humanity and more about AI and so I’m rereading the Hyperion Cantos. Amazon had ruminated for a while on creating a series, I think, and though I’d Love to see Dan Simmons’ visuals visualized, I don’t know who they’d choose for the Pilgrims. Raul Endymion and Aenea are less important in my mind, and can be generically pretty, but the original Pilgrims are so rich in characterization and nuance that I can’t help but wonder if there’s anyone who could match them.
Somehow Jack Black has aged into the obscene old poet, Martin Silenus. But the rest I cannot fathom.
Returning to Hyperion is just another way of running away from the world. The news is nightmarish and strange and unAmerican. My Catholic aunt and uncle are joyous in the midst of the Trump Ascendency, obsessed with judgment and punishment despite their moments of sympathy and service, and my mother tells me tales of how I was an angry child and an angry boy and an angry man, and she’s not wrong. We ramble into memory and dreams.
Last night I dreamt of my wife.
Breakfast has too much broccoli in it. I have no one to blame but myself. The three chosen NPR news items of the morning include cancer and war and tornadoes.
Beautiful show yesterday, out in a park in Severna Park, MD. And afterwards sitting and eating good, but overpriced tacos in an open air restaurant just down the street. Watching the sun set with friends and wishing for chips and salsa and more margaritas.
We are really quite incredible, and statistically speaking, the number of people who know this, or even know we exist, are a rounding error in the human population. In any meaningful survey of our species we do not exist.
Shame about that.
Kristen’s up. Prince is up. The morning ritual of the cat complaining and Kristen’s dad complaining via voicemails both wend down the stairs and I guess it’s time to move on with my day.
But it was a beautiful gig. And we were quite incredible. It feels like I’ve earned a day off today, but that’s not really how the world works.
Maybe the morning though.
Maybe the morning.
Slowly a quiet Monday morning dissolves into gas-powered mowers and overhead planes. This more than anything else breaks my reverie and reminds me it’s time to get on.