I’ve got a couple Bug strips stuck in the pipeline.
Eating apples sometimes helps, I hear.
It’s like this. I haven’t felt very buglike lately. I haven’t felt like being funny or even entertaining.
What have I felt like instead?
I’ve felt like an old guy.
I’ve felt like getting up early and writing in my notebook before breakfast.
I’ve felt like, what’s so bad about solitary confinement?
I’ve felt stuck again, but on a higher level this time. Like, here, the monsters are faster and meaner, but my gun shoots bigger bullets too.
I don’t know.
Lots of things happening at once. I will find time for the Bug soon. I still like him.
My daughter is going to France. She will be gone for what, six months nearly. I was talking to a German guy yesterday who drives around Europe constantly, servicing and selling harps. He recommended I drive Beta’s harp to France, since renting one would end up being prohibitively expensive.
And when I say prohibitively, that’s not a word I say lightly.
Who would have thought?
That little baby.
That little kid, climbing the ladder up the big slide at the playground in Tokyo with dad behind her, scared to death and ready to catch her but acting nonchalant so she wouldn’t be scared.
As recently as one week ago: a girl. Albeit strong shoulders from rowing, and a good punch, but still. And now: a woman looking out of that face.
Now: packing for half a year in France.
Until right now, until this very moment, I thought, right, France. Have a good time. But now I realize, when she comes back, everything will be different.
geez. thank goodness kein will never, ever be old enough to leave for six months. because i would be freaking out. not worried about him: he would do just fine in a lion’s den, i think. worried more about me and what i would do with the gaping hole in my thinking.
I try to fight off feeling like an old man by acting like a stupid kid… but my stupid kids keep acting like grownups and smashing the illusion. Stupid kids.
Look, I was misty over this last week, Mig, and now you’ve got me going all over again.
You should absolutely drive the harp out there. And note how short the drive is, really. Not much worse than, say, Portland to San Francisco, right? You’re not that old. You can do it, once a month or so. And after the first couple weeks she’s going to know all the cool cafes and bookstores, and will show you a good time.
Which, ok, will make you feel older. Heh.
Brendan has been wanting to show me his favorite cities, towns, family friends’ converted monasteries=>ashrams=>junkie rehab retreats. We could have lunch someFrenchtypewhere in March, what do you say?
We’re teetering on that same brink…our son is so close to flying the coop…at least emotionally…leaving his silly teen years behind him and us…and we’re ready for that step too, but oh…what agony these final bits are.
Mig: Stay cool. She’ll come back and will be even greater than before. In the meantime write a novel.
Thanks for writing the novel.