Another snowstorm blew through here. It's amazing how winter has changed in Chicago since I've lived here, no doubt a side effect of *koff* climate change *koff* -- I've got a cold right now that has had a field day with my throat, and I'm sounding like, I dunno, Darkseid. Just low and croaky.
I wanted to snap a lot of pix, as the snow made everything beautiful -- the winds had it blowing sideways, so it hit a lot of statues and what-not on the side, which made them look neat.
Saw some old women nearly get into it on the bus this morning -- one gal was getting up to leave, and the other woman was standing, and the woman said "I'm getting out soon." and the other woman said "I'm getting out soon, too." And they glared at each other. Irresistible Force meet Immovable Object.
I've been watching a lot of Olympics of late. I can't resist it. It's over before you know it, so I'm enjoying it.
A couple more days and I find out whether my book advances to the next stage in the competition. We'll see. Fingers crossed. I could do with some good luck.
I'm going to write about love in a day or so -- or romantic love, anyway. It hearkens back to that article I posted the other day. I think our culture has sort of forgotten romantic love. Maybe it just flies in the face of the pragmatic realities and transactional exigencies of capitalist society, I'm not sure. But I believe in love. I still do. I've had my heart broken a couple of times (well, one slow erosion, the other an out-and-out shattering), but I still believe in the power and beauty of romantic love. Not sentimentalized, mind you -- but romantic, in every sense of the word.
Sometimes I feel that the 20th century saw the Romantic ground beneath the marching bootheels of pragmatism, and as we stagger punch-drunk into this new century, we're still rebounding from that. Certainly, humanity's sense of itself was surely shaken by what happened last century. I wonder what's in store for us as a species in this century. I often hope that a new Romantic spirit will arise and we will rise to it, instead of just having it all turn to ash and dust. In my tiny way, I hope my Romantic (big R) spirit prevails in my writing.
I often think about writing a love story. I did, once, in '99 -- but, oddly (or tellingly), it certainly wasn't about Exene -- who seemed to love being loved, without having to do much about loving in return. That story, that first real novel, was me yearning for something else, for someone else, and badly. The first real book I wrote was that one, when I was 29. Ten years ago, amazingly enough. The world changed with the new century's arrival, and I don't think the character I wrote in that day could survive this world -- she would not like it. I know she wouldn't.
But part of me thinks I should try again.
