Back for at least a moment

Television and work are the worst things in the world for a self-conscious writer. I haven't posted in nearly a year, because I haven't done anything in nearly a year. And I didn't do much of anything in the year before that. Except watch television and work at things that are not writing.

But a broken television is lovely, because the room is quiet and there are books on the shelf. I read some Dostoevsky; biographies of Beckett, Hemingway, Thurber, George Sand; Moby Dick (finally); Salman Rushdie; some medium-good contemporary Literature (Jeffrey Eugenides and Jhumpa Lahiri); and a couple medium-bad novels from the 60's or 70's that I got from the library bookstore for a quarter each. I just finished The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion, who I always always love. What a sad beautiful book. Now I'm debating whether to read Portnoy's Complaint or Goodbye, Columbus (both also 25 cents) by Phillip Roth. I don't think I can take all the masturbation in the former, so I'll probably go for the latter.

I feel like writing, and in fact, have written some little notes, mostly about dreams I had, because I once wrote a poem based on a dream which was fairly well received in workshop, so that seemed like a good place to start. Three cheers for a creative impulse.

A year ago, I was a few days from my 30th birthday and now my 31st is coming up. I want to make everyone I know sing karaoke with me. I suppose the proximity of my birthday is part of the reason for an attempt at connection with myself and the world, but maybe this time I will sustain the attempt for more than a day. We'll see.

If anyone reads this, let me know. There's no reason why anyone might check this page after all my long absences, but just in case. Thanks.