Un Día Voy a Cantar las Canciones Sin Letra y Cada Uno Podrá Imaginar Si Hablo de Amor, de Desilusión, Banalidades o Sobre Platón

Last weekend, I got back to revising my novel, for the first time since I got back from Los Angeles, prior to which I had finished writing it, although now it needs revisions. During that time, I had been to DC and LA, so I wrote a new chapter for the book, a preface, which is set in DC. I had my character walk the same way I'd walked, exiting the FBI's Brutalist headquarters, passing the National Archives in front of which sits a stone woman with an open book on her lap whose pedestal reads WHAT IS PAST IS PROLOGUE, and down to the National Mall, except when I was there it was cold, and in the book it's spring, and he walks through a shower of cherry blossom petals.

After I got back from Hollywood, I had to take some time to let all the things in my head, what I'd seen and heard and witnessed, retreat, so it wasn't quite so BIG, because it can get that way when there are humans mating with machines, and porn is strewn across the floors of strip mall offices, and you end up in the back of a warehouse marveling at an empty raised Pepto Bismol pink stage with chipped paint and a stripper pole festooned with silver star streamers. I have to wait for it to abate, let the reptilian brain chew on it, so I can put it to words.

This has been a strange week, hasn't it? Once upon a time, there was a virtual me, and then there was a real me, but for a second there I wasn't sure which one was real, only that the internet flattens time, and you have to find a way to stretch yourself across it.

Have a great weekend, because there's nothing else worth having, is there?

[Music: Juana Molina's "Un Dia"; title translation here.]