Water rising up against my door

It's raining torrentially, and there's barely a brown leaf left on the trees: in Boston, fall is definitely over. We're into the cold, grey end of November, the dead days stranded between autumn and winter, when all the bones have been stripped bare and not yet reclothed in snow; and I'm remarkably fond of this time. This is nearly the season of Angela Carter's "The Erl-King." There are ghosts in this time of the wood.

I'm on break for Thanksgiving, thank God, and so I can prove that I haven't really fallen off the face of the earth (or into it). Friday night, I attended a marvelous party and learned that I am unlikely ever to develop an absinthe habit, as Pernod—despite its acid-green clarity, and the fact that it glitters when chilled—tastes rather like licorice cut with lit gasoline. I'd forgotten how much I dislike anise. But the hot buttered part of a hot buttered rum is very much worth the drinking. On Saturday, I watched the football teams of Yale and Harvard respectively suck like cheap Sumerian malt through a beer straw, and nearly froze to death. Three rounds of overtime! So many fumbles! A cloudless, bleached, bitterly bright day, and I suppose I could have stayed warmer by leaping up and down and screaming, as indeed I saw most of the people around me doing. Despite the historic ineptitude of the game, it was great fun. My first football game. I'm sure this is some kind of American rite of passage. Sunday I spent in Harvard Square, in company of hans_the_bold, and had a lovely book haul from Pandemonium. It's been all downhill (though lesser_celery did much to mitigate the slide) with doctor's appointments since then. But I'm still not in classes, and I'm sleeping late: I'm pleased.

I'm working on two new stories, finally, finally: I'm blaming hans_the_bold for one, lesser_celery for the other. Details to follow on completion, I suppose. In the meanwhile, I've located a new site for the publication and review of dark poetry, SpiderWords, whose inaugural column by Geoffrey Goodwin contains an exceedingly complimentary review of my own Postcards from the Province of Hyphens and, among others, Catherynne M. Valente's Music of a Proto-Suicide (precursor to Prime's Apocrypha). Nor do I have any idea who this Brian is, but he seems to have liked "On the Blindside," so I can deal with that. Lastly, The Dybbuk in Love has received a note in Publisher's Weekly, and I am very pleased:

Sonya Taaffe's graceful The Dybbuk in Love recounts the odd but lyrical romance between Clare, a student, and Menachem, the restless spirit of the title, who has a tendency to possess Clare's very corporeal boyfriend, Brendan. Yiddish lovers and others interested by culture clashes between the Old and New Worlds should find this tale of interest. (Prime [www.prime-books.net], $8 paper 48p ISBN 0-8095-5077-6)

I think that's all the news that's fit to reprint, for the moment. Must go see the grocer's about some cranberries.