Shnirele, perele, gilderne fon
This post comes in two parts.
The first: I am incredibly pleased with last night's reading. Insofar as I can reconstruct from memory, I read "Di Vayse Pave," "Kaddish for a Dybbuk," "Of Chasing After Yesterdays," "Sheydim-tants," "Postscripts from the Red Sea," "Madonna of the Cave," "Martyrology," "Wisdom," "Tzaddik," "Shnirele, Perele," and "Postcards from the Province of Hyphens," all out of A Mayse-Bikhl except for the first and last; Richard Michelson read a cycle of his autobiographical adult work from Battles & Lullabies and a pair of YA poems from Animals Anonymous and I liked both very much. People wanted copies afterward. (Of the two international envelopes
erzebet mailed me, I sold the contents of one entire and one additional copy went in trade for Michelson's collection.) People wanted their copies signed. This even happened with people I didn't know—
negothick had met me at the train that afternoon in New London,
nineweaving joined us for dinner at a slow but tasty pan-Asian restaurant called Red House, and then
teenybuffalo,
cucumberseed,
ap_aelfwine and
hans_the_bold all turned up to the reading. I ended up singing "Shnirele, Perele" in the after-conversation, which may have impressed a Hadassah board. There was a small afterparty at Negothick's, with more singing. I stayed the night at the local Marriott and read some essays from my awesome book of An-sky before bed. I am in a lot of pain, very tired, and still quite happy, I wrote to
strange_selkie. It's even Connecticut in autumn and I don't want to kill myself right now.
The second: I write all this from Hartford Union Station, where I am stuck until nine-fifteen [update: nine-fifty-five] because we missed the two earlier buses due to a toxic combination of traffic and miscalculation and I cannot even do any of my work online, because the official free wireless refuses to let me log on. The morning was fine—I caught a ride to Newington with Teeny, spent the afternoon with Hans-the-Bold, the Jurassic trackway of Dinosaur State Park (where I bought a book about ancient fossil hunters for my cousin Tristen), and Indian buffet at Bombay Olive. We talked about television, politics, bad philosophy. I recommended him Donald Kingsbury's Courtship Rite (1982). He almost showed me Slave Girls from Beyond Infinity (1987). And I ran out of pain threshold about two hours ago, when we were walking around downtown Hartford in the misting rain. I had to pay double for my ticket because I hadn't bought it online. I don't know why Connecticut wants to keep me—we really don't have good history—and I hate the feeling that I cannot even have an ordinary day to follow a good one; I know it's not reprisal from the universe, but the rest of this sentence deleted for irrational.
I am glad of all of this trip but the getting home. Seriously, I am now sitting on a bus—with wireless—delayed twenty-five minutes and now fifteen minutes more, waiting for the very last connection of the night and I am still in Hartford. I would be self-medicating with the Klezmatics if I could use headphones. There have got to be better ways.
[edit]
Just after one in the morning, I got home. And now I am going to bed.
The first: I am incredibly pleased with last night's reading. Insofar as I can reconstruct from memory, I read "Di Vayse Pave," "Kaddish for a Dybbuk," "Of Chasing After Yesterdays," "Sheydim-tants," "Postscripts from the Red Sea," "Madonna of the Cave," "Martyrology," "Wisdom," "Tzaddik," "Shnirele, Perele," and "Postcards from the Province of Hyphens," all out of A Mayse-Bikhl except for the first and last; Richard Michelson read a cycle of his autobiographical adult work from Battles & Lullabies and a pair of YA poems from Animals Anonymous and I liked both very much. People wanted copies afterward. (Of the two international envelopes
The second: I write all this from Hartford Union Station, where I am stuck until nine-fifteen [update: nine-fifty-five] because we missed the two earlier buses due to a toxic combination of traffic and miscalculation and I cannot even do any of my work online, because the official free wireless refuses to let me log on. The morning was fine—I caught a ride to Newington with Teeny, spent the afternoon with Hans-the-Bold, the Jurassic trackway of Dinosaur State Park (where I bought a book about ancient fossil hunters for my cousin Tristen), and Indian buffet at Bombay Olive. We talked about television, politics, bad philosophy. I recommended him Donald Kingsbury's Courtship Rite (1982). He almost showed me Slave Girls from Beyond Infinity (1987). And I ran out of pain threshold about two hours ago, when we were walking around downtown Hartford in the misting rain. I had to pay double for my ticket because I hadn't bought it online. I don't know why Connecticut wants to keep me—we really don't have good history—and I hate the feeling that I cannot even have an ordinary day to follow a good one; I know it's not reprisal from the universe, but the rest of this sentence deleted for irrational.
I am glad of all of this trip but the getting home. Seriously, I am now sitting on a bus—with wireless—delayed twenty-five minutes and now fifteen minutes more, waiting for the very last connection of the night and I am still in Hartford. I would be self-medicating with the Klezmatics if I could use headphones. There have got to be better ways.
[edit]
Just after one in the morning, I got home. And now I am going to bed.

no subject
It's as though Ayn Rand herself was in charge of them.
no subject
Kind of unbelievably, really. One begins to wonder if they were designed to.
It's as though Ayn Rand herself was in charge of them.
"Who is John Galt and why does he suck at traffic engineering?"
It was great to see you.