Finished A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, which left me most determined to reread Ulysses once I'm done with all this Murakami. On that front, the instant I had completed the above text, I pulled out The Elephant Vanishes, swallowed it whole, finished it last night, and this morning I read South of the Border, West of the Sun to completion and began Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman. Once I've put that one to bed, it'll be 1Q84, then First Person Singular, and then the rereading will begin: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, The Strange Library, Wind/Pinball, Norwegian Wood, After Dark, Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World, and then maybe Killing Commendatore--but I'm not sure about that last one. It's a definite possibility. Then, as I say, Ulysses, perhaps Dubliners, then as much Ursula K. Le Guin as I can cram in before the new year. Once that happens, I shall alternate nonfiction with poetry until I run out of fuel, though I seriously need to read at least fifty and perhaps more than one hundred nonfiction books next year, so help me. When I have exhausted myself, I will reread all my Kurt Vonnegut books, which happens to be all of them--except his Letters, and that one little book which is his first short story and his last short story. Don't think those have to count. I have everything else, from Sirens of Titan to Timequake, including Canary in a Cat House, one of my very rarest books.
ANYHOW THAT'S THE PLAN, and God may laugh but there it is. We have no choice but to lay it out sometimes, and risk being a cosmic punchline. Well, more of a cosmic punchline than we already are.
*
Ever since I was quite young, I have conceived of a piece of spacetime after death in which it's just you, free of your body but still your own self, and a calculable, comfortable manifestation of the Almighty--an old man, a giant cat, a floating radiant crystal; whatever you want, I guess--who "sits" down with you--I always picture a brown leather couch--and goes over your lifetime stats, gives you a director's commentary, and lets you in on every joke you've ever been to small and too limited by perspective to see or appreciate. Then, after this blow-by-blow of your lifetime, seen from enough new angles that it would take a few lifetimes to see--the next thing, of who knows how many things. Or life again, exactly the same! Or the loop is instantaneous. Or it's the next life, as someone or something completely different. Or it's all something completely different. Having been encoded with a premium Catholic programming early in life, I've also always thought and felt there must be some kind of Last Battle, before some timeless time of perfect peace and bliss preceding the end of the universe and the beginning of another, infinite universes stretched out before and behind us, or the same universe again infinitely.
All we know for sure is that death is coming! Maybe tomorrow. Maybe later today. Maybe sometime further off, but coming to meet you surer than anything else in this world.
*
Very much would like to put out a book this December and a couple more early in 2023, but we will see! I have most unwisely made such promises before, and that has only caused me personal anguish when unable to deliver. This book, for example, would contain the play I said I would publish over two years ago, finally done, but too short to stand alone. Also some essays, and difficult-to-categorize piece of poetry. If it can be called poetry.
*
On that note, I have actual work to do. Enough horsing around, dear reader.
Enough.
--JL
