The morning radio host had to tell me “If You Leave” by Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark from the Pretty in Pink soundtrack turned 40 today. There’s a moment here where I’m supposed to say “ouch” and wax nostalgic for a few beats. And I suppose I did. It’s good to remember that I was 12 years old when I went in search of the arcane knowledge about high school and adulthood in the movies. Being gifted and cursed with an active and strong imagination, I tended to live like I was living the layers of a life. I was a spy with a cover story. I was a crash-landed alien stuck and waiting to be rescued, turning it into a research mission to occupy my time until the mothership arrived.

I didn’t figure out what I’d done to myself until I heard it in the David Cronenberg’s movie of William S. Burroughs’ Naked Lunch. “It’s like an agent who’s come to believe his own cover story,” Benway told William Lee, mixing the cure in with the bug powder. “But who’s in there, hiding, in a larval state. Just waiting for a time to hatch out.” Later, when Lee was trading the mugmump machine back for Clarknova, the enemy (?) handler tried to convince Lee not to believe his own cover story by warning about an agent in Anexia who had come to believe her cover story.
It took some years to work myself back out, I suppose.

Struggling a little to focus this morning. Yesterday was a day with too little sleep. Today is a day after having slept maybe too well. We are fully enveloped in winter, which is to say it feels a little early in comparison to the last few years. A hard cold winter will make for a good spring, though, or so I tell myself. It lets the earth rest right and proper. Let’s hope the earth wakes up focused and ready to work. There will be plenty of it to do. So goes into the report, anyway.

sl
ee
p
sl
ee
p
sl
ee
p
dear
lo
ve
the
work
wa
its