The home stretch

Moving time is approaching. This week is going to be unfun. We hope to have everything pretty much packed and done in the next seven or eight days or so.

I read No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy last week. Damn. Breezed through it in about two days. If you thought the movie was good, read the book. And I thought the movie was superb. But the book is even better (though they are pretty much true to the original in the movie, but you can't get it all on film). McCarthy has a way of expressing profound things without being preachy or one-sided. I mean, in general, it's pretty bleak with him (the novels set in the American West at least--I haven't gotten to his earlier works yet), but he always gives you a taste of hope somewhere along the line. But really, I think McCarthy is gifted like few others. You can read him and, if you have a bit of patience, you will find something that strikes you deeply, no matter your worldview. He's a living master.

In other news, packing sucks. I went through a box of stuff filled with crap from my youth and beyond. Bad poetry, old letters, random trinkets with vague significance. Funny: I found a high school report that I wrote on a typewriter. Damn, does that make me old, or what? Well, not really, and no offense to anyone else. But it's a revelation to me. A typewriter. I still remember typing on that thing, using those shitty little whiteout tabs to erase mistyped letters. Oh, delete key, how I love thee. But despite the shittyness of the stuff I found, I had a real hard time getting rid of most of it. The sentimental value of some things still holds strong. Even some of the garbage poetry: it reminds me of my disposition during those years of angst, and helps me remember how I got from there to here--which has some interest to me, though a significant part of me doubts it has any real personal value. But here it is, going back into the box, and I likely won't see it again until the next substantial move, which will be who knows when. Do I really need to recall the terrible poetry written in my freshman year of high school or even the terrible poetry written post-high school? Do I need to keep the letters I received from my first serious girlfriend? I don't know if I do. But I'm keeping them for now.

Moving makes you think; at least it's got that going for it.

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