December 24, 2009 marked 25 years since I came to Southern California for, apparently, the rest of my life. In odd ways, I’ve grown used to it; I’d have a difficult time going back to someplace where I couldn’t get a triple espresso and a New York Times in the dead of night. In other ways, I’ll never get used to it. I’m sort of done crying What is wrong with you people? because I know. I know exactly what’s wrong and it’ll never get better. So it goes.

I wish I was John Irving. I’m rereading A Son of the Circus and he has exactly the words for everything. Last Night in Twisted River is fucking brilliant; okay, there is the usual flair for the dramatic, but you have to admit the boy does his research. Logger? Sous chef? The boy is THERE. Oh, and can you say achondroplastic dwarfism and orthopedic surgery for A Son of the Circus? I thought not. Is this a writer’s life, always looking in from outside? I can tell you everything you might wish to know about the latest storm system headed our way, but that’s all I’ve got.

Like him or hate him, I adore John Irving. Yeah, Dickensian. But I am rereading A Son of the Circus and Ben keeps asking me “What are you laughing about?” It’s life, Crumpacker. Hilarious but deadly serious. As John Irving would say, an X-rated soap opera. So it goes. This post may have turned out to be a paean to Vonnegut and Irving, but that’s okay with me. Those are the gods I invoke when I sit down to seriously write.