When The Super Bowl Was In Detroit

Am not going to watch the Super Bowl today, could give a big old rat's ass about the ads, the players, the half-time show, whether the Patriots cheat, and especially Phoenix, basking in warm sunny days and so on. When the Super Bowl was in Detroit, I spent the day writing the last chapter of my novella after spending all weekend suffering over it and like a last minute Hail Mary pass, the whole chapter came to me late in the evening as if it were handed down by God. That's kind of the Detroit way so far as I can tell -- nothing comes easy, but it alwasy comes at the last minute, bails you out of your quagmire and makes everything work. I was both glad and sad to finish; there's a certain relief to the end of anything along with a nostalgia for the world which you must leave. In the case of my novella, I longed to get out of the claustrophobic disturbed world of Josette and her brother, but I loved writing about Detroit, the broken down rickety beauty. Joyce Carol Oates wrote about Detroit both when she was living here and when she was living in London, an irony she details in her fantastic book The Faith Of A Writer -- "There I was living in London, one the most beautiful cities in the world, dreaming and longing for one of the most problematic, Detroit."

So instead of attending any parties or throwing one, I'll be home writing today. Kind of wishing that the Super Bowl was here this year again since the streets got fixed for a little while and Detroit took on a gleam, kind of like Cinderella's fairy godmother waved her wand. It took about a week for everything to break down again and look grubby, which is more than I can say for myself. I have about an hour or two at the most before I begin to ruin whatever look I'm going for. Nothing wrong with that, though. Decay is inevitable, things fall apart, much of what we love becomes a distant dream that we write about to gain some semblance of its essence. It's kind of a vale of tears instead of the glossy expensive ads that sell of us things we don't need for a life we'll never have. The trick, as always, is to enjoy whatever you have while you have it and even after its gone.

Michelle's Spell of the Day
"Kiss all you want, but don't tell." Dwight Yoakum

Cocktail Hour
Drinking music suggestion: Dwight Sings Buck Dwight Yoakum

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Sunday!