Snow, Opera, and the Phantom King

Just three things:

1. It's snowing. In Tacoma. In March. It may not be a sign of the coming apocalypse, but lordy, it ain't good.

2. Got squat done today. Not quite true - I did some organizational note-takey type things, but nothing I can point to in the libretto. CHord didn't show up for our Friday meeting. I suspect that it might be related to his birthday...

3. Shakabrah Java has this great bookcase - floor to ceiling and maybe twenty-five feet long. It's filled with an amazing medley of books, from Herman Wouk to Edgar Rice Burroughs to the Encylopaedia Britannica. Most of them are hardcovers that have long since lost their dust jackets, but there are quite a few odd paperbacks as well. They're donated by customers and staff. When the staff sorts through them at all, it seems to be by colour. People hang around and read them. It's cool.

Back in January, when I was working on The Resurrectionist in earnest, I left them one of my copies of The King in Yellow as a gift. I figured that since they were putting up with me sometimes five or six hours a day on the strength of free coffee refills, it was pretty much the least I could do. (I'm sure the waitress would have settled for more in the way of a tip, but I'm unemployed and this was relatively free.) So - the copy I left contained a mistake: the cover was bound on upside-down, in the European style. So far as I know, it's the only one like this. This particular copy also has a small notation on the inside back cover about the fact that it was donated to Shakabrah Java in January 2002, while I was working on The Resurrectionist.

Anyway, it was taken sometime in the last week. If anybody sees it on eBay (or elsewhere), please let me know.

thom

Absinthe Dreams

They were a fierce people, true,
but they rarely wore
the decapitated heads of their enemies
set upon their helmets.

Enshrouded in mists and
clothed in veils, their king
relaxed into his dissolution.