The moon.

We have, I hope, reached a pinnacle in our genealogical development at which we no longer feel compelled to discuss basic happiness in writing. The compulsion is part and parcel to human expression--it is fundamental, but when it comes right down to it there is the imposing burden it places on the reader to, for no other reason than unprofitable empathy, feel for the Voice.

Unnecessary--listen to a record, meet someone, try a pomelo, cutting, or wearing laurels.

Sufficed to say we hosted a blossom of a moon last evening, one apocalyptic in measurement, conducive to whiskey drinking and no small amount of forgetting. People were stepping outside of their houses in pajamas--okay, sweatsuits, just to say, "look, I am on fire. Beneficence conduct me, Moon, may uncharacteristic kindness alight with your light. Don't be a douchebag. Luminescence, this time it is me--I am watching you. I know about the Drifters record sitting on your floor."

I stocked my barren lp case with 78 rpm records, books and a Mexican candle depicting that most magnetic candle personality, Jesus, with his tranquil hand gesture, saying, "This way and not the other." Topped said column with a cocktail umbrella and a bitty U.S. flag. I am indubitably in that era of adulthood in which one neither contemplates death nor candies his social doings with nostalgia--I am thinking of this country and the verging holiness is quite grand. Once, for instance, my iPod played Sidney Bechet's rambling "Oh, Didn't He Ramble" on a flight. I looked diagonally downward--such was the angle of the circling plane headed for Minneapolis in which I sat, and saw for the very first time ever, the Mississippi River. What a coincidence. The world was not over.

I produced a solid natural emotion, I connected myself to something ancient. There are dreams about old places, and then, in rarest moonlight and mood, there is the nobility and security of the encounter.

All of this reminds me we are quickly approaching Lent. As an agnostic disfavoring devotion it shouldn't matter to me but I tagged along with J.J. and her pals; I will be excising booze from my diet for, well, a month or so. Shit. Anyhow, that's what with the weirdness. Full moon, get me drunk now, tomorrow I will be as dry as a scientist's eye.