high winds

I'm teaching this book next week. God I love it. My love of it confuses me a bit. I mean I hate graphic novels. I hate cartoons. But this, this is so good. My hatred of cartoons and my hatred of comics are easy enough to trace and feel nothing but fundamental. When a child, I preferred Little House on the Prairie or The Brady Bunch to anything animated. I like to think that it was because I had a particular refined sense of the real, that I was beyond fantasy even at eight. But that doesn't really get at it. I think I just wanted to imagine an alternative that actually felt like it could be real. I guess I did want the fantasy like everyone else; I just didn't need it to be too much of a stretch.

Anyway. There are high winds in Rittenhouse Square this weekend. I'm horribly and mysteriously hung over after just two glasses of wine (unless of course my friend slipped me something else that I can't remember). When I finally got my haircut this morning for the first time in eight months, I looked a little green and stylist, trying to inquire without being a total jerk, asked "Do you ever get haircuts regularly?" I wanted to both laugh and puke. It's the same sensation I've had all day while lying in bed reading the Bechdel, wanting simultaneously to laugh and puke, or really to laugh and cry. That's a good book, one that makes you want to do two things at once. Go read it. Like now.