Don Quixote says, "alea iacta est."

Just now, I peeled myself up from the awesome leather couch and began crossing toward the Marco's pizza box when Miss Gokey happened upon me and noticed that I was gasping and crying.

That's right, kids. I just finished re-reading Going Bovine. 

I have received quite a bit of submission fodder in e- and regular mail, but since I'm here enjoying a staycation in a gated neighborhood in North Las Vegas, and the submission fodder is on the east side where I live, it will have to wait, and I will have a built-in post for Tuesday. Until then, my five loyal readers have to deal with a series of text messages I received today along with my weird literary grief.

Although one text message in the series I read at lunchtime eloquently enumerated items that the sender hated at that moment in time, it was an "I hate everything" message. We all have our days. My previously mentioned "heterosexual life partner" says, "You can never go home again." Sometimes the die is cast, and we must trust when we look in the mirror that we are where we need to be to learn whatever lesson we need to learn. As I read the message, I came to the conclusion that it's not about the boss, and it's really not about the clients, either. It's about me. It's about each of us. What can *I* learn today?

I understand:
When it comes to reading materials, tastes are highly personal. I would hate to love Going Bovine as passionately as I do, and then suggest it to you only for you to hate it as much as I love it.
With so many brilliant minds out there composing new art for us to consume, why return to an old favorite?
A second reading of a favorite book always teaches a different lesson than reading #1. 
Although...I'm fairly sure I've liberally quoted these exact same words from Libba Bray at some previous point in time. Read it now with an "apocalypse" flavor.

"Maybe there's a heaven, like they say, a place where everything we've ever done is noted and recorded, weighed on the big karma scales. Maybe not. Maybe this whole thing is just a giant experiment run by aliens who find our human hijinks amusing. Or maybe we're an abandoned project started by a deity who checked out a long time ago, but we're still hard-wired to believe, to try to make meaning out of the seemingly random. Maybe we're all part of the same unconscious stew, dreaming the same dreams, hoping the same hopes, needing the same connection, trying to find it, missing, trying again - each of us playing our parts in the others' plotlines, just one big ball of human yarn tangled up together..."

November is National Novel Writing Month. May it produce for someone, somewhere, another Cameron Smith on whose journey we can ride along. It may be the last National Novel Writing Month ever. So...if you've ever wanted to write a novel, tonight is a good time to get started by typing your first 2,000 words. 2,000 words a day will earn you a "finished" badge, which is something that I've never gotten. November is, after all, smack in the middle of the confusion of quarter 2 on the front lines of public education in America.

Now, after all of this re-visiting, it's time to kick it into gear. I have a kit to prepare for the girl who hates everything (at least for a moment in time). This is because, in the words of some nonfiction writer whose books I've never read (named Ian Frazier), "Every once in a while, people need to be in the presence of things that are really far away."

FREE THE SNOW GLOBES.

Blah de Blog

1. The Thanksgiving trip to Peru with Krista (who has been busy finishing all sorts of projects you should read about) is canceled for me. I feel bad for flaking out on her, especially when it involves a place that would be so cool to see in advance of the apocalypse. I now have a more vested interest in hoping the Maya are wrong, so that I can live to get another stamp in my shiny new passport with the uncracked spine.

2. There was a big gnarly hurricane on the east coast a few days ago. I find it difficult to blog about the apocalypse with an actual one in progress for some people, while I am personally insulated from it in the mostly-loving embrace of the Mojave Desert, where I lectured today about our ancestral natives and how they used cliffs for their homes. I trust that the photos you'll see here on the Orlando Sentinel site are real, because I found the story from Tom Skilling's weather page.

3. I must keep this post short, as I have a date with the end of Going Bovine (read 2) right now.

She must have known that it was Tuesday, because Miss Gokey sent me the following quote in a text message this morning:

"The world is round and the place which may seem like the end may also be the beginning."

It is that thought with which I leave you on this fine evening, loyal readers.

(Re)visiting

Now, here at the end of October (only one more post after this one in my favorite month), it's time to regroup and reflect, generally going over our memories and getting our lives in order for the coming of the theoretical end of the world. Get ready for the most shameless self-hyperlinking ever.

I laughed. I cried. I re-read the first 147 pages of Going Bovine on the airplane.  

"'These are not the grades you wish to assign me, teacherling. You will reach for a higher letter or taste the righteous mojo of my Ultimate Peace Weapon.'" 

That was one of the parts where I laughed. I cried on page 105 of the paperback, and I won't quote that part because, in the words of one of my bosses, "I don't want you to cry. I want you to kick a$$."

Now for some updates on recent blog posts:

1. In the chars post, I mentioned the 2012 presidential election. When the students saw my sticker proudly displayed, they told me about a series of youtube rap battles between Obama and Romney. Then they were shocked when I told them I actually watched some of them. I forced Jodi to watch one, but will not link it here. There are several different versions. Some are stupid and some are hilarious. Enjoy. 

2. In off the top of my head, I blather about interactive notebooks. However, last weekend I strongly encouraged students to turn in their notebooks to get an important assignment graded. Most students did, and I was overwhelmed with the amount of reading that I had to do. It took me three four-hour sessions over a span of three days to grade them, and at certain points during the process, I actually fell asleep (beware inappropriate language). 

Speaking of falling asleep...

Recently, an easterner I know traveled to SoCal and posted photos on facebook. Being the overly-sensitive type, I got REALLY upset that they didn't call, didn't write, didn't even send a postcard. This was not the traveler's sole and unique fault. It is part of a pattern that has been established for a while. And now, here I am in Indiana, enjoying a moist, cold day in which the multicolored leaves are just beginning to fall from the trees...doing the exact same thing to them. 

Despite my obvious hypocrisy and resolution to concentrate on that which I have instead of always focusing on what's missing, it's important to me to be able to say to these people that I now understand and reiterate that my not inviting you does not mean that I don't love you. It doesn't mean that I don't miss you. I doesn't mean that you have fallen off of my Christmas card list. 

I located another Sinead O'Connor song called "The Healing Room" from her Faith and Courage album. It's just bizarre enough to still be super-soothing, and to help calm the anxieties of the approaching apocalypse. Look it up if you want. 

Well, time to go. Jodi and I are off to find some geocaches, an old hobby of mine that I'd like to revisit just once or twice more before the end.