Cecil Vortex

Wire Act

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We saw this squirrel the other night. And she’s carrying one of her kids in her mouth over a thin black power line — tree to tree, in search of better digs.
In her mouth! POWER line! Or…maybe it was a telephone line. But either way, it was crazy.
So she drops the first kid off on a big branch in this new, flush tree, takes a quick breath, and then heads back out to get kid number two.
This time across, she seems wiped out, stumbling dramatically — we gasped! This is thirty feet over the concrete sidewalk. And kid number two is huge. At least half its mother’s size.
Well the mom just barely makes it over, but make it over she does. We all cheered! And then back she goes. Step, step, then lying down on the wire, lying down. Embracing that wire, then step, step, oh god I’m so beat stumble. Lie down. Again. Then step. Spent.
We wondered why she didn’t just walk on the sidewalk, nudging them along with her nose? A thin wire? Thirty feet in the air? Why make it so hard on herself? And then we realized Oh yeah. For a squirrel it’s like: “we die on the ground.”

Knock Knock

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Here’s a joke my four-year-old told us at dinner tonight. I enjoyed it and thought you might too:

Knock knock.
Who's there?
You know what's broccoli made of?
You know what's broccoli made of who?
Peas.

Scramble

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When I was in second grade my family moved to Holland. We lived in a town called Wassenaar and went to school in The Hague (Den Haag) – a big city about 20 minutes drive away.
Every morning, a bus would swing through our neighborhood and pick me and my brothers up on the corner, just around the block from where we lived.
There was a small, circular park across the road with a pair of benches and plenty of thick bushes — the kind you could crawl through or just sit inside for a while, at least as a kid. And this whole scene relaxed in the shade of an old Dutch church with a deep-voiced clock tower that kept the town moving on collective time.

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The Gravity’s Rainbow Deathmarch, Week 15

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At So-Called Bill’s excellent suggestion, last week turned into one final rest, reflect, and reread week before the grand finale. Now here we are, tanned and ready, primed for the big wrap and just — jinkies! — two more weeks to go. I really like the word “jinkies.”
Next week: Page 706 (p/v), once more with feeling….

Woosh

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That’s the goal. To open it
one more crack.
Bathe in the woosh.
Fire it back.
Not to be Superman.
But to stick our heads
into the place
where the idea of Superman came from
and then wriggle out
trout
in teeth.

The Gravity’s Rainbow Deathmarch, Week 14

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So here we are at Week 14, and now it’s all right there, all right there within reach. Me myself, I’m about 8 pages off target, which is the closest I’ve been in a long while. The most recent stretch has been one of my favorites. In particular, the story of Byron the Bulb, which came across as pretty much a perfect thing. And it’s just two more weeks now. Just two more weeks, and the inside back cover will finally be revealed….
Next week: UPDATE — we’d originally targeted page 706 (p/v), but I like So-Called Bill’s suggestion from the comments of belaying those orders and taking one more week to soak up a little extra Pynchon goodness. So let’s call this week a time loop and let folks catch up and retrace their steps.