beyond the daylight, who knew what it could feel like?

"What do you think of James Spader?"
"He needs to call me."

That's the best of what I've gleaned from watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer today, viewed in the midst of washing dishes and folding clothes and general room/apartment cleaning. Or, what I had originally claimed as reading and relaxing on Saturday. Either way, I found the show to be mildly amusing, but I don't think I can find myself obsessing over it as some of my friends who love it. I watched three episodes. Maybe I'll give it another try later. For now, I'll do as my mother does and watch Star Trek while I take care of the laundry. How thoroughly domestic of me.

In other news, I finished A Single Man last night. I thoroughly enjoyed it, especially Isherwood's well-crafted style. There are very few books I feel I could extract more than a few lines from, and this is an exception. I know I've subjected you already to one of my favorite passages, but please bear with me as I share another:

"And now, an hour maybe, has passed. And they are both drunk: Kenny fairly, George very. But George is drunk in a good way, and one that he seldom achieves. He tries to describe to himself what this kind of drunkenness is like. Well - to put it very crudely - it's like Plato; it's a dialogue. A dialogue between two people. Yes, but not a Platonic dialogue in the hair-splitting, word-twisting, one-up-to-me sense; not a mock-humble bitching match; not a debate on some dreary set theme. You can talk about anything and change the subject as often as you like. In fact, what really matters is not what you talk about, but the being together in this particular relationship. George can't imagine having a dialogue of this kind with a woman, because women can only talk in terms of the personal. A man of his own age would do, if there was some sort of polarity; for instance, if he was a Negro. You and your dialogue-partner have to be somehow opposites. Why? Because you have to be symbolic figures - like, in this case, Youth and Age. Why do you have to be symbolic? Because the dialogue is by its nature impersonal. It's a symbolic encounter. It doesn't involve either party personally. That's why, in a dialogue, you can say absolutely anything. Even the closest confidence the deadliest secret, comes out objectively as a mere metaphor or illustration which could never be used against you."

And now onto a third book. I have plenty to choose from, but first, I must get through two books and evaluations for work on Monday. Scratch that, three. My life these days is full of books and manuscripts. I've developed the ability to absorb 300 pages in 4 hours. Such is the projects I've been getting from work lately: not merely slush and mediocre writing taken from the mailroom, but full manuscripts given to me by the editors who act as my supervisors. It's nice, the responsibility. But it's also a lot of pressure. The good kind of pressure, not the Queen + David Bowie kind.