Down Down Down

I didn't realize how widespread my influence is. When I titled my last entry, R.I.P., I didn't understand that the entire economy was not only reading my blog but taking things so seriously. Really, economy, it was all a joke! I'm not dead and neither are you. Get up and walk. Jump around! You know, like you used to.

Argh . . . .

I am a bit down myself, though not in a depressed or economic way (not yet, at least.) I had sinus surgery two days ago and still feel as though sitting on the couch and watching TV and movies is an excellent past-time. In my secret life I am a fearless outdoor explorer, but in real life, ah, not so much. Still, sitting around doing nothing is not my idea of either a good time or time well spent. And no writing. That part of my brain is still snoozing.

Well, writing a blog entry is writing, but not of the wholesale creative sort. I have sent a revised manuscript out and have another one I am working on, except, um, not today.

Mostly today I am brain dead, which is slightly pleasant. I have had anesthesia three different times in my life, for three minor operations, and it is always an astounding feat to pass into a state of utter, black nothingness then out again, waking up with no sense of the time that has passed. Of course, this wouldn't be amazing if you didn't wake up, but thankfully that hasn't happened to me (yet.) Even in sleep our dreams and stirrings mark the passage of time, but under anesthesia, nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing.

On a bookish note, over this past couple of weeks I have been having a Graham Salisbury feast, reading Under the Blood-Red Sun; House of the Red Fish; and Eyes of the Emperor--all of which deal with Japanese Americans living in Hawaii during WWII. Fascinating. Harrowing. I have long enjoyed historical fiction, but usually stories set further in the past. But I find I am being claimed of late by more recent tellings, and especially about WWII.

I have also just started Salisbury's Lord of the Deep, which is set, like the others, in Hawaii, but not during WWII. Still, it has my attention. Salisbury writes great boy books.

Eyes of the Emperor, I should note, starts in Hawaii but follows the Japanese-American soldiers to the US mainland, where they experience things no soldier should. One always hopes that as a species we've improved with (historic) age, but we humans keep going back to the same old muck holes of prejudice and cruelty, don't we?

Right now, I am going to my own personal muck hole of slumber, to take a nap.