Wednesday, October 09, 2013

Owl Sick

Man am I sick of being right all the time! Yes, there is an owl in every book, as I weary of telling you, and you - if you exist, which by all accounts you do not - are tired of hearing. Norman Mailer's little paperback about the moon landing got buried under some other stuff at my "work station" and I forgot all about it. But yesterday there it was peeking out at me, and I was looking for something to read, something small enough to carry in my pocket to the Ajax Diner and the City Grocery Bar (ISN'T THIS INTERESTING?) and the bookmark told me I had stopped at the end of Chapter Two. So I started Chapter Three, in which Norman Mailer describes all the kinds of animals you can see around Cape Canaveral, and he hits us right away with some owls, which I noted with a resigned sigh and record here with a sluggish sensation of duty. But allow me to add a postscript in which I find my spirit uplifted. Double checking the passage for owls just now I read again a description of palm trees "as ravaged and scabby as the matted backside of a monkey."