Battered Old Bird Thursday, August 21, 2003

Nondescript morning. Slept a little later, lingered over e-mail, had a bracing conversation with a couple of the other editors. Nasty, slanderous, heart-lifting.

On the way in, Mr. Waugh offered a signpost:

It was All Soul's Day. Guy walked to church to pray for his brothers' souls--for Ivo especially; Gervase seemed far off that year, in Paradise perhaps, in the company of other good soldiers. Mr. Goodall was there, popping in and down and up and out and in again assiduously, releasing toties quoties soul after soul from Purgatory.

"Twenty-eight so far," he said. "I always try and do fifty."

The wings of the ransomed beat all about Mr. Goodall, but as guy left church he was alone in the comfortless wind.

It's impossible for writing to get better than that--warmer, more human, closer to the divine. Must approach that somehow. Maybe not with the current Secret Thing, but there will be others eventually.

Speaking of which, I wanted to send a complicated backhanded message to a friend who for discretion's sake I won't name but who sent me a couple of notes yesterday: one a compliment, the other full of questions. I tried to answer them but came up short, I think. I'll leave him, and you and me, with a line I heard on the iPod this morning:

Well here's a boy if ever there was
Who's going to do big things
That's what they all say and that's how the trouble begins
I've seen them rise and fall
Been through their big deals and smalls
He'd better have a dream that goes beyond four walls

If I ever knew a guy who fit the first two lines--without sarcasm or irony--it's my buddy; and if there were better advice than the last line, I can't think of it.

@ 9:45:00 AM,

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