spent the morning reading about alexander grothendieck and his work, after which i felt obliged to say something intelligent, which you can read if you wish. he is the picasso of mathematics. it's kind of a detour into abstract thinking and it derailed my present project which i will explain.

really i've been staying home mulling over the idea that i will soon have my head cut open in a cochlear implant surgery (friday) and much of it is unresolved including the time and possible price. i think my wife will pay any price to have me back in the world of hearing her, but i myself am much more hesitant to pay anyone anything to cut my head open even if i trust him and believe it's all in the cause of better hearing for my last ten years. i have a lot of trepidation about it but it will probably work out ok.

meanwhile with a little extra time caused by my taking about five days off of dashing, due partly to a frozen ignition, i have virtually finished another book. this one, have a magical day, causes some trepidation in me partly because one of the stories involves real people, and partly because i have never actually set foot in disney world. how could you write a book about some place you've never been, when almost everyone else has been there? well. i had a lot to say. it's my exploration of fantasy and magic in general, and i could only do it through one of the world's best marketers of it. i don't think disney will be mad at me; i don't really slam disney at all, even though it's a huge corporation, has gone through numerous questionable changes, etc. in other words it's fair game for criticism but i'm not really in the business of criticism (and i would say this about mcdonalds and walmart too). i write these books partly because after thirty years of representing american culture i want to take a certain angle of looking at it and exploring it. some of the issues are of course unresolved - look at the state of the american family for example - and i can't hope to resolve them or even make a meaningful contribution. well, meaningful maybe if you consider just putting it on the table as being a meaningful contribution. we are what we are; disney represents it; it puts entertainment and movies right up there as its primary product, and a whole generation doesn't read much anymore.

in addition, certain fairy tales are now frozen in time and space as disney's production in many ways confirmed the fairy tale, and became the dominant image people have of it. most of these fairy tales were told in various iterations over the years but whatever disney did pretty much set them in cement, since they may not be redone for twenty years or more and since millions upon millions will watch disney's movie and now have disney's interpretation of whatever happened. disney is the master of fantasy: these movies are good, well-made, with excellent animation and characters that draw you right in based on their decades of research on what works and on how to portray good and evil. they are the masters. in the same way mcdonald's and walmart are the masters at their own particular field. my hat's off to them, i'm not sneering at them.

but it isn't wrong to put your book of stories right inside their empire, i hope.

the weather has become calm and cool and beautiful. i'll need to mow, for sure, and this will set off a round of anguish even though it's much cooler and pleasant outside. anguish because basically august 15-september 15 is hay fever season. i am refamiliarizing myself with full sinuses.

may wait to publish this book until after the operation, friday. that's because it's an ordeal to run it through paperback, kindle, etc. and it takes a lot of energy to get it out there on the market. it is almost done though. have a magical day it's called and it's just getting its finishing touches. people may look back at this book and say, this guy never went to disney. or they may look at it and say, he writes good short stories, even when he doesn't know what he's talking about.