Reprinted from Sunday’s MacroParentheticals0040:

While I’m very much in the inchoate stages of thought-noodling and can’t share particulars here (because I don’t have any), it’s exceedingly likely that the birthday novella/novelette release discussed in last week’s Informality won’t be a one-off thing, but a yearly one, my birthday present to myself, a way to view each passing year not as one of stagnation and self-loathing (as I did throughout my 30s) but of incremental progress and a modicum of accomplishment. So, while I’m taking the next six months to shock and awe the current (and myself), the writing of the next will start after the release of the first in August and will be scheduled/timeblocked in with other long-form work for the duration of the year.

More when I know it.

While the loss of our best good boy will hurt for some time, we are keeping – as we have with each passing of a beloved dog-child – one thing in mind, a value we consider sacrosanct: the loss also means that, once we have grieved and healed (not before - never before: it’s not fair to the next to be a coping mechanism) and learned to function within the absence, we must – and will – heed our responsibility as dedicated dog parents to give another dog in need the same chance at life and at happiness as we have all of those that have, without fail, captured our hearts time and again.

But for now, healing. Thank you all, again, for your kind words and support. 🙏

…(if only for myself): I don’t hate Twitter, I see its value – I wouldn’t have a career without it, at least as it, Twitter or my career, used to be – but, given my current projects workload, I don’t have the capacity to keep myself mentally in check if I do partake. Weekly Informality incoming.

Bag One: in which I commence the assembly of our Christmas gift to my 94-year-old grandfather. Batmobile on hold.

In a happy confluence of interests, he loves both trucks and owning Legos of trucks (and making wooden display stands upon which to display his pre-assembled Legos of trucks) but can’t stand building them; I like to build them but lose all interest once they’re finished.

(He said he “already has some ideas” about the form his wooden display stand will take. )

And thus, the build begins.

Note: this is an edited/updated version of Sunday’s “Input of Note” selection from issue 0033 my MacroParentheticals newsletter. You can sign up here, if so inclined.

Continuing from Wednesday: the first film remains my favorite of the saga; the second is a “perfect film” but I still prefer the first; and, though I’d forgotten much of Part III, now CODA, the re-edit – though only five minutes shorter than the original – felt different, more assured, and marked a fitting conclusion: the power of a defined existential purpose.

My opinion of PART III still holds in its new guise: Sophia Coppola’s performance is, like the film itself, unfairly maligned (I’m not sure anyone could’ve done much with the part – a plot device, at best, thankless from the first ink spilled – and I suspect that complaints about her are little more than a convenient personification of critical disappointment in the film itself); the mirroring variations and riffs on the themes established in Parts I and II are fascinating and tragic though meaningless unless you’re intimately familar with Parts I and II; and, though the Vatican plot is confusing as hell, it’s not a bad film by any metric (the fifth season of THE WIRE being comparable: a lesser season of THE WIRE is still better than 99% of television out there).

Recommended – though only if you carve out the time to rewatch the whole saga: what’s the point in listening to only the final notes of a symphony?

1.) I am incapable of working with any semblance of depth on more than one fiction project per day, no matter how removed they may be from one another in form, content, or medium.

2.) Workblocks must be scheduled close together; any gap of longer than an hour - two at most - and I have to spend most of the second block starting over because I’ve forgotten everything I’ve written.

3.) Specific tasks and small assignments done in a disciplined, single-task manner are the key that keeps my brain open long enough to produce something, anything, of value upon which I can build the next day.