December 9, 2024

Spending most of the day in fictional worlds, having to stop and reflect for a moment to be sure what happened and what was imagined for the next page. Went to the Farmers’ Market for giant bags of peanuts. What conversation there was was still about the hurricane, about the lives of people not yet re-assembled. One woman kept shouting, “Dora, turn your hearing aid off! Dora, turn you hearing aid off!” The guy I bought cheese from said, “I’m glad finally to have a day without rain.” It was raining pretty hard outside at that moment. The guy across the street set up a lighted plastic Santa, maybe 7 feet tall. It glowed dimly through the night, then deflated and collapsed on the lawn. 

Al-Assad collapses in Syria, ten years after it should have happened, but better late than never. Symbolic value, anyway. He did nothing that Trump is incapable of.