One has returned from the Paradise Show in the good ole' US of A. I am officially seven different kinds of messed up having spent more time in the air than I actually did on the ground. I did so much writing while I was away, I have something that looks a lot like a big enough collection of essays and stories that won't need an awful lot of additional work to put out a book. So I came back with a bee up my ass about getting that done sooner rather than later. The Family of Noise didn't quite get finished as planned but it got awfully close - work continues like a train running late on that. If I could shake off this dizziness and see straight again, I'm sure I would get there a lot faster. I also forgot we were supposed to move house this weekend as well but Eleanor is still in Dubai, so I guess we'll get around to that soon enough - she's back tomorrow, so we can wander around like the living dead together. How constructive of us...
Having written a fair amount on the trip that turned out to be worthwhile, as much as I'd like to, I'd best not drop it all on here - instead, here's some snaps of what the upper echelons of Colorado is like and may go some way to explaining why I think it's a great place to finish a book (and kick start some new ideas too):
This used to be a moose. I knew moose were big but I didn't quite figure on this big - and can't quite get it straight in my head how big it would be with the rest of its body still attached:
..and here's what it looks like outside where many words were laid on the page:
As I closed my notebook for the last time and sat right about here (above) at seven in the morning thinking about how fantastic it was, I realised that, high in the mountains of Colorado was not actually that much different from North Wales - it was just a lot further away and magnified in scale. I guess you don't appreciate what's relatively on the doorstep until all the pennies fall out of your pocket at the same time. So at some near point in the future, when I need to wrap something up again, I might simply decamp to the old birth-place and soak up what I should have all along.
To prove a point - even if to nobody other than myself - this is what I call home:
Not really a whole bunch of difference is there? I adore Colorado but I think I may have been somewhat foolish in taking for granted what's practically around the corner. Sometimes, you have to travel many miles to find what you where looking for. Ain't that the damn truth with everything?
Anyway, the most energy I can muscle up right now is to press some buttons on the remote control and watch Whitechapel.
Sometimes, that's good enough.
Later...