I stared upward at the motionless ceiling fan. A faint glow filtered in the open bedroom door from the nightlight in the hall and reflected down off the still blades. It was four in the morning, my head was pounding, and there was a dull throb in my ear meaning that almost assuredly my infection was back. Great. To top it all off I was trying to come to grips with the dream I just woke from which involved performer Amanda Palmer, her husband and writer Neil Gaiman, a mysterious collection of architectural ruins in a coast line not far from a train station, and a small mysterious decaying skull.
That was how I woke up this morning. I blame it all on the far ranging discussions of the previous evening. Well maybe not the earache, but who really knows.
So let’s go with the previous evening. If I lay the blame there, I can transfer a good amount of it to my friend Andra Watkins. Whenever we get together the discussions take unusual turns, and last night was no different. Her first book, “To Live Forever: An Afterlife Journey of Meriwether Lewis”, is about to be published and so our conversations naturally centered on that. Topics ranged from author interview questions to publishing formats to the effect paper quality has on the reading experience. The most lively discussion though was around the premise of her book in general, shall we say a post-death do-over.