Notes on Mad Men, jigsaw puzzles, European writers, tea bags, politics, and Jackie Collins

It is amazing to me, sitting here, listening to Donald Draper speaking in the background, the sound coming off an Apple book computer pointed to I-Tunes, the small machine placed on the floor of my cabin's screened-in porch, my wife and adult son and his pretty girlfriend stretched out on cushions taken down off the flat steel chairs, all three of them steadily and seriously working on a 1500 piece jigsaw puzzle, the pieces tiny and subjected to the concrete floor, though painted, still susceptible to dampness from the summer rains of August here in northern Michigan in our cabin in the middle of the Huron National Forest. None of this is amazing to me except for what I am reading, and the material comes from Enrique Vila-Matas and Laszlo Krasznahorkai, two writers from completely different backgrounds, not to mention countries of origin, which is completely obvious not only by the sight of their names printed on the jackets but the way these names roll off the tongue unlike the name of a writer say like Jackie Collins for the sake of argument. I look around me and from my comfortable old reading chair I see the knotty pine boards that cover the walls and ceiling of my cabin, look out the old-school aluminum divided-light casement windows on to the trees and branches of all these different species out of doors of scented pine and oak seen swaying in the breeze from this late summer storm passing through today. I worry pieces of the jigsaw puzzle will swell beyond good use and the threesome will be unhappy enough to quit their exercise and possibly join me here in my reading room. And to think I read Enrique Vila-Matas here, among the natives of the north, obviously right-wing political monsters in my book, Christian zealots in another I keep on a quiet and mostly private shelf, and perhaps mostly the new tea party people who have put their minds and souls behind two turnips with the names Bachmann and Palin. Amazing. To think Laszlo Krasznahorkai speaks to me here in my chair above the din of these crazy rednecks promoting family values and no taxes on the rich really gets my goat in a very happy way.