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George Bailey, if not the first, was certainly one of the earliest fictional characters i ever had the pleasure of meeting. and, you wouldn’t know it now from the long list of those who followed (off the top of my head, Raistlin Majere, Richard Blaine, Eric Draven, Maurice Bendrix, Morpheus — of the Endless, not of Zion — V, and, of course, John Constantine), he was my hero.

long ago, It’s A Wonderful Life was something of a christmas tradition. every year i’d catch it on the telly. doesn’t matter what time of day it would be. i only remember that it would be christmas break, and my best friend, as it would often happen on holidays, when everyone who wasn’t yet in the double digit years was likely (maybe even expected) to stay home or go out only with their families, was the television set. and it would come on, and, sitting alone, i’d sit through the whole thing.

George Bailey was my hero. i never forgot him. but everyone else, it seemed to me, did.

the tradition stopped being a tradition. Home Alone came along and ran it off the list of christmas specials. McCauley Caulkin with his Ed Munch-parody scream and bad-ass Stoogie slapstick pushing away Jimmy Stewart’s wussy near-pathologic stutter. but i never forgot.

there was a time i believed in things. was an idealist. certainly that idealism was tinged by a degree of pessimism, but it was idealism nonetheless. see, i had dreams. always had dreams. but i knew — that’s right, i didn’t think it, i knew it– they weren’t to be mine. so instead of chasing after them, in a sad attempt to pattern myself on good old George, i decided, with whatever Invisible Power cared to listen at the time as witness, that i would be a Man For Others. of course, even then, i knew we were carved out of different salt, George and i, and there was no way i could ever be exactly like him.

like George, i hated the decisions i made that i felt were forced upon me, but were mine nonetheless. like George, i labored through the trap of my decisions. unlike him, i never enjoyed a minute of it. unlike him, i was never driven by anything. because though i dreamed, i dreamed on my back. and never did i think to try to reach up and try to put even a finger on it.

and anyway, i hardly think my decisions were anywhere near so noble.

the tradition stopped being a tradition. and while i forgot that decision made long ago, that oath i swore, for that was what it was, i continued to be trapped in the hole i dug myself, and continued to dig, deeper, deeper. and though George slipped from the front of my mind then, he was there nonetheless.

they stopped showing the movie. and while i still looked for it whenever i found myself in a videostore, i never, in those years between then and now, found it.

until last night.

seeing the vcd at the store was like meeting an old friend i’d not seen in years. suddenly old George was back, and it was time to get re-acquainted, do some catching up.

tonight, i watched the first 2 discs. i couldn’t go on.

it wasn’t watersprite. the movie was every bit as good as the first time i saw it. i’d still recommend it to anyone i meet on the street. but the movie you saw last night will never be the same movie you see ever again. not because the movie changes, but because you do.

i’d changed so much that watching It’s A Wonderful Life no longer left me feeling warm and fuzzy inside. as i followed George Bailey’s trials and triumphs, a sick feeling started welling up inside me.

i’ll never be as great as George Bailey, but i was trapped in the kind of shoes he found himself wearing.

George Bailey never got to live his dreams. but he did get something better. he got his life. all it took was for his eyes to be opened to that fact.

it’s an awful thing when our heroes turn on us. suddenly i was walking in a shadow i couldn’t bear walking under, but lacked the courage to step out of.

suddenly i saw my eyes were closed. ARE closed. and yet, i refuse to open them.

i want my dreams. but i know i will never have them.

i wonder only if i’ll ever have the courage to try.

the World Fantasy Award winners are up.

i suspect "Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell" will become one of those critically acclaimed novels that no one else seems to have read. or, at least, liked as much as i did.

i’d say that about the other stuff, but i’d have to read them first. (though i can say that while Iron Council does have the distinction of having won China Mieville his second Arthur C. Clarke, and would rank as one of the better, more intelligent and innovative works of fantasy put out in recent years, i wouldn’t have voted for it either.)

(i was initially surprised that his "Looking for Jake" collection wasn’t included, even though "Reports of Certain Events in London" was, until i realized it wasn’t published in 2004. i’ll be looking for it in next year’s list then.)

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i clicked off the "view friends anonymously" feature of my friendster account a couple days ago, and it seems everyone else has turned theirs on. not that i expect a lot of visitors to turn up, but you never know.

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i’ve been building up to the kind of blog post i personally haven’t actually seen, the kind of deeply personal stuff you expect to find only when you come across someone’s little black book hidden under their pillow, and not posted on the internet for all the world to access, link, and possibly download, but everytime i get around to coming here, the mood sort of slips me by, and i really don’t feel like talking about it anymore.

Pulvis et umbra again some other time, then.

right. stiffen that upper lip, ol’ chap. work to do.

The City, it seems, has an endless multitude of faces; i thought i’d seen them all, and was, gladly, proven wrong.

the new faces, the ones i hadn’t seen before, began alternating about a week ago, when a day of rain made for a different kind of night. there are nights when clouds hang, tremendous dark ones, as on the week of Katrina’s wrath, but they loom high above the skyline. one night a week ago, they came down as a mist, a veritable fog not commonly known in these tropical climes. a veil laid to rest on the City, obscuring the faces of skyscrapers several blocks distant from my viewing point on the balcony. the buildings seemed to loom an incalculable distance from where i stood, like mountains seen on the far horizon. i looked at them, dark and ominous, feeling as though at any moment they should wake, to step through the veil and lumber towards me on a slow march to some unnameable vengeance.

but the City continues to slumber, it seems, and if the time draws near that the City should wake, it seems that, at least, it is not yet.

and these days, the bothersome weather, the sky seeming unable to decide whether it should weep or glow, the sun peering, burning, in fact, between episodes of grey. the light, it seems, changes momently, and everything with it. one moment, you are reading Titus Groan to a warm orange glow, the page the color of old parchment, or of jaundiced skin, and then the pages turn the grey of a tombstone, as though turning pale at some dread event outside the window, or the passing of some winged beast of prey, and there is again that pallid, corpulent glow over all things…

these images, i’m sure, will someday find themselves in a story. but not yet, so here they stay for the moment, so i don’t forget.

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to my chagrin, Titus Groan had been hiding at Fully Booked all this time, having been misplaced under that section devoted to authors with surnames beginning with the letter G. good citizen that i am, i dutifully took them down, and brought the books and placed them alongside the remaining copies of Gormenghast and Titus Alone, of late taken from the general fiction section, and laid disrespectfully to rest on the floor of that part of the shop devoted to science fiction and fantasy.

oh well, at least now they are all together, where they belong.

and so i now have a complete set of the Vintage editions, though not the very latest ones, with the white covers.

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and i finally finished my re-reading of Titus Groan (with a brief interlude into The Penultimate Peril). i wanted to finish the book before i made another blog post, which accounts, in part, for the long delay between posts, and, consequently, my missing the chance to post on Hallowe’en. at least i made it to Bonfire Night (for which you may also want to check out a page of verses, and this wikipedia entry).

having completed my second reading of all three books, i feel almost ready to write that review i’d promised myself i’d write on them. almost. it shouldn’t be long now.

i hope.

meanwhile, i’ve just started on China Mieville’s Looking for Jake and Other Stories, which i plan on following up with a re-reading of M. John Harrison’s Viriconium, now available at Fully Booked in a lovely new US edition from Spectra, with an introduction by Neil Gaiman.

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Briefly, for anyone who’s interested, my personal list of the three most essential works of literature, in, i suspect, descending order:

1. Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast Trilogy

2. M. John Harrison’s Viriconium

3. Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman

all of which are actually made up of several books, though the first two of would still qualify for "what three books would you bring to a desert island", being available complete in omnibus editions.

i’d have to think long and hard to decide on the third book, though Alfred Bester’s The Stars My Destination, John Brunner’s Stand on Zanzibar (which i’ve yet to finish despite being incredibly cool) or Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair come to mind.

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what a sad life i lead, with a lot of the good bits found in books no one else seems to have read.

at least they aren’t all the good bits. thank God for films. and, of course, Mabel.

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saw John Singleton’s Four Brothers a couple nights ago. quite possibly my favorite film of the last few i’ve seen this year. it’s of the very best kind of feel good movie there is: the dark and gratuitously violent revenge flick.

i had some reasonably intelligent and philosophical things to say about the film here right after i saw it, but now they seem to have gotten away from me.

not really. just a bit lazy about putting them back together from my fractured subconscious.

suffice to say those things had to do with John Singleton’s coolly minimalist style, the hip soundtrack, the use of symbolism in films today, moral responsibility and the portrayal of violence, acting, and the most awesome car chase i’ve seen in a while.

quite possibly, i realize, i may have loved it for no other reason than because it was just the sort of thing i subconsciously needed at the time, or because i walked into the theater with rather low expectations to begin with. or maybe it was just that good.

go see it yourself. come up with your own intelligent and philosophical things to say about it. good or bad.

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and to remove any obscurity from the last post, yes, i did have a particular person in mind when i said the worst days are when you only want one person dead, and dead in the quickest, most painless manner possible. and yes, it’s the same person for everyone, every time they have that sort of day. only it may not be who you’re thinking now unless you’re the type of person who actually has that sort of day, and is having that sort of day now. and we won’t be talking about the same person if you’re having that sort of day while i’m having it.

and since i’ve managed to put up a post despite having that sort of day, yes, i’m still around.

still having those days, though.

there, i hope that clears things up. as if someone actually bothered to ask.

good night.