Mark Twain

I'm finally home, luxuriating in the presence of another parent to herd my rowdy sons, and have many tales of woe from my trip. Before I can post about the horrible man who was mean to me yesterday and who, if there is truly karma, is suffering already from the first of many unfortunate and hopefully painful maladies that he richly deserves for being such a huge asshole, I have to comment more succinctly (yes! succinctly!) on Mark Twain's life.

Left to his own devices, my husband wallows in Ken Burns documentaries. I've tried to encourage him to seek help, but denial is the first phase of everything. Now he's becoming evangelical and not just watching but taping and forcing others (namely, me) to watch these things. I've been home 12 hours and am now sitting imprisoned by jet-lag in front of a Mark Twain documentary. I am discovering that semi-conscious is actually the ideal state of mind in which to watch such a program (which in turn makes me question my husband's usual state of mind). I hate to admit that I'm sort of enjoying it, because he reads this blog, but there it is.

The comment I wanted to make, which was to be short and to the point (when will I ever learn brevity?), was that Mark Twain's life was as exciting as his writing. Understandable now the wide scope of his imagination and the diversity of his characters - and, as I must observe in my chronic self-absorption, the lack of imagination in my own attempts at writing. As soon as I wake up properly (maybe by Thursday), I will research opportunities for living more dangerously, a la steamboat captaining and 5 month ship journeys to Jerusalem. Ha, even as I write that, I have a feeling that waking up properly will return me to my homebody sense, and that I will have to resign myself to writing indefinitely about nothing more stimulating that middle class mothers of small children.