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Rain. Rain. & more rain.

The rain it raineth.

Rain reigns.

Not even Louis Henri Maxence Bertrand Grimaldi is rainier than this.

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The last day of a tired old year. Good riddance. A sad year. A frustrating year.

Too many farewells. Too many obstacles. Too much energy dissipated. Too little accomplished.

I spend the morning sorting out bookshelves in the bedroom to then house the overspill in other shelves (upstairs, downstairs, in milady's corridor ...). It's a therapy of sorts and good for clearing the mind.

This afternoon I've been wandering from shelf to shelf jotting down names and titles trying to form clusters of interest. Is it depressing or invigorating to discover books I'd bought during the year and forgotten about or started and shelved for later? Not sure. Or volumes from further back which now seem newly relevant and indispensable. Probably. Either. Maybe.

In the bedroom, John Ashbery now rubs shoulders with Elizabeth Bishop, James Schuyler and Peter Gizzi (they'll have plenty to talk about). In the corridor, Christopher Hitchens and Geof Dyer have Sontag, Eco, Beerbohm and Benjamin for company (imagine!). Upstairs, Delillo, McCarthy, Barthelme and Foster Wallace are jostling for room against Dick, Bester, Ballard and Gibson (should be fun). And so on.

A Caliban cabin cribb'd and unconfined - this house is full of voices ...

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& resolutions? Rather intentions. To read. To write. To make. The usual in other words. (So get on and do it!).

Strange to see I managed 220 posts throughout the year (I had imagined fewer).

Strange, too, to see the daily page views when - so often - so little is going on. (For some reason the Alan Measles post is consistently popular).

And strangely reassuring to see that the notebooks pile up suggesting something is going on behind the scenes. (Now to turn the dross into gold).

Anyway, if you're reading: a happy and productive New Year!