Bedside reading, December

Best bit from Decline and Fall so far: "I don't believe that people would ever fall in love or want to be married if they hadn't been told about it. It's like abroad: no one would want to go there if they hadn't been told it existed."

....goodnight, sweet prince

There has only been one other public figure who moved me with their passing and that was Princess Diana. Hitch would have laughed me out of the room, putting them together. How could I have hoped to explain myself - he would have had the last, sword-swinging word. The iconic piece he wrote below, his last, (what an amazing self-obit), leaves the rest of us with nothing more to say. No man that I have heard about in my time died so courageously, so, as was his wont, intellectually. What is happening that the lights of this world are being so ruthlessly snuffed? How do we go on in the darkening way?

http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2012/01/hitchens-201201

Chris Hitchens still has his voice

http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2011/06/christopher-hitchens-unspoken-truths-201106?mbid=ob_ppc_22

Only a writer can make his emperor of maladies mere grist for the literary mill. Hitchens has proven he has no need for a trumped-up God, and his courage in the face of life's ultimate betrayal, his eloquent courage, is enough to see me through my day.

Words are so mighty, just read the poetry he quotes here:

I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.
—T. S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.”

They told me, Heraclitus; they told me you were dead.
They brought me bitter news to hear, and bitter tears to shed.
I wept when I remembered how often you and I

Had tired the sun with talking, and sent him down the sky.

Or even his own:

"One can become quite used to the specter of the eternal Footman, like some lethal old bore lurking in the hallway at the end of the evening, hoping for the chance to have a word."

This is why everything from Stacia Kane to JP Donleavy keeps me snug in bed in the still of night, happy as only good writing can make me. Knowing that the world matters less than the world of the mind is something else I thank Hitch for reinforcing.

Forgive the maudlin tone but sweet prince, I hope we never have to bid you good night.

Bath&Body really works

I mean, come on, raspberry and vanilla? I could eat that!

Best of Britney

....the bottle and fragrance for Curious. Light and fresh and mood-building.