Might is Well

Owwww!
I get up, and nothin' gets me down
You got it tough, I've seen the toughest around
And I know, baby, just how you feel
You got to roll with the punches and get to what's real.

-- Van Halen, Jump.

My life has been void of gifts for quite some time now. So when I was handed a very smart looking Murakami novel last night, it was appreciated in a manic sense. Perfect timing too, I sobbed through the last chapter of the epic Tale of Two Cities, hungover this morning in the bath.
Charles Darney, one of the central characters in the Dickens classic, faces the guillotine in the morning. He finally falls asleep, he dreams, he is with his wife, his wife tells him he was only dreaming. He believes the dream, thinking his scheduled execution in the morning, only a nightmare. The crushing reality of his situation overtook me with emotion. Damn! That Dickens is good.
As the summer closes, so too does my cirillian blue dickens novel, which has so defined the dead heat I have been subjected to over the past 3 months. Now, as the air turns crisp, and the leaves fall ever so softly to their graves. I shall read my new gift, and remember a summer like no other. One that took a heavy toll, yet gave in return, for its passage into memory. It was the best of times.