EPIPHANY!

it's today. the magi finally followed their star to jesus after twelve days of trekking across the desert. that today is the sixth means also that two of last week's posts were mistitled and in fact recounted events from the fourth and sixth days of christmas and not from the third and the fifth. wanting an extra day of christmas is understandable, but why the first day of christmas is after christmas day doesn't so much compute, unless of course caspar, melchior and balthasar arrived the day after day twelve. regardless, they've arrived, and despite having a friend with a late capricorn birthday who insists that the holidays don't have to end until after her party, i'm letting go, accepting my gifts (myrrh is amazing) and getting on.

so today -- and somewhat dolefully, though less so than had i done it on, say, the more appropriate monday (which is why i didn't) -- i retread the links at the blogroll to get you all back in the know after the midwinter information lull. and? whatever timeliness might have been sacrificed by not following and reporting from the beginning of the business week was compensated for by all the good news that had waited just to be posted today.

this morning, nathan ihara launched the mobylives great "young" critic hunt, a search intended to shift the focus of critical appreciation to "the hustling freelancers and eager bloggers and moonlighting critics who exist at the periphery." he explains: "we have awards, retreats, and fellowships for young novelists, but the young critic is [a] less glamorous profession, and only rarely finds name recognition." in other words, even if mr. ihara isn't reading this blog, we can gather that he would probably like to. like, a lot. thanks, nathan. the encouragement helps. better essays, more frequent full reviews. how old do you want me?

from there, i didn't even have to make my own way to salon.com, because the 'mobylives' day in review included an item entitled "wonderful advice from laura miller at salon," which linked to this piece on taking on a reading challenge for the year. miller suggests that her readers do their best to make their 2011 book selections out of their comfort zones and then goes on to list more than a dozen possible yearlong reading challenges. one of the challenges that miller set herself for last year was to read at least one contemporary french novel. she chose the elegance of the hedgehog, which we haven't read but might like to given that miller describes her difficulty with the book as stemming from it being, "so...french." we'll be happy to pick up millers slack on that front in 2011, but we'll also happily leave the haruki murakami reading challenge to someone else.

but enough, now, with "the intellectual grandiosity and phony pose-striking" (miller's words for what had her gritting her teeth through the last page of the elegance of the hedgehog). we like the gossip, too! today's linkalicious at 'ohlalamag' took us to a short piece about james franco on playing gay characters. franco says some stuff about identity politics, decries the predominant dichotomy that orients gay and straight into discreet groups based only on "object[s] of affection," and then describes his interest in learning how "people who were living anti-normative lifestyles contended with opposition." it's quite a bit of yada yada -- and then the point: "or, you know what, maybe i'm just gay."

we'll take it. it puts a dream from last night into perfect perspective. he was skinnier than he seems on screen, but what a kisser. later, central park at night. i didn't think that the lights of manhattan allowed for much star gazing, but they were clear and bright last night. to be honest, i'd forgotten the whole thing until i did my reading. an epiphany. lead me back to that apartment. show me the light and the way.