Savvy?

When I looked at the calendar this afternoon I noticed that somehow the summer has ended. I panicked. So much stuff left unfinished (well, mostly just the dissertation proposal), but there was something I could still cross off the list. Which means I finally saw Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest. So much swashbuckling action and fun CGI! And a reminder that both Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom are welcome any time (they can eat all the crackers they want in my bed). This is not to diminish the appeal of the boy I brought with me, who has the added benefit of being real and who occasionally expresses interest in puffy shirts (jokingly, but a girl can dream). So now the fall can officially start, and good thing too, since I have my first of what will no doubt be an eight-month marathon of meetings Tuesday morning. I managed to catch the last metro back, and saw something neat – a little tunnel trolley carting things around on the tracks. It had never occurred to me that they could be used for transporting things other than people, and I had an unsettling frisson not unlike the sensation of being in the mall when all the stores are closing, rattling their giant chainlink doors shut and plunging the mannequins into darkness. It reminded me of two stories: Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere, and Jenny Colgan’s “The Wrong Train” in the Tart Noir anthology. I'm either going to finally buy a metro pass, or start grabbing transfers on my way in as proof that I'm where I'm supposed to be. Such paranoia is an unavoidable consequence of reading speculative fiction, but can you imagine how dull I’d be if I never let my imagination run away from me?