A dirty secret

One of the mental habits I'd like to break myself of: hating just a little bit people with great experiences, like loving a hometown, enjoying the memory of grade school, having great parents. Sam and I watched most of Dan in Real Life, a lovely movie with Steve Carrell playing Dan. Although the main character is tortured and morose, his family is extraordinary. I guess they have to be for the movie to work, but I found myself tearing up. Is this self-pity in action? Is it longing? Is it evil? Whatever it is, I need to figure out how I can stop feeling this way and realize some of my own good luck.

How to start a fire

I miss reading good books but cannot give up the luxury of a quiet voice reading me to sleep. Nevertheless, no illusion stands between an audiobook and actual reading.

In the service of trying to do more real reading, I checked out the Kindle, a device Amazon is pushing. Its screen works like paper, sort of, allowing the user to read even in bright daylight. It also connects to Amazon through a cellular network, allowing fast and free downloading of comparatively inexpensive books anywhere a cell phone can connect. It's ugly and expensive and technologically selfish, but most reviews were positive.

After some thought, I realized that the new device wouldn't solve my central problem. And—this is important—the thing can't retain the physical elements of a paper book, like page layout, paper quality, typeface that isn't Cambria. You can do what I plan to do (here in a minute). Pick up the closest book and smell it. Turn the pages and listen. Look at its age, and open it until the spine cracks. Smush the pages and write your name on the surfaces that creates. Read it until the page falls away, in that mysterious process of becoming absorbed.

Now call me Ned Lud. 

Hurrah for Sam!

He got quite a bit done this morning, including replacing the kitchen faucet. I'm grateful that he did it (and with only a little interference and confusion-making from me). Now we aren't dripping water from the kitchen tap all day. Good for us, the environment, and the water bill. 

Of course, now that the lovely new faucet is in, the sink looks a little cheaper than it did with the crappy faucet. Sinks aren't too difficult to put in, are they?

The Return

So, I feel like I'm coming back to my senses, back to my life. What is still not clear is how my absence has affected the life I haven't been living. What am I coming back to? Have the houseplants died? Where has the dust settled? What kind of housekeeping needs to be done now? 

I'm tempted to call my incipient emergence a sea change, except that I can't forget the origin of the phrase, from The Tempest:

Full fathom five thy father lies;

Of his bones are coral made;

Those are pearls that were his eyes;

Nothing of him that does fade,

But doth suffer a sea-change

Into something right and strange.

In the song, the Duke's dead body becomes exotic, when changed by the sea. But, also, Ariel is lying. Lying about the Duke's death, and also lying about what a sea-change actually produces.

What has happened, is happening, bears no beauty, but at least it's honest.

And now, for your delectation, a 1917 offering from Mr. Pound:

The Return

SEE, they return; ah, see the tentative

Movements, and the slow feet,

The trouble in the pace and the uncertain

Wavering! 

See, they return, one, and by one,        5

With fear, as half-awakened;

As if the snow should hesitate

And murmur in the wind,

            and half turn back;

These were the “Wing’d-with-Awe,”        10

            inviolable. 

Gods of that wingèd shoe!

With them the silver hounds,

            sniffing the trace of air! 

Haie! Haie!        15

    These were the swift to harry;

These the keen-scented;

These were the souls of blood. 

Slow on the leash,

            pallid the leash-men!

Circumspect, part 1

I'm considering getting rid of the enormous steel desk I have. I don't work at it. Or maybe I should just get rid of all of the stuff on top of it so that I'm more likely to work at it. 

Certainly, it is time for a purge. I never look at those back issues of Modernism/Modernity, as much as I think I should. Two of those desk organizer thingers contain papers I haven't looked at in weeks. How important could they be? And I think I've never read a single copy of The Believer. In my closet, chaos has spread itself thick. Why do I have so many things I never wear or use?

The answer to all of the whys is that one can never tell when something might be useful. This attitude makes sense when books are involved. Perhaps one day soon, I might need a quotation from Middlemarch. It's unlikely, but the possibility meets the minimum requirement of keeping that book on the shelf. Books do decorate a room, as someone said once, and a book may also be lent out to a friend who—should she read it—will be improved by at least that much. (Perhaps I agree a  little more with Arnold's "sweetness and light" principle than I'd like to admit.)