Spiderweb of Flourish
Aug. 27th, 2020 09:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ismoNot in a good mood. Current events torment my soul, my stomach is also tormenting me, and I'm not sleeping enough. You can put those in any order, and imply causality in any direction, but it would be incorrect. I think they're just simultaneous miseries. It's back to the toast, soup, and rice diet. I'm doing a little better with my internet consumption, and reading more, which I think proves that staying away from screens is the key to more reading. The book I'm currently on is The Songs of Trees: Stories from Nature's Great Connectors, by David George Haskell. It's a lovely book, beautifully written, but it does require focus because it's a complex subject. I think I've figured out why it doesn't work well as a distraction from a suboptimal present. It's describing a complicated, rich, robust, beautiful system of interconnected lives. AND WE'RE KILLING IT. So, yeah. It's like reading a beautifully written art history book about a museum that is currently burning down.
It was another hot day, and my plan was to work on things indoors, because on such a day I would not feel guiltily that I should be getting more done outside. My plan was to work on the storage area in the garret. I thought it would be good if I could assemble all the letters in one place and all the photos in another, so I could consolidate each of them in some kind of gestalt of organization. I located a couple more boxes of each. Then I found a box that portrayed itself as containing an inflatable spare mattress. I looked inside. No mattress. Instead, there was a random assortment that someone obviously packed in a hurry, and which had never been unpacked because it was thought to be a mattress. First, a set of yearbooks: two of the Philosopher's high school yearbooks, the Diva's junior high school yearbook, and the Sparrowhawk's high school yearbook. Also, an award for being Most Outstanding Senior Boy that the Philosopher received from his high school band (he played bari sax). Then, three different biographies of Thomas More, a massive two-volume commentary on the Gospel of John by Raymond Brown, and a translation of The Aeneid. Also, an icon of Jesus at the Wedding at Cana, which I was glad to see because an old friend gave it to us, and I couldn't figure out where it had gone. Then there was Harold Acton's memoir about Nancy Mitford, with photos, a book about how to grow roses that I was sure I had, but couldn't find, and one of those old-time Skira art editions of Malerei der Etrusker. I think that was all . . . . When I turned the icon over, there was a set of instructions stuck to it, describing how to apply a rubberized patch in case of leakage. I was like "whaaaat . . ." and then I realized this must be a remnant of the mysteriously vanished mattress.
Well, so much for my plan to spend a couple of hours organizing. In a box of old papers, I found an airmail envelope that had traveled all the way from Switzerland, where my father was a graduate student, to Dryden, Michigan, where my mother was working as a camp counselor. Inside was a touching letter. He explained that he had not written before because he was packing up to return to the U.S. He said it cost him a fortune to get his trunk as far as Le Havre, because it was so heavy, due to being full of books. And he hadn't managed to squeeze them all in, even so. The apple didn't fall far from the tree, I guess.
It was another hot day, and my plan was to work on things indoors, because on such a day I would not feel guiltily that I should be getting more done outside. My plan was to work on the storage area in the garret. I thought it would be good if I could assemble all the letters in one place and all the photos in another, so I could consolidate each of them in some kind of gestalt of organization. I located a couple more boxes of each. Then I found a box that portrayed itself as containing an inflatable spare mattress. I looked inside. No mattress. Instead, there was a random assortment that someone obviously packed in a hurry, and which had never been unpacked because it was thought to be a mattress. First, a set of yearbooks: two of the Philosopher's high school yearbooks, the Diva's junior high school yearbook, and the Sparrowhawk's high school yearbook. Also, an award for being Most Outstanding Senior Boy that the Philosopher received from his high school band (he played bari sax). Then, three different biographies of Thomas More, a massive two-volume commentary on the Gospel of John by Raymond Brown, and a translation of The Aeneid. Also, an icon of Jesus at the Wedding at Cana, which I was glad to see because an old friend gave it to us, and I couldn't figure out where it had gone. Then there was Harold Acton's memoir about Nancy Mitford, with photos, a book about how to grow roses that I was sure I had, but couldn't find, and one of those old-time Skira art editions of Malerei der Etrusker. I think that was all . . . . When I turned the icon over, there was a set of instructions stuck to it, describing how to apply a rubberized patch in case of leakage. I was like "whaaaat . . ." and then I realized this must be a remnant of the mysteriously vanished mattress.
Well, so much for my plan to spend a couple of hours organizing. In a box of old papers, I found an airmail envelope that had traveled all the way from Switzerland, where my father was a graduate student, to Dryden, Michigan, where my mother was working as a camp counselor. Inside was a touching letter. He explained that he had not written before because he was packing up to return to the U.S. He said it cost him a fortune to get his trunk as far as Le Havre, because it was so heavy, due to being full of books. And he hadn't managed to squeeze them all in, even so. The apple didn't fall far from the tree, I guess.
