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EveningBat of Leave
Oct. 18th, 2018 10:32 pmNot a productive day. Various things happened that made me feel sad and caused me to reflect on my misspent past and what I should have done differently. And then, for an encore, to bewail things in the present that I can't do anything about. This never ends well. The books wouldn't fit back into the bookcase, either. Funny how that happens! It's like when you dig a hole, and the dirt won't all fit back in afterwards. Or when you unpack your suitcase, and then when you want to go home, the things you brought with you won't go quietly but keep struggling to get out again. Or when you have feelings, and they get out and run around the room shrieking like toddlers after the birthday cake, and even when you get ahold of them, they won't go back in the box. Yeah, funny how that happens. Not that I'd put toddlers in a box, you understand. That's just a metaphor that got out of hand, and why not. Everything else does.
We're getting ready for a visit from the Philosopher, and an unspecified "friend." I'm anxious about it. I'd like to present the facade of a calm, normal person, but I don't think that's possible. I mean, it's CLEARLY impossible for me to BE a calm, normal person, but I can't even do the facade. I live in kind of a witch's house. It's full of books of arcane lore and random toys and pictures. They're like talismans. Each of them has a little piece of magic in it, and most of them are dusty. When people come to visit, I make a stab at tidying up, but I don't think I'm fooling anybody.
I thought hopefully that my mother probably wouldn't want to talk long on the phone tonight, since she just had a visit from Mr. Science, who took her to the doctor on his way home from Up North. However, she talked to me for forty minutes. Part of it was her going through the LL Bean catalog and describing all the stuff she saw in there that might be good to order. I haven't talked her into the fifty dollar slipper moccasins yet, but I'm hopeful.
I also got a call from my friend in PA, who is having her triple bypass surgery first thing in the morning. Only it might be quadruple bypass--they can't tell until they get inside. I cried--but not until I got off the phone. Probably she'll be okay. But I don't know.
The Sparrowhawk found me staring gloomily at my bookcase. "I should just throw out all these books. I'll never use them," I said. All the things I thought I might get around to! How to knit, how to keep a nature sketchbook, how to feng shui your house, how to speak Esperanto and Portuguese. How to market your writing, ha ha. I rediscovered my very old Penguin paperback of The Realms of Gold by Margaret Drabble. I love Frances in that book. Such a mess, yet so doughty and hopeful. I pulled a book at random off the shelf and waved it at him. "See? I'll never read this! I probably don't even know how any more." It was a book called Garten der Erde, published in 1922. It's a compendium of stories from around the world. It was printed in Fraktur, and has a bookplate of an Art Nouveau-ish man climbing a mountain in the nude. As one does. I opened it at random and read the Sparrowhawk a very weird story about a poor man who goes to borrow a horse from his rich brother and gets in all kinds of trouble, and then gets out again. I didn't read it to him auf Deutsch, of course, because even though he is genetically nothing but German, he doesn't speak it. So I kindly translated as I went along. And then I thought, well, I haven't forgotten EVERYTHING. So I didn't make an auto da fe of my books just yet.
We're getting ready for a visit from the Philosopher, and an unspecified "friend." I'm anxious about it. I'd like to present the facade of a calm, normal person, but I don't think that's possible. I mean, it's CLEARLY impossible for me to BE a calm, normal person, but I can't even do the facade. I live in kind of a witch's house. It's full of books of arcane lore and random toys and pictures. They're like talismans. Each of them has a little piece of magic in it, and most of them are dusty. When people come to visit, I make a stab at tidying up, but I don't think I'm fooling anybody.
I thought hopefully that my mother probably wouldn't want to talk long on the phone tonight, since she just had a visit from Mr. Science, who took her to the doctor on his way home from Up North. However, she talked to me for forty minutes. Part of it was her going through the LL Bean catalog and describing all the stuff she saw in there that might be good to order. I haven't talked her into the fifty dollar slipper moccasins yet, but I'm hopeful.
I also got a call from my friend in PA, who is having her triple bypass surgery first thing in the morning. Only it might be quadruple bypass--they can't tell until they get inside. I cried--but not until I got off the phone. Probably she'll be okay. But I don't know.
The Sparrowhawk found me staring gloomily at my bookcase. "I should just throw out all these books. I'll never use them," I said. All the things I thought I might get around to! How to knit, how to keep a nature sketchbook, how to feng shui your house, how to speak Esperanto and Portuguese. How to market your writing, ha ha. I rediscovered my very old Penguin paperback of The Realms of Gold by Margaret Drabble. I love Frances in that book. Such a mess, yet so doughty and hopeful. I pulled a book at random off the shelf and waved it at him. "See? I'll never read this! I probably don't even know how any more." It was a book called Garten der Erde, published in 1922. It's a compendium of stories from around the world. It was printed in Fraktur, and has a bookplate of an Art Nouveau-ish man climbing a mountain in the nude. As one does. I opened it at random and read the Sparrowhawk a very weird story about a poor man who goes to borrow a horse from his rich brother and gets in all kinds of trouble, and then gets out again. I didn't read it to him auf Deutsch, of course, because even though he is genetically nothing but German, he doesn't speak it. So I kindly translated as I went along. And then I thought, well, I haven't forgotten EVERYTHING. So I didn't make an auto da fe of my books just yet.
