It is, it’s Friday, and I’ve got to rush off to hand therapy. So, this is going to be short.
One
Found a nice place to sit during hand therapy where I can work out of the view of all the people who are there for the wonderful work that goes on there. The very first time I toddled in, I pulled out my device and started to tap wildly away—with my hands—and then looked around the room at everyone painfully moving fingers, joints, wrists, and my own daughter, who at that point was still in the wound care stage. I lowered my eyes and looked at my own, and felt mostly astonishment that I have gone my whole life using my hands quite happily without thinking about it. Now I tuck myself away and type wildly where no one can see me. We’re all doing our own kinds of work, I tell myself, it’s just that mine is mainly self-aggrandizing and not the least painful.
Two
Not only is it the end of the week, but also the end of the month, in case you weren’t paying attention, which means that tomorrow starts, for most people up here, one of the worst months of the year—Dreadful February. Read last night that Romans made it short because they thought it was unlucky and I think they were on to something. February is bad because you are rising up from the ashes of January where you have to cope with your own failure to keep the merest New Year’s Resolution (like getting thinner or being nicer) and have endured some sharp drop in temperatures and probably a snowstorm, and are coming to the end of the second quarter of school, and you feel that now is the time for something…but then you realize that that something is just lots lots more of the same. The temperature will actually drop more. The Christmas tree lights are gone, and the days are slightly longer, but not in a nice cozy way, but in that bleak way that gets right at the back of your already depressed spirit. And school drags on day after day…after day. This year, though, I’m popping vitamin D like it’s candy, so maybe it’s going to be awesome.
Three
January was a triumph for me because I got through six, that’s right, SIX books. And they weren’t that short either. I listened to the Early Cases of Hurcule Poirot (my very first sojourn into Agatha Christi), The Mating Season, and Roger Scruton’s I Drink Therefore I am. I feel that last one should count twice because I had to listen to the last three or four chapters almost 3 times each because of not being clever enough to get them the first time. It was a lovely book, though, and after some other people have a turn with it, I’m going for it again. If you feel the inclination to try to think about philosophy, without really wanting to go any deeper than the bottom of your wine glass, I recommend it unreservedly.
Four
And then I actually read with my own eyes Queen Lucia in one sitting on the airplane coming home, and on the way there The Towers of Trebizond. That one—the Towers—I might have to just immediately reread. It is such an unlikely book, and every time I go to try to talk about it, I find myself making a lot of caveats, or excuses, for why it’s the most beautiful thing I think I’ve ever read. It’s not the sort of book you think you will like (by you, obviously, I mean me). True, Macaulay does go in for the run-on sentence (I do love a run-on sentence, if you couldn’t tell), and so maybe that’s what sucked me in. But there is nothing orthodox about it—if you were looking for an orthodox expression of Christianity, or anything really—this isn’t it. And, I’ll just say, it doesn’t exactly end well, which is always what takes a book off my list. And if you are discouraged about how confused Anglicans can be, then this won’t comfort you. And yet, honestly, I haven’t found a clearer and more beautiful expression of what sin actually is, and how damaging it is, and how hard to let go of, anywhere. It comes out and smacks you from the gently rolling sentences, and then retreats and lets you try to sort out what on earth you were doing.
Five
I’m still mired in my effort to listen to Dante. I only have four hours left, but I’m just not getting it. I think I have the wrong copy and the wrong reader and must try again another way. I Will Prevail. I refuse to be defeated by this book.
Six
This wasn’t supposed to just be about books. I’m sure I did other things this month, like despair over my house, and despair over my lists, and despair over myself. And every morning the new cat came up and sat on my keyboard and put her paw in the milk and dabbed it everywhere—onto herself, and the keys, and the screen, and all my books. And every evening the very old cat was sick in the laundry room, and then would come and sit on my keyboard and look frustrated and sad. And there was evening and morning over and over again until we finally had enough and took her to the vet—again—where they discovered, again, that there is nothing wrong with her except her age. But we are sending a horrible sample to the lab, and then if that tells us that there is “nothing wrong” we have a to have a difficult conversation, because she is getting thinner and thinner.
Seven
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