Another week without illustration, alas.
Word of the Week: OPTIONS
For the sake of this post and not as an absolute, let us assume that things happen for reasons, usually known in hindsight. If ever.
As I rely on my son's tutelage and his iPad - and one-fingered typing - until we are computer compliant again, I have returned to reading. Somehow that life-long pleasure was shuttled aside as I found how few activities could actually fit into a day. My delighted book companions may be heard cheering, "We're BACK!"
I began with the rereading of Marilynne Robinson's HOUSEKEEPING, which I found so much more bittersweet these several decades later (forgive me if I already wrote of this). Almost too many experiences of loss now stuffed into my bag of tricks, I inhabit the story in a different skin.
Then Junot Diaz's THE BRIEF WONDROUS LIFE OF OSCAR WAO, winner of the Pulitzer and a lesson in history of the Dominican Republic as well as life, in all caps, in buzzing neon, as one family lives it. I cried at the end of these first choices.
Now, a decision: the somehow-missed Cormac McCarthy BLOOD MERIDIAN, Ursula Le Guin's LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS or my birthday gift of JONATHAN STRANGE AND MR. NORELL, the mini-series version of which I truly loved.
I am not confused, imagining that my brief and current reading list is any sort of stop-the-presses news. Simply, I choose to share the yet-again discovered truth that all which seems at first so impossibly vexing may actually be not all bad. Among my manifesto-level beliefs is that complaining and/or whining is a poor use of time, a poorer use of finite energy. Let us find, always, the brightest sides we can and pledge them our allegiance. Any other option is pure suckage.
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4 comments:
Hurray for the return of reading and I love your choices and I love that you cried at the end (I tend to cry at the end of books I love all the time). Love you Marylinn. oxo
"I inhabit the story in a different skin.".....a recent and regular occurrence for me.
"Let us find, always, the brightest sides we can and pledge them our allegiance. Any other option is pure suckage."
You are so quotable.
Rebecca - I really can't say how I stepped away from reading, which has sustained me forever. In the worst times I read nothing but mysteries, bags and boxes of them. Marilynne Robinson, I believe, called me home. I picked Ursula Le Guin and am already glad. What simple joy. Love you. xoxo
Kass - Whoopee, I think the device spelled your name correctly. A moral victory. Thank you. How pliant we must be, going through our own eternal changes, inhabiting the new skins seasonally or more often. We are not even who we were a moment ago. Let us celebrate all our revisions of self. Love to you, xoxo
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