glibness

I very much dislike this novel, but I will finish it because I'm reading it for the book group. I find its trivialization of pain and fear and grief annoying. There is a lack of respect for other people -- everyone and everything exists only insofar as it allows the protagonist to say something glib, almost always about herself. With rare exceptions, anything anyone says or does registers only as a way for her to obsess about what she is feeling or not feeling, to tell us over and over again that she is not feeling the way a normal person would feel. All of it seems designed to make her feel special, different, uniquely unfathomable. No one is fathomable, of course -- none of us coincide with ourselves.

sunday again

MG sent a link to an NYT essay in praise of the online personals. I wish I could say that my personals experience included travel and house sitting! But hey, I shouldn't complain. I got a house out of it, which led to me staying in place for a few years. 

I do know what she means about the fuzziness that can set in when you are married -- or in a long-term relationship. Apologies for the triteness of this profound thought: I keeping learning, over and over again, that I can't get everything I want because what I want is completely unreasonable.

I just read an interview with Almodovar in the Guardian and am looking forward to his new movie.

I'm trying to plough through on yet another chapter of the manuscript I've been editing. Here's hoping I get two-thirds of the way by the end of the day. It's very quiet this morning -- all I hear is an occasional car passing. The rooster in the back yard adjacent to mine is not crowing, and there aren't many big trucks being driven around on Sunday, I guess. Ah, but here comes a plane; so much for silence.

how to take a walk

Few people know how to take a walk. The qualifications are endurance, plain clothes, old shoes, an eye with nature, good humor, vast curiosity, good speech, good silence, and nothing else.

~Ralph Waldo Emerson