On still being ill
Jan. 6th, 2020 05:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
radiantfractureStill sick.
Still raining.
Furthermore, when I left the house to get supplies, I bailed magnificently on the moss-slick concrete hill out front and went down hard (WUMPH). However, I landed on exactly the right part of my butt, and did not hit anything more vulnerable than butt (knees, head, tailbone). The moss is 100% saturated, so my pants were instantly soaked. I went back inside, changed, and went out again to buy salt and vinegar chips.
The only thing I want to eat is salt and vinegar chips. I did manage a salad, and now I am eating a turkey sandwich, but what keeps me clinging to life -- what gives my existence any kind of continuity or meaning -- is chips.
Perhaps my ongoing sensation that the world, some sort of dropped platter or sailor hat, is endlessly sloshing back and forth on a great dark sea is connected to the fall -- although it's also the case that ours is a very badly maintained path.
Other Pressing Questions
How can I have this much laundry to do when I haven't gone anywhere or done anything?
Why is it still so hard to find a way to watch 63 Up, which was ostensibly released in Canada in December?
Happier Thoughts
I do have in hand and am enjoying The Club: Johnson, Boswell, and the Friends Who Shaped an Age by Leo Damrosch. It was the first to come in of all the "best of" books I put on hold at the library.
I can read or listen to pretty much anything about Samuel Johnson with pleasure. I'll often fall asleep to the In Our Time episodes about Johnson and associated figures and ideas -- though that also has to do with listening to John Mullan's voice.
Why Johnson? Somehow I like him. I don't particularly affine to the British 18th century, but Johnson himself feels real and recognizable to me. His struggles with money, isolation, ennui, and inaction sure feel familiar (though he was a lot more productive than I am). He was non-neurotypical. His love for Richard Savage feels like a brilliant but emotionally vulnerable person's entrapment by a narcissist. He was a lot more supportive of women as writers and intellectuals than Boswell portrays, apparently.
I'm touched that the Club seems to have begun as Joshua Reynolds' attempt to cheer up Johnson and give him somebody to talk to.
I first studied Johnson and the 18th century with a deeply eccentric prof on whom I had a crush, but in those days having a prof and having a crush were pretty much synonymous, and I don't think my affection for Johnson is a carryover -- or else I'd be a birdwatcher, too, since this prof used to regularly stop his lectures on, say, Goethe, to talk about songbirds.
{rf}
Still raining.
Furthermore, when I left the house to get supplies, I bailed magnificently on the moss-slick concrete hill out front and went down hard (WUMPH). However, I landed on exactly the right part of my butt, and did not hit anything more vulnerable than butt (knees, head, tailbone). The moss is 100% saturated, so my pants were instantly soaked. I went back inside, changed, and went out again to buy salt and vinegar chips.
The only thing I want to eat is salt and vinegar chips. I did manage a salad, and now I am eating a turkey sandwich, but what keeps me clinging to life -- what gives my existence any kind of continuity or meaning -- is chips.
Perhaps my ongoing sensation that the world, some sort of dropped platter or sailor hat, is endlessly sloshing back and forth on a great dark sea is connected to the fall -- although it's also the case that ours is a very badly maintained path.
Other Pressing Questions
How can I have this much laundry to do when I haven't gone anywhere or done anything?
Why is it still so hard to find a way to watch 63 Up, which was ostensibly released in Canada in December?
Happier Thoughts
I do have in hand and am enjoying The Club: Johnson, Boswell, and the Friends Who Shaped an Age by Leo Damrosch. It was the first to come in of all the "best of" books I put on hold at the library.
I can read or listen to pretty much anything about Samuel Johnson with pleasure. I'll often fall asleep to the In Our Time episodes about Johnson and associated figures and ideas -- though that also has to do with listening to John Mullan's voice.
Why Johnson? Somehow I like him. I don't particularly affine to the British 18th century, but Johnson himself feels real and recognizable to me. His struggles with money, isolation, ennui, and inaction sure feel familiar (though he was a lot more productive than I am). He was non-neurotypical. His love for Richard Savage feels like a brilliant but emotionally vulnerable person's entrapment by a narcissist. He was a lot more supportive of women as writers and intellectuals than Boswell portrays, apparently.
I'm touched that the Club seems to have begun as Joshua Reynolds' attempt to cheer up Johnson and give him somebody to talk to.
I first studied Johnson and the 18th century with a deeply eccentric prof on whom I had a crush, but in those days having a prof and having a crush were pretty much synonymous, and I don't think my affection for Johnson is a carryover -- or else I'd be a birdwatcher, too, since this prof used to regularly stop his lectures on, say, Goethe, to talk about songbirds.
{rf}
no subject
Date: 2020-01-07 04:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-01-07 05:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-01-07 06:13 am (UTC)Blame it on the moss! :)
no subject
Date: 2020-01-07 07:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-01-07 11:10 am (UTC)I don't think I've read or learned anything about Samuel Johnson... might have to rectify that.
no subject
Date: 2020-01-07 11:25 am (UTC)That book sounds fascinating.
And I hope you're feeling better soon.
no subject
Date: 2020-01-08 10:35 pm (UTC)