dual personalities

The weeks have flown by and added up to years much more quickly than I can countenance. This little guy turned 30 yesterday!

In lieu of parental advice, I’ll include this passage from a letter Vincent Van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo:

“The age of thirty is, for the working man, just the beginning of a period of some stability, and as such, one feels young and full of energy. But, at the same time, a period of life is passed, which makes one melancholy, thinking some things will never come back. And it is no silly sentimentalism to feel a certain regret. Well, many things really begin at the age of thirty, and certainly all is not over then. But one doesn’t expect from life what one has already learned it cannot give, but rather one begins to see more and more clearly that life is only a kind of sowing time, and the harvest is not here.”

Happy birthday, dearest James! Here’s to your next decade, which hopefully will not include extended periods of mandatory self-isolation, but will instead bring fulfillment and adventure!

Meanwhile, back in the reality of lock-down limbo, we soldier on. Tim and Abbie came to visit last weekend and we had a grand time (I took no photos). I made spicy sesame zoodles with crispy tofu for dinner one night and then made naan bread to go with the DH’s wonderful chicken curry the second night. We got very silly playing a drawing game online with the brothers, and we even got a few chores done. It was a perfect social interlude in our otherwise humdrum lives.

Having visitors inspired a few household improvements. We added pictures to our large mudroom wall:

Honestly, they aren’t so badly arranged as they look in the photo, nor are they too high on the wall. It’s an awkward space to photograph.

As mentioned in a previous post, we removed the stereo from the living room and, at least for the time being, have a corner full of plants.

The stereo removal brightened and enlarged the space nicely. Oddly enough, the living room is the only room in the house amenable to plants, so they are beginning to take over. Anyone need any houseplants?

Finally, here’s an update on my reading and watching activity:

I’m now binge-watching Community on Netflix. I’ve never been one for sitcoms but I can relate to the college setting and to lines like this:

And someday I’d love to say to a student trying to get out of something by crying, “This won’t work. The last time you tried this, I saved a vial of your tears and I’ve been slowly building up an immunity.” As usual, I’m very late to the party, but Community is funny.

I’m two-thirds of the way through Hilary Mantel’s Bring up the Bodies and very much looking forward to starting the final book in the series. I’m also reading a fascinating book on Environmental Problems of the Greeks and Romans, which included deforestation, soil erosion, pollution of water, air and soil, overgrazing, and wildlife and resource depletion, to name but a few. Evidently, we have been ruining the environment since establishing the first permanent settlements. There’s nothing new under the sun.

That’s about it for this week. Have a great weekend!

*Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

As you likely know, we are nearing the 40 week mark and are getting pretty darn antsy over here. Tuesday was my last official day of work, which is a true blessing — no more Zoom calls! I should probably enjoy this blissful time between work and a newborn, but of course that isn’t really how it works. I am deeply uncomfortable and not sleeping!

I spent my first day off reading, dozing, and watching a movie. For lighter reading material, I picked up an Anne Tyler collection and started The Accidental Tourist.

I honestly think the last time I read an Anne Tyler novel I was in middle school (sometimes my advanced reading capacity made for some odd choices), and I thought it was a good time to revisit her as an adult. Well this one is a bit odd — a pretty depressing conceit from the beginning, plus a weirdo protagonist. So far my favorite character is the corgi! But I am chugging along and it’s still better than so much literary fiction, so I will stick with it for now.

Then I watched Annie Hall.

This is how I always felt on large-group Zoom calls.

My mother famously (well, famous in our family) went into labor with me after watching a Woody Allen movie, so we couldn’t help but experiment with this one. So far, no luck, but let’s not forget that these blog posts are pre-scheduled. Who knows what could happen before morning!

I’ll let you know…

Aren’t we all. Well, it’s Tuesday, but it feels like Monday, and I’m not full of rage today. Perhaps tomorrow will be a different story. The weather has been a whole of this for the past few days:

That is to say, sunny and then rainy, but maybe just cloudy, but possibly going to rain, but never really raining, very humid, and vaguely ominous in the distance. It’s getting to be a bit of a bore. You never know if you can take a walk or not!

As my mother said, we had a lovely weekend. We shopped in downtown Kirkwood (where we had to sign in at stores for contact tracing purposes [insert face palm emoji]), walked around Kirkwood Park (I don’t think I’d been there in at least 15 years), listened to music (it’s a great stress reliever), and accidentally drank a whole bottle of Rose. In one sitting. A Henry Mancini record has that effect!

These days, I think it’s important to do things that bring you joy and help take your mind off the world (maybe don’t drink a whole bottle of wine, especially if the wee babes are coming over the next morning). But, indulging in hours of music and not much else is totally fine. Sitting outside in the sunshine, or even just sitting inside, also totally fine. Starting each blog post with something from the Simpsons, totally legit.

I was reading my bible last night (the 99 Days of Joy) and I particularly enjoyed the verse in Luke where Jesus declares “How dull you are!” to the disciples who fail to recognize him when he returns. I just love that. People can be the worst. We’re so irritating, even Jesus gets annoyed with us. We also haven’t changed a whole lot in 2000 years.

So what’s my point? I’m not really sure. But everyday I strive to not be a total bore. Now, I’ll work on not being so dull, as well.

*Bastard, Ben Folds

I know it’s Saturday because it’s my turn to post something. This week was just like last week and the week before that, and they have all blurred together. At some point, as I puttered around, I found this priceless photo in a box of stuff.

What song do you imagine they are playing along to? Why the hats? And, yes, toy weapons do make great air guitars.

In other discovery news, I found this story by our grandfather in a book titled The Best News Stories of 1923. I had to capture it using the snipping tool, hence the three differently sized sections.

Aside from this human interest story, the book included a much longer, more serious selection dealing with rum-running in New York. Here’s the beginning:

If you’re interested, you can read the rest via Google Books.  Our poor grandmother did not bargain on our adventure-seeking grandfather. I imagine that when they got married in 1917 she thought he was an upright, patriotic citizen going off to fight in WWI (which, of course, he was). She expected that after the war he would come home and start practicing law, and that they would become pillars of whatever community they graced. It was not to be. The war killed his brother, but it also introduced Arthur to all sorts of stimulating people and experiences. He flew planes; he rubbed shoulders with movers and shakers different from the staid businessmen of his youth in Burlington. He liked the fast pace of big city journalism. Mira played along for a decade or more, but eventually it got to her and they separated. Arthur went to the west coast, and she and my father went home to Massachusetts. And that, as they say, was that.

When I wasn’t searching through my family’s past, I finished re-reading Wolf Hall, every page of which seems to reward the reader with some insight, beautifully expressed.

But it is no use to justify yourself. It is no good to explain. It is weak to be anecdotal. It is wise to conceal the past even if there is nothing to conceal. A man’s power is in the half-light, in the half-seen movements of his hand and the un-guessed-at expression of his face. It is the absence of facts that frightens people: the gap you open, into which they pour their fears, fantasies and desires (p. 331).

This passage particularly resonated:

You can have a silence full of words. A lute retains, in its bowl, the notes it has played. The viol, in its strings, hold a concord. A shriveled petal can hold its scent, a prayer can rattle with curses; an empty house, when the owners have gone out, can still be loud with ghosts (p. 597).

I am looking forward to re-reading Bring up the Bodies before I start the last book in the series, though it will be difficult to read about Thomas Cromwell’s demise.

In the meantime, life continues apace. Tim and Abbie are arriving for a visit later today. The weather is beautiful and warm (in the 80s) and everything is blooming, but we promise not to go anywhere, do anything or have fun. It’s not allowed here in New York, because we are just starting our phased reopening. Here are the rules:

Have a grand weekend, wherever you are and whatever your circumstances!

Toward the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis, lots of people were writing about plague literature. Most often referenced was Albert Camus’s The Plague, though people also loved to note that Shakespeare largely wrote his plays while in quarantine. So far I have failed to bring much literary focus to this blog, though I did make the rather obvious observation that Thoreau socially distanced at Walden Pond.

Well, I finally got around to making some headway in The Scarlet Letter, which I started way back when in February. And I couldn’t help but think that Hester Prynne, too, was an expert at social distancing. I’m half kidding. Ostracized is more like it, but she had her little cabin outside of town and she rarely went within six feet of others.

In the bit I read last night, Hester reconnects with Arthur Dimmesdale, and feels liberated from her “quarantine” for the first time in seven years:

But Hester Prynne, with a mind of native courage and activity, and for so long a period not merely estranged, but outlawed, from society, had habituated herself to such latitude of speculation as was altogether foreign to the clergyman. She wandered, without rule or guidance, in a moral wilderness; as vast, as intricate and shadowy, as the untamed forest, amid the gloom of which they were now holding a colloquy that was to decide their fate. Her intellect and heart had their home, as it were, in desert places, where she roamed as freely as the wild Indian in his woods. For years past she had looked from this estranged point of view at human institutions, and whatever priests or legislators had established; criticising all with hardly more reverence than the Indian would feel for the clerical band, the judicial robe, the pillory, the gallows, the fireside, or the church. The tendency of her fate and fortunes had been to set her free. The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, — stern and wild ones, — and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.

Do you feel that you are wandering a moral wilderness?

Anyway, I haven’t yet finished the novel and I’ve forgotten precisely how it ends. I’ll have to let you know if — and how — Hester (and her daughter) successfully reenter society.

Must be Tuesday.

Well, today was one of those days. Apple thinks I’ve had my old iPhone for too long and clearly wants me to buy a new one so it is rendering my phone non-functional through its mandatory updates. You know how they work. Then, I managed to spill half a can of soda on my lap during a work call. And, after giving me hope that my car (which I still don’t have) might be ready this afternoon, the mechanic called to say that the windshield they’d been waiting on was delivered but was the wrong one. I’ll never get my little car back. 

In other news, I have to say that one of the most enlightening things about this global pandemic has been learning how many people I know who, despite majoring in Communications in college, are experts in the field of public health and government. It’s really amazing isn’t it?

I’ve also really enjoyed learning how many people I know have access to second homes, pools, bodies of water, or all of the above. And in a Venn diagram of these two groups of people, the overlap is pretty wild.

Normally, I’d wrap this up with something inspirational but I don’t have it in me today. I’ve also used two Simpsons references and a 30 Rock gif so this is a real low for me. I hope everyone has a good rest of the week. And maybe the next time I post, I’ll have my car (but don’t hold your breath).