Got it! While Bela and Colin were playing piano, after the kids left to shop at Ladders, I drove downtown, found a spot to park just past monte alto, went to Roots and bought the painting by Molly Marshall. I've hung it on the wall and will wait to see if anyone even notices it. I was obsessed with it all night after looking at it in the shop yesterday morning when I bought a stack of notecards. Now each house has a waterfall painting. Why that pleases me I don't know; the influence of Handke and Stifter? Motely Stones. Landscape, geology, water.
Watched the hour long video Mike McDermand sent about the memorial for Nancy. Nicely done video, mostly the book group and watercolor group members, two oldest friends from college at Cornell College in Iowa. Class of '64. this from online cornell college class updates --- Nancy Connolly McDermand ’64 and Bob McDermand ’63, San Jose, California, celebrated their 59th anniversary. Nancy loves her hiking trips with her group (highlights include San Francisco and Point Reyes National Seashore), book group, and she especially loves her watercolor classes.
Dave and crew trying to orchestrate the rest of today. Big crowd at the beach yesterday, wide angle group photo on Micah's super google camera. Today in array because they are juggling family groups and interests. Cooler today, gorgeous air and sun. We have the Dr Wesley appointment at 4:15--pit of the afternoon but it will be fine. Suggest Last Chair evening meal to Dave. He seems pretty distracted. Their packing this time is the lightest we've ever seen; the one big red bag and three light backpacks. Airlines now charging for size and weight more than ever, that encouraged them to downscale. Emma and Eliot both on screens but not for that long. Eliot still love kicking the small football in the den and hallway endlessly. They both have summer reading books to finish for school. Emma's are of good size---Jane Eyre and S King's The Shining, a british woman writer I don't know, Sarah Waters, the little stranger, and Oscar Wilde's Portrait of Dorian Gray. She is Welsh, the book a ghost story. Nicely grouped novels. Oh, at prom night at school Emma got a prize, a surprise to her, as "most engaged" student in her class this year. Nice.
Last summer Dwayne was instructing Bela in how to use this larger wheelchair. Why did her legs give out once more a few weeks ago? No one knows.
The Cloud of Unknowing. Would I enjoy reading it once more? Did the whole work keep my interest, or was it, is it, the title alone, the bumper sticker, that serves me my life long? If I had read that work, or have even heard of it, early in high school, would that have made significant difference in what came after? Cloud, dreams, detachment, distance, observing, wandering, uncertainty, ambivalence, abulia (term I learned at Ammendale for spiritual state of indecisiveness, "While it shares some surface-level similarities (such as social withdrawal and inactivity), abulia is fundamentally different from depression. People experiencing abulia generally do not feel intense sadness or negative thoughts; rather, they experience an absolute decline in psychic drive. For more granular clinical details and case definitions, you can consult the . . . ."
"In French thought and cultural spirituality, aboulie (abulia) describes a profound collapse of the will, manifesting as spiritual dryness, existential inertia, and a paralyzing inability to direct one's soul toward action or faith "
Katherine Murphy University of Exeter "ABSTRACT The literary exposition of abulia in Pío Baroja’s early
novels, especially La lucha por la vida trilogy, illuminates the ways in which
diagnostic language from psychopathology was adapted, assimilated, and
disseminated through the trajectories of fictional characters who suffer
from a loss of volition. This article analyzes cultural narratives about abulia
in Baroja’s early fiction, demonstrating that they constitute a resonant
pathological metaphor during a period in Spain’s history defined by na-
tional introspection and regenerationist debates. By tracing meta phorical
explanations for social, political, and economic circumstances conveyed
through the literary appropriation of medical terminology, this study ex-
plores comparisons between abulia and the gendered and class- based asso-
ciations of neurasthenia at the turn of the twentieth century. Although the
assumed causes of each condition are diff er ent, this process of transposition
between medicine and metaphor anticipates the con temporary social, cul-
tural, and ideological shaping of concepts such as stress and burnout.
Family just exited the house. They are going to meet their other families at La Familia for lunch on the terrace there. After that they will decide whether to take a hike or go to the beach. Remember---one key tenet of these travelers is that being out in the sun as much as possible in the first days of travel gives one the best solution to problems of jet lag in terms of mood and energy. The have swirled all around us, now the house is empty, and we, what should we now do with the rest of this day before heading to MidState for medical check-in?
Summer after high school, at Ammendale, I was starting to read texts in late 19th C French spirituality, some, much, of which I had glimpsed in the twelve! twelve! years of Catholic schooling, but now I was into the inner core, the harder core, of what spiritual thought was, what guidance in spirituality was, even having, suddenly as it were almost, having meetings about "spiritual direction" would be about. How did Brother . . . forget his name, thin, sandy hair, eyes that never met yours lest he break the rules about the practice of modesty of the eyes, how did he first help me use the word "abulia?" Brother Germinus Paul, Adeodatus Philip, Antoninus Leo, all those strange names those brothers had, where on earth did they get those names, who did they recast themselves to be and want to become by choosing these names from the Lives of the Saints?
Kids went to the Creamery on the way home. Dave had vanilla with potato chips. Eliot had pink lemonade but it tasted nothing like it and it was too sugary.
