NOVEMBER 2023
1 Wednesday
Note from Kim yesterday about a friend who can manage our short term rental of Casa A. Not going to pursue it. Happy with where we are now, moving forward, moving wall hangings and a few books. One chair.
Hey Bob,
I was thinking about your situation with your Lechusas home; my friend Courtney does actually manage AirBnBs for other people, so I am happy to introduce you via email to get the ball rolling, if that's of interest? You can chat with her about her view of the market, what services she offers, what she charges, etc., in order to make a decision for 2024.
A couple of questions: How often was your place rented when you weren't there? Were you happy with the amount of rent received while you were in NH? What did Eloy charge?
I actually am considering turning my long term rental house into an AirBnB and am starting to investigate, so thank you in advance for anything you'd like to share!
Weather has "turned" here. We finally hit freezing overnight (buh-bye mosquitos) and the days are crisp and clear. Lovely fall weather! What's yours like?
Kim
Hi Kim
First freeze here last night. Trees and leaves not as beautiful as past years because the summer and fall had way too much rain, fog, drizzle, mist. etc. Bright and sunny yesterday
and today looks so good.
We're no longer interested in trying to rent Casa Alegre. A local mover is coming first week in December to collect wall pictures and such and a few books and one heavy chair. We'll move all of that out this winter. We'll be there the five months.
Eloy most recently charged flat fee of $135. a month as a base administrative fee. But that was a change, earlier he had used a commission kind of arrangement. Then there were always other fees, VRBO listing fees, etc. I think by this fall he had our place listed on four or five sites, including a newish medium term rental called Snowbird. Plus there were lots of property management costs. We never really made much money, if any at all, all things considered. Recent balloon week was best ever so I'm still waiting to see the final statements. But not expecting it to be that great, really. Forgot to mention city fees, MuniRevs each month.
Nationally a few articles have suggested that NYC found ways to box Airbnb in with fees that have crimped the whole idea significantly. Even here in small town NH two hours north of Boston, there are too many places in competition it seems.
We were in the house four or five months so only seven months were available. That was a problem because we couldn't get enough reviews piled up in just two years. People
want to go where the review numbers are highest! I suspect Petroglyphs also was against us, west side just not as known as east side for lots of reasons. Eloy says travelers want to go to Santa Fe and Phoenix, Albuquerque just not as famous and trendy etc. The algorhythms so hard to please, beat.
So, lots of factors. He tried it for eight years, between four of his own places and four or five of other peoples' places. Two years ago his mood was expansive, of late not so much. Of course I don't know much about his private concerns.
We are looking forward to getting back there. Our kids visited with us in August here and they will be back for Christmas for eight days.
Property maintenance is still something we may be interested it. With your rental
when it needs things does your husband do it or do you hire handy people and professionals? Have long have you had it?
Your friend's experience and take on all of this might be quite different, let me know what she says.
Enjoy the fall sunshine and vibes,
Bob
——-
always feel like I went on for too long there, but we'll see. Wonder what Courtney has to say about it all.
WALKED the UTI sample to Speare and back. The receptionist refused to give me one of her homemade cookies but I did pocket a few mini-mini candy bars. As mini as they have ever been.
Back to savoring Mountolive!! Even if Courtney sounds gung-ho and all that still not interested in renting any more.
Univ VW called yesterday to set up recall work on the ID.4! Made an appt for Jan 17.
Dear PT, please send more info on the thing that Ray wears on his arm. I think lots of people could use something similar. Maybe even us...,maybe you??
It has turned very cold here after months of rain. I am wondering if all that rain rotted the trees so there is practically no color. I hope that is not one more negative effect of climate change. No more color would wreck our tourist economy.
I am hoping you might still make it here to help pack up the Mexican dishes. Do you know when they date from??
My ideal would be to put them up on that beam over the living room in ABQ. Bob is not a fan.
I am worried that you say you are so heavy. I am sure that does not help your walking. I hope you can find a friend who will go to the pool with you and Ray . Aren't there some water aerobic classes that a friend could take you to? Be glad you can still swim for real instead of having to snorkle like me.
I am very happy that I have my "essentials":
my Life and my Man. More later.
love,
pew
—
2 November
Maybe a bit upset by Kim's note introducing me to Courtney Bell. Kim seems to have taken no note of our desire to not rent the house at all. I
told Courtney that. But then this morning I asked her to send me links to
a few of her listings so she will naturally wonder if I am changing my mind. I am not. I am being nosey, as usual.
Now in Mountolive, as delicious as ever. Perhaps more so now that we can get the "straight story" in Mountolive's variant and look back aside at what we already remember if possible from Justine and Balthazar. Pursewarden a bit of a vulgarian according to Kenilworth, whose "flesh was knitted in a heavy cable stitch." 95
3 Nov
Like Durrell's notion in Pursewarden's words (on 125 in M) that art doesn't exist, not for the producer of it. Writes and after it appears critics and other sniffers try to explain, debunk and praise what it is and declare it to be art, of this sort of another. For the artist, as for the public, art doesn't exist . . . only for those who exist in the forebrain. 125 Interesting.
"maniacal form of dance . . . queer cockroach-crushing steps" 133 Durrell uses "queer" quite a bit in the old Himalayan usage ! school days in India
Mountolive back in Cairo and Alexandria for the summer. The Coptic Egyptians have the festival for St Damiana out in the desert. Just like Burning Man!!!
about Darley Shyness that goes with Great Emotions imperfectly kept under control. A fellow romantic quotha! 121 hooray
art does not exist 125 But the poor bastard is still interested in literature. 185
With every advance from the known to the unknown, the mystery increases. 186
By taking a lifetime to admit these things about himself, he delayed doing anything about them until it made no difference in any way.
The passage where Justine fucks Nissim is amazing. Her face like Shiva.
He is the more feminine, submissive. Politics of Egypt and Palestine here?
Or relish of archetypal powers and patterns. Both.
5 November Sunday
to Dennis
great images great titles. ! Still a gallery even opening there is some sort of good news?? Dan Moore, silver hair, small, business dept, grew up near Franklin, some other town close by.
saw Miriam and Terry. She looks great, beaming, but Terry has to keep close hand on her, she wanders off, out of it pretty much.
Meg Petersen in EnglishEd died few weeks ago, shocking everyone. not yet 70. Lung cancer. diagnosis in the spring.
Naomi Kline also died a week or so ago. No idea cause or age. Also Bob Morton. Also Jim Hobart.
Sarah said her dad died in a car accident four days after her sixth birthday. Sent a photo of the two of them looking happy.
He went to Yale then law school at Wash U in St Louis I think. Became the lawyer who oversaw the merger of two big aircraft
manufacturing companies McDonnell-Douglas. That must be the fund source. Friends donated money to Wash U to
commemorate him, a Residential House named Rutledge House.
No idea why all of this poured out the other morning.
Lunch with Ken and Carole yesterday. They have decided not to go into a retirement community. Bourgeoises seem headed into
Taylor Homes within a few years. They do long winters at the Villages each year. in Florida
In passing we heard K&C say Dan Perkins and his wife divorced and are still living together. I asked them this morning on email
to tell me more but have not heard back.
Martha Richards stopped cancer treatment after 6 of the 8 prescribed. Side effects too much. Has 50% survival gestimate.
No news from Dick Hunnewell how Anne's bout with cancer is going. In August they said it was going well and she looked
good.
Got us an invite to see Kirsten Giebutowski and her Dartouth prof husband in their house in Hanover, road to Etna
I had never been on, about two miles from campus, up on a hillside. Nice but not quite as upper as I would have
imagined. Cookies and tea. He is very shy and still lots of Virginia Episcopalian to him. Kirsten seems the perfect
faculty wife. Works as book editor and works few evenings at the Hanover library. Big newly remodeled kitchen for
baking. Jim says his students are difficult these days because they all feel so much stress from every angle.
We have no news from campus here, no more contacts. Va got a message from Matt Cheney I guess about something
but she works facebook quite a bit.
Our kids are coming for Christmas, eight days here. We go out to Abq Jan 10. Going to do airport layover this time
instead of night in hotel to save some money. Never as restful as supposed to be in our imaginations. Your invite
to visit always open.
No snow yet. Endless rain and gray skies continue. I'll look for that movie. Wish I had one to suggest back,
too many detective series, none of which are memorable in any way.
I am, however, loving Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet. And everything he's written, slowly, should get me
through the next year.
If the Crowley guy comes through we will ship small amount of stuff in December. Hoping that will get things rolling more.
—-
Jung gets about seven entries in the bio. Not archetypes but poetic consciousness, the gods themselves.
"If only we did not have to keep acting a part, Justine." "ah, Nessim! Then I should not know who I was." 267
6 nov Elif Shafak's Intro to Clea is the best of the four!! even better than Aciman's!! Later I must read at least one of her books. I may have read one and it has slipped my memory. But every single point she makes is bullseye and emotionally perfect. And she shuts up William Boyd by saying however critics treat Durrell in England, in the world his achievement is treasured as a "brilliant, riveting piece of world literature." "literature has never been 'in search of lost time' as 'in search of lost place.'" Brava Elif!!! could/should copy every line of her short and superb piece. She pinpoints and nails and states every essential consideration. No empty forebrain nonsense. Felt understanding, spiritual feeling comprehended.
Revolt of Aphrodite arrived. There's enough pages to see me over into January!!
It was great seeing you too. When are you coming to see us in Albuquerque?? Bob and I travel on Delta first class . That gives us more room and fewer people near us. We think that has kept us Covid free so far. If you stop at the Atlanta hub you can stay a night and get to ABQ the next day. This year we are trying to skip the lay over and go straight to ABQ. We will see how that goes.
We are looking forward to having our wall and photo art to decorate the house more as we like it. We told you that we no longer have our manager which. means that there will be no more renters so we can make the house more like we like it. Our first move towards being there full time.
We plan to live there until we really
need assisted care and then plan to go to another place.
When do you have coffee once a week?? Could we fit in??
b and va.
——
seek, suffer, endure D's poem on Horace
On first going to Albuquerque and now going there again. Like Darley going back to Alexandria, searching for lost place. The book within the books of one's life. Is it a huge mistake? A small mistake? What on earth possessed us to buy a house there? Was it my doing mainly, my selfishness, my expansiveness? Did Willow want it in any way, at any level? Perhaps I was expressing for her her deepest wishes without either of us realizing it? Or were we inventing all of it, to see what would happen?
strange that I no longer underline books the way I used to do—-why am I "keeping" them pristine? for whose's collection, whose show? Why underline? Will I ever look back at the underlinings any more than I look back at journals? All such questions miss the points don't they? As always.
Weds 8 November Lunched at La Famillia today and someone paid it for us!! second time there.
Thought a few days ago I would give my good pens to Kirsten since she writes by hand so beautifully. Few days later I thought, no, I need to keep those pens for myself and use them in some ritual ways. Make them mine in a way that would add to my presence in a Durrell novel should he decide to put me in. but now of course I cannot find them! where did I hide them or put them away for safe keeping?? I need to flush the inks out so the don't dry out and clog.
"artists are composed of vanity, indolence and self-regard" Clea 122
physique is only the outer periphery, the contours of the spirit, its solid part 124
Sex is . . . a cloud of unknowing 125
Sappho I try to make myself read a page or two a day. It is a verse play, much later made into an opera. Trying to finish it interrupts reading Clea!
Now I can see that Augustine being a Carthaginian converted in order to become a Roman, a true Roman, a Roman more Roman than the Romans because in loved with the true essence of Roman salvation.
Durrell's sense of the landscape as the generator mirror of all spiritual longing.
Found the pens this morning.
Joe seems to now be cancer free. Has a new rescued dog named Juliet.
Dear PT, You are hereby released from the call to come help with the Mexican dishes . We will pack them and hope they arrive in as good a condition as when you mailed them here from ABQ. I think that time they came by train which seems even more complicated than by moving van from here. We will just have to try our luck.
We have just gotten our first snow so winter has started a little here. I think even though it is cold enough to snow here, I think I prefer that to your 80 degrees. Snow just seems more right for the season. Maybe it's all due to the pictures in our kids's books.
love,
pew
"Religion is si
mply art bastardized out of all recognition." 133
"There is a kind of perfection to be achieved by matching oneself to one's capacities—at every level. This must, I imagine, do away with striving and with illusions too. " 133
Had he not hidden, run away from, denied, diverted, waved the cape back and forth, obsessed over hidden orations, pirouttes and performatives, the revelation, when it came, would not have gored him so into such ecstasy.
No, sorry. I gave you the wrong impression. My medical news is just status quo. I'm the same as I have been, that's all. The Tagrisso drug will eventually fail. But it gives me two months of continued whatever the hell I am living with.
Not sure how Juliet got here. Most dogs in the pound are from the south. I guess the hillbillies don't take good care of them.
I don't think I will read Irving. Who knows? I have no rhyme or reason to what I read any longer. Probably never did.
Not much else to report. Might do Thanksgiving with Wendy and the rest. I'm writing about Wendy these days. Strange. We had a lot of fun, but also had some nuttiness. We also had a lot of heat, something people don't talk about. I always thought Burton and Liz Taylor liked to shag. That's one of the pleasures of life.
Pretty snow today. Birds on the feeder.
Well, sorry to have misinterpreted. Reality takes us over once again, whatever it
claims to be, far out of our control.
Your passages about Wendy could make some halls of fame. Came across this tidbit--
in '62 Lawrence Durrell was up for the Nobel prize but he lost out to John Steinbeck.
"When one examines the reasoning behind the committee’s decision, it appears that Steinbeck’s citation arose largely from extra-literary considerations and lethargy. From the recently declassified archives in Sweden (Nobel nominations are considered top secret for an incubation period of fifty years), we learn that ’62 was a standstill year for the Swedish academy. As a member reported, “There aren’t any obvious candidates for the Nobel Prize, and the committee is in an unenviable position.” Steinbeck was apparently the lowest of all the hanging fruit. One wonders why the committee had nominated him a previous eight times if he was indeed a mollifying choice. . . . .
"In a deadlocked year, it’s easy to imagine the committee would opt for a safe bet, and not want to err on the side of an experimental newcomer in Durrell. For a body so focused on posterity, the Swedish academy would be sensitive to what might one day be seen as a misstep. Officially, Durrell wasn’t given the nod because the committee wanted more time to see his catalogue develop. The committee, however, also noted that his work “gives a dubious aftertaste… because of [his] monomaniacal preoccupation with erotic complications.”
so yeah, let's see those pages about all the divine shagging that makes the world go 'round ---
——
"I’m very impulsive when I write. I don’t plan anything; it all just comes out in the act of writing. I try to get myself into an altered state that could be described as a sort of rush: this 'writing state' sets in and takes control of me. And when I write by hand, I produce different sorts of sentences than when I’m on the computer. I’d say they tend to be better ones. Then again, it probably also holds true that the more techniques you use, the greater your range of expression. —-Norman Ohler, Berlin writer
—-
Hi Bob and Virginia,
I hope this email finds you well. We haven't communicated in a few weeks so I thought I should drop you a note. Just as a reminder, we will stop offering your property as of 18 November 2023. This mostly means that we will stop advertising your property on the internet and our website. We will hold off handing things off to you until you arrive in town so we can walk you through everything and have the opportunity to ask questions. Here is what you can expect with your property:
- Close out you account with us in November. Final statements in December.
- Removal from all online travel agencies such as Airbnb, VRBO, The Snowbird Network, and others.
- Prepare for Barbara Schwartz in December and your arrival in January
- Transfer front door management, alarm system and any other items you need our help with in January when you arrive in Albuquerque.
Please keep in mind that we are still hear for you if you need help even after you move back in. The following are contacts you might need from time to time to assist you. You can also call me directly.
Eloy Gonzales VMG Rentals 505-604-1078
Jamie Kota VMG Rentals Ops Manager 505-688-5264
Dave Koester Handyman 507-766-6650
Ramon Carrasco Electrician 505-440-8955
Jim Howard Plumber 505-261-1594
Idalia Enriquez Housekeeping 505-319-8263
Victoria Cota Housekeeping 505-900-5331
I also welcome another phone call if you require to discuss any areas of concern.
Happy Thanksgiving to you!
Eloy
——
Irving needs a Maxwell Perkins, with carte blanche.
Just finished a near-700-pp novel that I do recommend, but with the warning that it's an odd hybrid novel-memoir, with some improbably long speeches by characters and essayistic ruminations: Ariel Dorfman, The Suicide Museum. Dorfman was close to Salvador Allende, and the main plot of the novel is a quest to find out whether A. was murdered or committed suicide. Much of the action is taking place in 1990, with frequent flashbacks to & suppositions about 1973, but it's also informed by events in 2020. I read it partly because it concerns environmental awareness and out of curiosity about Allende. If one doesn't mind the hybridity & metafictional turns, very smart and deftly done.
Sorry to have been out of touch. Had the second cataract surgery on Monday. Seems to be going well (I taught Tues & today). Still mild swelling & thus blurring but slighter (I think) than the first one. All well with you, Phil?
~John
——
this amazed me but then I must recall that John is an historian after all ——
Phil the journalist
moi the estwhile wannabe poet-artist
"On the contrary I was full of relief—a relief from the bondage of these forms which seemed so inadequate an instrument to convey the truth of feelings." 285 Clea
4:55 pm Read last words of Clea, of The Alexandria Quartet. I have not been so thrilled with pleasure for years and years and years. Ready to read it all again. And I will in due time. After I finish reading everything else.
This book has kissed me. What's the other line—a book is a love letter to a reader.
Jourir c'est pourir une peu enjoying is rotting a little decaying ? Rochefoucault and Pursewarden rewriting him
"Suddenly a shutter seemed to roll back across my mind. I realized that this new fact that I was enunciating was one that I had always known, but without being aware of the knowing! Foolish as it was the distinction was a real one." 307
16 Nov
For some reason the tiny detail about your father and asking him for money to
go out on the weekend really struck me, moved me. Everything else moves along
smoothly and continues the exploration.
Baby will be the first genuine Smash Hit! I think. ? How did that story coalesce in
your mind? Had you previously imagined a girl in foster care system? Or Wendy's
cancer triggered something you didn't know where it came from? I had forgotten that
she had had her battle with that disease first. Pattern there not unlike Jenn and Chris,
alas.
Bookish Eng major me really enjoyed the part about you and Lou Ann chatting book talk.
Of course I had heard a bit about her and her visits to Maclean every few years. I guess
I would like more of that talk about where and how your books arrive into your brainpan?
How do you realize you've got a book started? How many unfinished mss are in your
desk drawer at any one time? How many false starts, abandoned ventures? Is it
like an itch that needs to be scratched? Do you hear voices? Do youl see characters'
faces before you hear their voices? stories?
I've never read Thoreau's Walden!! Have you? Do all fly fisherpeople Love it??
Novel I'm reading now has a fishman traveling in back rivers of Serbia, his treasured
copy of Walden his only reading. Details about why flys he's tied etc. Did you ever
try tying your own flies?
——
Thanks as always, Bob. I really rely on your takes. I agree the stuff about my dad is...strange and kind of interesting. I have no idea what it means exactly, but I know I experienced it...and probably carry it forward. He made a good buck. He didn't have to turn it into something peculiar between us, but he was powerless, I suppose. We all are in some way. That situation of buying the barn but not really believing in what we were doing...but not saying anything...is a lamentable part of my personality. I don't mean to do it, but I do it nonetheless. Susan talks a lot about me "verbal processing." I'll talk aloud twenty times around the simplest things. Oddly, I can make a big decision -- buy a house, for instance -- without batting an eye. Strange. Do you have anything like that?
wow what you describe is pretty much what I just went through two years ago in
buying the house in Albuquerque. I haven't done that sort of thing for a good while
and not on such a scale but I keep going back and forth about why I did it and
whether it was a huge mistake or not. Meanwhile we pack some boxes and inch
forward on making a move---maybe this year, maybe next year, who knows, a few
months a year. At any moment either one of us could get much more seriously
ill or disabled. Crazy how we do things and as you say have things done to us,
through us. Powerless in so many ways. Durrell talks about it in similar ways in
parts of his novels.
I hit send before I was finished....
Yes, I did tie flies years ago. It was kind of fun. Looking back it seems like a lot of work for something you can purchase fairly cheaply.
Got a nice note from Paul R. I guess a few students have tried to get in touch with me. He also told me that Meg P died...wasn't sure I had heard. He wrote that people get in touch with him and say, gee, you worked with her for 30 years, what was that like? He said he has nothing to say. How sad, really. I remember being in the copy room with her and she would not speak. I suspect she feared/disliked men. I'm pretty sure she has two nice sons, so who knows? Really, PSU was right out of Catch 22.
Thanks, too, for the tip about writing...putting more of that into the book. I was afraid I would bore people. I can pepper in some litty stuff.
And no....I never read Walden all the way through. Parts, but not the whole. We're both phonies!
You would be amused to see me around here. Justin and his girlfriend are putting out Tic Toc videos of "life in the barn." They did a cute one about our dog and it got something like 750 hits in ten minutes. The geometric progression on those things are astonishing. They just keep multiplying. Anyway, they don't put me on camera! I'm the creaky old guy who lives in the back bedroom!
Okay, going to watch some football tonight. Susan has me hooked on the New Amsterdam on Netflix. Evening soap opera, but good in ways. I may watch the new Crown season. I like that royalty crap.
And btw, I find it charming and amazing that V can watch Pretty Woman over and over! It's such a weird movie. The Catholic boy in me wants to ask, doesn't anybody remember she was a hooker? That's just a job, I guess. Funny.
Again, thank you for reading. The Great Work goes on….
——
18 November Saturday
Casa Alegre no longer up for rent on any of the sites. Our two year experiment being business moguls has ended with a glorious whimper. Still waiting to see if any statements will arrive from vmg next week to report on balloon festival loot.
Finished Durrell's White Eagles over Serbia. For a throw-away spy novel it was pretty good. A lot of woods and hillsides and ravines and yet somehow he kept one glued and
the project of recovering the lost gold treasury of the king of serbia was wonderful.
Now on to Aphrodite's Revenge or tunc and qunc ? just ordered three short works too. anxious alas to get on into Avignon Quintet but will be patient. Have the Letters and poems to work with as well. Just enjoy the novels so much.
19 November Sunday
Emma and Cécile had their girls night at the opera this past Thursday. Then Dave and all went to some animé rave concert of some sort. We enjoyed No Hard Feelings much more than half of Barbie.
So glad I read The Black Book because after Alexandria Quartet Durrell did a few smaller things and then first half of The Revolt of Aphrodite and I can understand what's up because you can feel Larry going back/forward to wilder crazier stuff just for the fun of it. Or maybe under pressures of new sorts—-great success and fame as well as longeurs of boredom as usual? Biographical surmises at this point. Remember, stay away from the bio.
Major research issue for the day—-where did Durrell get Konx? maybe from A Crowley's 1907 book on occult essays in Light. He claims it was the salutation to initiates after they had completed the Eleusinian Mysteries.
konx om pax isn't that also "go in peace" ?? just like today's mass!?
Sitter is recommending Oxfam—-praising its reporting, Phil is defending billionaires against the charges
20 Nov Can feel that twinge of nerves about taking care of the MuniRevs
tax for October. Be happy indeed when the house is ours and no daddy
figure looking over the shoulder about it.
Victoria texted she can do the housekeeping gig for us. Hooray.
Can't lose sight of this passage. Best of the year so far!! "Suddenly a shutter seemed to roll back across my mind. I realized that this new fact that I was enunciating was one that I had always known, but without being aware of the knowing! Foolish as it was the distinction was a real one." 307
Notice how I renamed the book into Aphrodite's Revenge!! when in fact it is The Revolt of Aphrodite! Big difference, big distinction, and real one. These are lines for my yard sign. "Aphrodite is real.
Durrell in this volume feels at ease, even on the down low or something like that. Maybe depressed. Maybe back after depression. Did he frequent prostitutes in Greece and imagine life among them? Did he yearn for living with them? Are the characters in the -tets spruced up respectable literary variants of ordinary even undesirable characters in real life? Did he really want to be Genet or Malcolm Lowry? Or Henry Miller? Was he trying to compete with Miller, live up to his standards of the lovely down and dirty?
Whatever, the writing has wonderful energy as usual, overblown and excessive and hyper and extravagant and on point, laser sharp and on fire. Firey indolence. oops fiery!!
look at how his Koegen anticipates today's headlines about AI and Sam Altman.
and look, D steals the name of his scientist from "A Roman Catholic theologian, Georg Koepgen has best described the Trinitarian basis of Christian spirituality. [All the references in this chapter to Georg Koepgen are taken from the Introduction to his book, Die Gnosis des Christentums, 1st ed. (Salzburg, 1939)] "
Petronius, Satyricon, of course that is what Durrell is riffing on, updating, responding to, joining game with, expanding upon. etc etc
And then the architect! great addition to the cast of characters. His
lecture at the Parthenon, capped by the performance by Sipple. Great name.
All ready to write some xmas cards, bough two boxes yesterday. boy the coop was hopping with workers, stocking, marking, sweeping.
"I had always known, but had never been aware of knowing it." I always knew but was never aware that I knew. I like that version. I always knew, of course, but was never aware that I knew. Or "I always knew, of course, but never allowed myself to be aware that I knew." I like that version too.
Nursing my sprained big toe. Does it get sprained from holding up the heavy winter duvet at night?? And by pressing on the gas pedal in the car.
23 Nov Thanksgiving day
parade on tv sun bright snow melting ready to microwave meal in an hour or so noon now
24 Friday
What stays what goes becomes the drama of each moment. Moonstruck and La Boheme yesterday.
One long passage in Revolt I wish I would type out. About how life goes on out of the corner of one's eyes and you can't tell what's happening.
on page 100
25 Saturday sore foot plantar fascitis, sprain, break? might to go Urgent Care to see if their imaging can tell—-or just worry and fret
26 Sunday
foot better? seems so for a while but have not done much so far this morning except sign xmas cards —
29 Now have a boot on the right foot to keep it stable I guess. Compression socks on order. one pair here I couldn't get on this morning!! Didn't want to either I guess.
Going to have Eliz take Va to Refresh tomorrow, cut down on driving until the foot feels less wonky.
30 Nov
Last day of the month. leg up most of the day, reading Revolt. Long boat trip was just like a Viking cruise.
Joe talks about his narcissism, his thickheadedness, self-deflecting charm tactics of all self-absorbed writers. Narrow view of thing through which they filter the world, defend themselves from the world. Did I read and now remember correctly that Durrell says writers write to protect lost innocence? That probably will not show up in a google search. Might have to put quartet on kindle so I can search the online text.
