Slow Revolution

I've reached the false-bottom of today, but I may suspend investigations in favor of sleep.

Three unusual things were accomplished, and three usual things were not.

Thing one:

Doodled out of obnoxiously pink and fuzzy (muppet-like) fabric, as a warm up to the larger, holiday-related project I'll be undertaking in October. Considering the ratio of plan-to-kludge, I'm impressed with it.

Thing two:
Reagan was not at work. I went to the bookstore alone. For... pleasure? I am alone--do things alone--all the time. This was the first time in recent memory I did something on my own. It's a subtle-but-distinct difference.

This On-My-Own idea is so obscure to my daily life that I was terribly out of practice with it. I browsed at one bookstore (reading a graphic novel), walked a long way across a parking lot to another, browsed there (seeing what looked like my high school English teacher in a meeting of a local writer's group), then took the long trek across the parking lot again to see if I could spend the tenner burning a hole in my pocket. (I didn't.)

While I didn't find the particular inspiration or relaxation I hoped for, I did encounter a hundred tiny messengers telegraphing to me "get serious. get to work." They're right. I need to get serious. I need to get to work.

Thing three:
I came home from that expedition (which, in my mind, I likened to riding a unicycle) and finished Midnight's Children, which I liken to a dream. It's run its course (and I was there every step of the way), I've woken up, and I'm not sure what I'll remember in the morning.

Also like a deep, intricate dream, I want to relive it so I can re-examine it, but I don't know if I can go back there again. The barriers to me revisiting the world and life of Saleem Sinai are not as absolute as those that prevent me from experiencing Monday night's dream again in the sense that the book is still there. I can pick it up and open to the first page of the first chapter (or even read the introduction again) any time I choose.

The barrier is more self-inflicted. I have trouble returning to a previously-read piece of literature (and I do mean that Rushdie's novel is of high caliber) when there are so many books, even in this very house! in this very room! within my line of sight! that have not yet been explored.

Catching my eye right now is Shabtai's novel past continuous which I can't recall knowing anything about when I purchased it from a discount bookstore five years ago.


Three things I didn't do today: clean my feed-reader inbox, d*ck around on Facebook, draw more than my morning Blue.