It’s been a good week, starting as it did with Monday off, during which Christian and I ran an errand… then days of routine and now its Friday, the kids were home from school, friend visits were lined up and this post gets barely published in time! But I love gathering a few things here, as if I’m styling a little vignette just for the pleasure of looking at it.
1 Coziness
The errand we ran, was for a lamp. “I need a lamp!” I texted Christian, like a dramatic soprano who wants honey-lemon tea. “A lamp, lamp, lamp!” So he brought me to Home Depot, and we found a lamp, and it is perfect. I feel so cozy now.
2 Satisfaction
There are some mysteries in life, like the end of Lost or the meaning behind The Leftovers, that linger like dust bunnies. But then, I was listening to Dead Eyes and an interview with Damon Lindelof mentioned both shows and unravelled my thoughts on the subject. It was very satisfying. The podcast is a fun listen!
3 Nuit Blanche
Christian and I walked 5 km taking in the art at Nuit Blanche on Saturday. Streets were full of people, cars immobilized and buildings overrun. We took a “break” by stopping in at Across the Board for snacks, drinks and two rounds of Battleship. (While we were waiting for the performance below, we ducked into the Antique Mall at Johnston Terminal before it closed and I spied a jacket that was the same as one I had when I was young!)
4 Mr Lytle: An Essay by John Jeremiah Sullivan
I read this essay, from the book of Mr Sullivan’s gathered essays, titled Pulphead. But it’s online too. I liked these two paragraphs, because I have my own Mr. Lytle, except that she’s short, wears her hair as a sphere of white cotton-candy and raised my husband to standards of cleanliness one rarely sees in real life.
The manner in which I related to him was essentially anthropological. Taking offense, for instance, to his more or less daily outbursts of racism, chauvinism, anti-Semitism, class snobbery, and what I can only describe as medieval nostalgia, seemed as absurd as debating these things with a caveman. Shut up and ask him what the cave art means. The self-service and even cynicism of that reasoning are not hard to dissect at a distance of years, but I can’t pretend to regret it, or that I wish I had walked away.
There was something else, something less contemptible, a voice in my head that warned it would be unfair to lecture a man with faculties so diminished. I could never be sure what he was saying, as in stating, and what he was simply no longer able to keep from slipping out of his id and through his mouth. I used to walk by his wedding picture, which hung next to the cupboard - the high forehead, the square jaw, the jug ears - and think as I passed it, “If you wanted to contend with him, you’d have to contend with that man.” Otherwise it was cheating.
5 The view
I’ll leave the natural scenery behind for another shot from our night out.
Happy Friday!