OK, I guess it's definitely official. My son Gary and his fiancée Ali are getting married on 14 September 2024. This is such extraordinary news. She's wonderful and they're so good together. I could not be happier for them. It's funny when you realize that your kids are suddenly, finally, fully-fledged and functioning adults - which I guess doubles down when they're getting married.
One of the discoveries of this past summer's trip to Portugal was the art museum in Lisbon. Janet was in the middle of writing so I skived off to visit the museum. There I discovered presepios - that is, cribs or mangers - or maybe it's better to think of them as religious miniatures. They might have "lived" in churches, but you were apparently also just as likely to find them in private homes. They were closed up most of the time, but then you could open them up to explore the little world inside. As a child I would have been absolutely fixated on them.
The rustic, the reader of novels, the pure ascetic - these three are happy in life, for these three types of men all renounce their personalities: one because he lives by instinct, which is impersonal, another because he lives by the imagination, which is forgetting, and the third because he doesn't live but merely (since he still hasn't died) sleeps.
Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet, ch. 232
Truthfully, I don't know if I've actually processed all of this passage yet, but, like so much of Pessoa, I think he's giving me the tools to arrive at a deeper understanding. Maybe I'm just drawn to this because I've moved into the wilderness and I see myself in all three of these categories. Earlier in this chapter Pessoa notes, "Happy the man who doesn't ask for more than what life spontaneously gives him, being guided by the instinct of cats, which seek sunlight when there's sun, and when there's no sun then heat, wherever they find it." One of the reasons why I think I've been so unhappy during so much of my life - or at least much less happy than I should have been - is that I consistently over-thought everything, not necessarily because I've been too intellectual (because, well, I think we know that's not true) but because I felt that I was supposed to over-think everything, that somehow that gave me an intellectual bona fides that growing up in southern Indiana didn't provide. I used to opine that Graceland made sense once you visited Elvis's childhood home in Tupelo, Mississippi. Maybe the emotional carnage of so much of my life makes sense because of my own stunted intellectual/emotional youth. From now on, I'm following the example of the cats.
Seriously, how many photos of Wadi Rum sunsets are buried here in this blog? The answer: not enough.
If in art there were the office of improver, then I would have a function in life, at least in my life a an artist.
To begin with somebody else's creation, working only on improving it . . . Perhaps that is how the Iliad was written.
Anything but to have to struggle with original creation!
How I envy those who produce novels, those who begin them and write them and finish them! I can imagine novels chapter by chapter, sometimes with the actual phrases of dialogue and the narrative commentary in between, but I'm incapable of committing these dreams of writing to paper . . . . . .
Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet, ch. 291
I have this sinking suspicion that someday I'll be as famous/infamous as Fernando Pessoa for never actually finishing my larger writing projects. In there are probably many reasons for this ignominious reality: 1) I teach in an interdisciplinary programs with a heavy teaching load, none of the courses in my own discipline - and the curriculum is constantly being revised, and 2) I'm a very dedicated teacher who devotes an incredible amount of time to class prep and looking after my students (I suppose this is a subset of point #1, but in other ways it's a separate point - I have several colleagues who are facing the same challenges but also don't particularly give a shit about their students or the quality of their classes), and 3) I work on two many different projects - mainly, I guess, because I find all of them interesting - which means instead of simply finishing the Epics project I'm also tinkering with Ramadan in Winter (my personal reflection on Islam) and a couple creative writing projects, and 4) I'm the laziest person in the world - at least that's what my father repeatedly told me growing up and I suspect he was/is right, and 5) I'm more than a bit of a coward in regards to my writing, and 6) I'm utterly talentless.
Maybe this is why I'm so drawn to Pessoa's The Book of Disquiet: I completely understand why - and sympathize with - his inability to finish his projects.
Oh, and I completely swiped his reference to the Iliad for this related chapter in the Epics book.
Yes, this is actually where we live.
As we all know, and which none of us need to be reminded, I am Vermont's leading CFL fan. Sadly, I had somehow manage3d to make it through the season without going to even one CFL game season, which says something very bad about me. Happily, I kept up a long-standing tradition of heading up to Montreal for their own long-standing tradition: the Thanksgiving (Canadian version) Montreal Alouettes game. Over the years I've dragged many of my friends up to the Thanksgiving game, and this year I brought my excellent friend Mike Kelly (who was there for his second Thanksgiving game extravaganza). Since it was the only game of the year I splurged: great seats right on the 55 yard line.
