A month ago, I wrote about my day. It's nothing special, nothing earth-shaking—my day. But it's something I think it's worthwhile chronicling. Because the details are important. What we pay attention to. What we get outraged by. What stimulates us. What makes us glad to be alive.
This morning I slept in! All the way to 8:15! (I've been waking up at 5, 6, 6:40 lately, so this was a treat.) I had some coffee, an end-slice of toasted homemade sourdough bread topped with truffle cheese. Then it was time to meet my Oaxacan friend (whom I mentioned last month). We started re-reading the practice book we finished last week. We started re-reading because, yes, we could have gone straight into book 2, but every week when we meet, and we read a new passage involving the adventures (and sorry love life) of Bob the bicycle mechanic, she invariably says she understands "a little." I want her to understand. So yeah: let's just start over. Keep it easy. Today, she seemed more engaged with the language. She paid attention to every word.
Then I worked for a few hours: an "edit" of a beautiful translation from the French of a Martiniquan writer, about a West Indian woman in the 1960s in France. I put "edit" in quotes because there's virtually nothing to do: occasionally I change a comma to a semicolon (in long run-on sentences), or query a term for an explanatory footnote, or wonder about a word choice. It's a dream job! (This after the book about tubers that I mentioned here last month, which was fine—I sent it out for author's review yesterday—but probably only interesting if you're a historical geographer/ethnographer focused on potatoes, yams, and cassava. Which I'm not.)
At 2 I met my friend Nina at a coffeehouse in Monterey, Captain + Stoker, a big room with rustic seating and lots of light; a good crowd, including several under-two-year-olds (separately) who were huge-smiling and exploring and looking winsomely adorable. They have no idea what they've gotten into... Nina and I did, yes, go on a bit about just what that is—the deep shit that is this supposed government. That's what we do. It doesn't solve, or even help, a thing, but I suppose it's somehow useful to rant. To know we're not alone in hating what's going on. Worrying about what those sweet little kids will encounter in another twenty years, when we'll no doubt be dead and gone.
On our afternoon dog walk, we watched a couple of black phoebes swooping from fencepost to fencepost, chatting. Yesterday, there were six turkeys.
I made a Provençal fish stew for dinner—Provençal because of capers, olives, and anchovies, plus there was shrimp and squid, and tomato paste, garbanzo beans, and spinach! It tasted pretty good.
And for the evening: The Last Detective on Britbox—an amusing-enough police show, British so no shooting; and then a couple of new series for us: The Rehearsal and The Righteous Gemstones. Both of which had me cringing. I know the Gemstones is meant to make us cringe—the arrogant and hypocritical entitlement of the evangelists. I'm not entirely sure what to make of The Rehearsal, but after a while all I could think of was the money they put into pulling off that elaborate ruse. Yes, I like entertainment. And yes, entertainment costs bundles. But we don't like it when the thing itself calls attention to those bundles.
To make fun of Christian evangelism is one thing (and I sincerely hope that the finale of this series has all these fat smug "Christian" people seriously contemplating an uplifting reason for being on this planet), but day after day we are seeing this country getting scorched. And half the country is cheering! Half the Congress yells, oorah! Or, more to the point, does absolutely nothing for this country. For the people of this country. Isn't that supposedly their job?
It's all so bewildering.
No comments:
Post a Comment