Daily Office:
Wednesday
¶ Matins: Ms Cornflower is not as lucky with her new dishwasher as I have been with the new computer. Even if it didn’t work — and it does, just fine — the new computer would not flood the blue room with suds. My heart do go out.
¶ Sext: Kathleen, expects to fly on American Airlines to North Carolina this weekend, to visit her parents. I wonder if she’ll be able to get there.
¶ Vespers: After a quiet day of reading and minding the domestic front (isn’t that a nicer way of referring to “paperwork”?), I’m going to try to finish watching Ha-Buah (The Bubble), an Israeli movie that I rented the other day. Whose idea was it to print the subtitles in yellow?
Oremus…
§ Matins. This afternoon, I took two walks, in opposite directions. The second walk, a truncated version of my constitutional, took me past this planter of hydrangeas and on to some other vernal treats. The first one took me to Madison Avenue, where I picked up a copy of Richard Sennett’s The Craftsman at Crawford Doyle. The dishwasher story suggests to me that we elites have reaped what we have sown, with our glance askance at all forms of manual labor and our provision of movies and television shows that fairly proclaim the stupidity of old-fashioned hard work. No wonder “I want my MTV”! No wonder the installers were “defeated.”
In Connecticut, ten years ago, when we had our house on Candlewood, I met a handful of craftsmen who belonged right up there with Dorothea Brooke, making the world a better place with their beautifully executed unhistoric acts. I went broke paying them to rebuild my house, but I’d do it all over again just to learn what they taught me about doing well what’s worth doing.
§ Sext. Fossil Darling tells me that the inspection scandal at Southwest Airlines, which I’d only dimly attended to, lapped at American’s operations two days ago. It’s always dismaying to get wind of stories that affect one’s life two or three days after they break. Nothing makes me feel more old and discrepit than not making good use of the Internet.
But enough about technology. I’m taking the day off. I’m staying in, even though the weather is utterly invigorating — maybe I’ll go for a walk later — and reading. If I had the time-stopping powers of the hero of Nicholson Baker’s The Fermata, I would not waste it taking the clothes off pretty girls. I would use it to read.
If I can’t interrupt real, ongoing life to read books, I can certainly interrupt the reading of other books. My reading at the moment is, let’s say, highly nested. At the outermost edge, a book like Tom Bissell’s The Father of All Things. At the innermost, Winifred Watson’s Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day. In between: Pictures at a Revolution. Those are just samples.
Oh, I almost forgot: this week’s Book Review, reviewed, at Portico. It’s not a bad issue — three Yeses!
§ Vespers. What I’ve seen of The Bubble is very engaging — a clutch of metropolitan hipsters in Tel Aviv, gay and straight, speak the international language of Twentysomething. I got about two-fifths of the way through before Kathleen came home the other night. Then I tried watching it in bed, on the portable player that we take on trips. Not only did I fall asleep, however, but I banged up the disc somehow. They were very nice about it at the Video Room when I confessed. It crossed my mind not to, but the idea left a powerful stink. In the end, I’ve only got to pay for another night’s rental. I’ll try not to destroy what I expect is their only other DVD of the film.