August:
Normal
9 August 2011
Today already feels like the first normal day. I was up before eight — I’ll be rising earlier and earlier, I hope — and when I gathered up my reading glasses, my new phone, my water bottle, and my book, to carry to the front of the house where I’d be spending a few hours, I thought to bring my laptop as well, because it is now and (as a rule) only now that I am going to be connected — not on and off throughout the day. I set my stuff down on the table and arranged it while the water boiled; by the time the tea was steeping, I had downloaded yesterday’s photographs, chosen the ones to save for use here or at Facebook, run them through PhotoShop, and even (I think) posted to an album at the social network. Then I opened WordPress and got started here. Now I can close PhotoShop and Zoombrowser, write something brief here, and decide what, if anything, I want to do next.
When everyone’s up and out of bed, I’ll put on some music and start in on the kitchen. Until today, we’ve been camping out (which completely lacks the rigor of genuine camping) — piling up stuff here and there, stocking the pantry and then forgetting what we’ve got, and letting the refrigerator descend into unholy chaos. When I sort it all out, I’m going to set aside the ingredients for a composed salad, or a dinner salad composed of leftovers. I’m going to turn the ripe avocado into guacamole. And then we’re all going to sweep.
Megan, I believe, plans to take us out to lunch in town. A nice treat! I have a short shopping list, but as it includes a box of wine, I’ll be happy to have the wheelbarrow.
I brought a few books out, not as many as you might think. A recently reissued Patricia Highsmith. The Hans Keilson novel that I didn’t read. Paul Taylor’s autobiography — as charmingly idiosyncratic as his dances, but proof that he took up the right line of work. I forget what else. I didn’t have to give my choices much thought, because I planned a bedrock of Caro and Proust. I have all of A la recherche du temps perdu, the Pléiades’ dictionary-thick paperback, and, even thicker, Robert Caro’s The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York. This even thicker book is what I’ve been reading with not just interest but fascination. Everyone who has ever talked to me about having read the book has praised it to the skies, but I’ve allowed myself to be put off by the backroom-politics subject-matter and the unattractive subject. But I thought that there couldn’t be a better time to read this highly-regarded 1975 Pulitzer Prize winner than a month spent on a sandbar that Moses wanted to pave into an expressway to the Hamptons. It turns out (duh) that Caro has figured out how to charge his material with real, shoot-’em-up excitement. His dogged pursuit of the details of key transactions, negotiations, and, for the most part, underhanded maneuvers is so judicious that thebook reads like a crime novel’s dénouement. And, yes — the location gives the story some extra juice.
I haven’t started in on (resumed) reading Proust yet. I’ve been saving him for quiet afternoons that have, so far, proven to be elusive. He’ll be proof that the new normal has settled in.
What’s this? For forty over an hour I’ve been sitting in front of a sliding glass door without realizing that someone closed it last night before going to bed. That’s proof of something! And now, I hear the plaints of a little boy who, if you ask me, has been uncomfortably uncertain over the past day or two about whether he’ll be going home soon or whether he lives in a new house.