Sometimes I feel like I’m living on the surface; skimming surely over the top without ever managing to puncture through and end up submerged. I can go for long periods of time living up here, skating along. It makes it hard to write. It makes it hard to come up with a true story; no description is deep enough for veracity. <\/p>\n
Maybe it’s the wintertime, the darkness, the sluggish response to everything. Maybe it’s the way my eyes slide along the surface, too. I don’t see things or I don’t stop for them, the way I do in the spring and the summer. There was a glimpse of white on the river as I drove over the bridge, enough of a recognition to identify a swan but I didn’t really SEE it. There was another glimpse of white in the pasture as I passed on the way to work, a peripheral flash of shape and expectation that gave me knowledge: a stork. But I didn’t REALLY see it. It’s not that there is less to see, it’s simply that my eyes are turned inwards and away. It makes for boring posts.<\/p>\n
Now is the time of preparations, and frenzied bustling and at the same time a deep sense of slowing as we come to the darkest day. A clementine momentarily arrests me: a bright dollop of glory and a sharp tingle on the tongue. Sunshine in the morning gives me joy but it’s a muted feeling. I remember the light and turn; heat-seeking.<\/p>\n
Everything I write sounds banal. Trite. I write a sentence, backspace. Write another, delete. Who cares that twice this year it’s taken me two weeks to read a single book? Who cares that I finished writing, enclosing and addressing my Christmas cards? We watched Ice Age 3<\/i> tonight: whoopee. <\/p>\n
I just finished reading the 3 Merlin books by Mary Stewart. Did you know she is still alive?? Did you know she is NINETY-THREE? I had no idea. I know we had these books in the house when I was growing up; I must have read them at some point, one would think, and yet if so, I remembered nothing. And they are so good! They don’t feel at all as if they were written in the early 1970s\u2014they’re fresh and dynamic and a fascinatingly intricate take on a tale so well-known as to be cliche. Her children’s book, The Little Broomstick<\/i>, was a childhood favorite, a birthday gift from my maternal grandparents in the 70s. The inscription on the flyleaf, in my grandmother’s hand, says To Elizabeth Slaughter from Grandma and Grandad Pangborn Aug 197-<\/i> …isn’t that strange? So I don’t know what year I actually got it.<\/p>\n
I have a couple of shelves of hardcover books missing their dust jackets: all gifts to me from my parents and grandparents for birthdays and Christmases throughout my youth: A Wrinkle in Time<\/i>, The Grey King<\/i>, Lad: A Dog<\/i>, Heidi<\/i>, The Three Toymakers<\/i>, just to name a few. The cloth of the covers is softened and the edges of the spines are whitened and worn: old and battered good friends.<\/p>\n
Looking over the list of books that Stewart wrote makes me realize that I have a lot of catching up to do; with these three I’ve only read a total of four of her oeuvre. It’s as if I’ve opened an unexpected treasure chest, seeing that long list of books that I haven’t read by an author that has captivated. It’s the same way I felt when I discovered Dorothy Dunnett: pure glee. A whole stack of beautiful books to get my hands on and devour.<\/p>\n
What are you reading? Any old favorites to recommend? Preferably ones with a substantial body of work?<\/p>\n