As I left the house, I noticed dark storm clouds above the condos, which, as with the day before, never managed to amount to rain. The “stuckness” or repetitiveness of weather patterns has become palpable –as is, sometimes, their jerky or clumsy effort to restore balance or get unstuck– hard showers/ or days of hard showers.
I walked to the Goodwill first, where I bought for a couple dollars a book on the physical sciences, thinking to bone up for no particular reason on the physical sciences, (though I never did wind up reading it) and a copy of The Hamlet, which had recently been brought to mind. (I didn’t plan on reading it again but just thought I might need it to refer to later, but I did wind up rereading it.) From there to work, a busy day there….
Woke up early and enthused, a spring in my step. In Kierkegaard I reread the part about the “poor clothing” of The Good: how The Good doesn’t need any one person — rather, it’s individuals that need and require The Good– and it takes a long time for the Good to achieve its ends. (The Good requires “unprofitable servants”: it doesn’t require us to be profitable — it requires us to will what’s good). I translated a couple lines from The Odyssey; they referred to a land –perhaps Egypt?– where everyone was a doctor and “had knowledge of all people”, the children of Paion, a god of healing.
This was the day I saw two people at a table sitting across from each other both reading Frederick Douglass’ autobiography. It turned out that they were a mother and son who had just returned from an afternoon of volunteer work at a literacy clinic somewhere not far from his house. I recently saw the mother again –she had been reading Walter Mosely, who I hadn’t read or heard of– and strongly recommended his books. (Walter Mosely).
I haven’t seen her since then –but I did finally get around to reading and enjoying “A Devil In A Blue Dress” this past summer. (I wound up putting this book, along with a few others, in the clothes drier, as the result of bed bug scare, which more or less destroyed the book.)
.i`` * ^ / . . . . . ` `~ 