back

We actually got back a day and a half ago, but it took me this long to swim up to the surface. Well, not really to the surface just close enough to signal.

We got home Friday at 11am after getting up at quarter to three. Yes, we has a reason for getting up at that ungodly hour, but that's another story (I'll put it in with my vacation post). We arrived home with a stuffed full car to piles of laundry in bags, no food in the house, and me limping severely with gout. The afternoon involved napping, going to the doctor, putting away laundry, acquiring food.

Yesterday was a slow moving morning. The first chance we've had in probably two weeks to sleep in was not given the chance to escape. A bit after noon derien headed out with the laundry and immediately thereafter a contingent of her family arrived. The remainder of the day and night was spent entertaining. It did involve, however, going to the free Suzanne Vega concert up in Freeport, which was quite cool and fun.

reading (Incest)

While on vacation I finished reading the next installment in Anais Nin's journal "Incest (1932-1934)" In this journal we see the departure of June from the scene, the continuation of Henry, and the addition of several new lovers. Seriously, her black book would make The Fonz feel inadequate.

True to the title, as a married woman of thirty (or almost thirty) with two affairs going already, she decides to sleep with her own father. Not once, but as an ongoing affair. Surprise, surprise, this doesn't release her from her early childhood demons or lesson her feelings of guilt. She quickly becomes bored of the affair, like the others, and seeks out another psychiatrist to seduce.

I have to admit I've lost most of my interest in the ongoing journal at this point. It's like watching a train wreck in a slow motion loop. Anais keeps falling back to basic thinking patterns that set her relationships up for failure since she was sixteen. She's enamored with experience, but where she used to justify it as material for her writing now justifies the damage it does by a sense of entitlement. I want to, therefore it's right. But she doesn't get fulfillment or happiness out of it. In a lot of ways she's starting to resemble a hardcore heroin junky.

The later (unexpurgated) journals have lost a lot of the charm of the earlier ones because they lack the flow of everyday life. They come out disjointed and uneven. Maybe if they were integrated back in with the edited versions of the journal Anais might not appear so blind, vain, and downright mean.

18. Anais Nin "Incest"

reading (A Farewell to Arms)

I read "A Farewell to Arms" starting on Thursday and finishing up on Friday. With that kind of short time frame, the reading obviously went easily.

I enjoyed the book, but I couldn't help thinking that at times Hemingway was just filling time waiting for the next thing he wanted to happen. The dark poetic foreboding did get a bit heavy handed at times for me, but I probably understood it better than the person who had underlined bits and written notes in the margins of this copy. I respect the bits of incompleteness that he left about the fates of the minor characters that you met along the way.

One of my favorite bits as far as the technique goes is how he represents the Italians talking when there is a group of them. At first I was irritated by the confusion of seven people talking in one paragraph with no quote breaks or reference to who is saying what. Then I realized that confusion and profusion of words was exactly what he was showing. He drags the reading kicking and screaming into a garble of people all talking at once, responding to each other or opening up new threads, while the person listening is awash in a sea of words. Cool device which contrasted the two person back and forth he had elsewhere quite well.

19. Ernest Hemingway "A Farewell to Arms"

reading (Asimov's)

When I got home Friday there was an Asimov's waiting for me. Today I read it from cover to cover. A good issue overall. My favorite story was Ruth Nestvold's "Feather and Ring" which is sweet and warm. The remainder of the issue was even and pretty good, solid stories but none of them really stand out from the pack.

20. Asimov's August 2006 Issue