I have only just noticed that the word “rhythym” has no vowels. What!?
Good Morning. So. January is swiftly passing away. A blue January, I would like to call it, as it is dark so late in the mornings I can appreciate every shade of it as it turns from pitch black to off-grey. In between there are many deep, pretty blue shades.
At this stage in the game, I am suffering, a bit, I must admit. I have hit my first real writing blocks, beyond the fact that its a pandemic and I’m lucky to be healthy, beyond the fact that there is mysterious drilling in our building every single day (but today it mercifully seems to be coming from farther away, and not from directly under my feet, shaking my brain). It is the work itself—they always told me this phase would arrive, but I was like no, I am a unicorn, obviously—well the work is a bit un-fun.
I usually like editing, scrubbing it up, but it seems so tedious. I liked re-wording, and shaking my head at Past Me who was not as clever as present me, who now has so many more synonyms at her disposal. There is still a very large part of my thesis I am (still) writing from scratch—and I very usefully spend most of my time and brainpower beating myself up for not having realized that the last section would end up being the most important, and longest. Basically, my work is making me hate myself and I just want to come clean about it.
The “rhythms of scholarship” is a phrase I once read on wikipedia and its beauty has sustained me through much (I am sorry, I don’t know who exactly said it, but it was a French lady academic). I am now located at a low ebb in the rhythm, a long, drawn-out low note. There is not much rewarding about this part. Maybe it is because this week I tasked myself with fixing up something that I know too well—yes it was fresh and exciting last April but it just isn’t anymore, maybe it’s because I’m tired as sh**.
It’s just going so slowly. Soooo Sllloowwwwwwwww.
I am finding very little to romanticize, which is dangerous. It’s not coming easily, so I am saying things like “I guess I am not a writer” and “This academia thing is clearly not for me”—because I hold a million comparisons with my peers, and the greats of my discipline, living or dead, in my head. Why don’t I know more? What have I been doing? Am I really stupid, or what? Oh, and don’t get me started down my You Have Made Weird Choices In Your Life Girl rabbit hole…that can take a day, or a whole good night’s sleep to climb out of.
Which reminds me. Mornings. They are still here. The deep blue of this one has faded but there will be another wistful one tomorrow. And on and on and I just have to fill them. A little cat is sleeping right beside me now as I type, and another one is sleeping in her bed to my right. There is nothing to complain of there—peace and serenity rule. Today I can probably carry on. At any rate the day will pass away and I will have, at least some point, tried to try.
I am lucky to be able to fill my life up with this nonsense. And these wretched-blessed days won’t last forever. I have put it off a long time, but someday I will become a little cog, hopefully a useful cog, a respectable cog, in some larger machine, and this private time of contemplation and “freedom” (inside the shackles of one’s mean mind) will be over. And then I will say “how precious it was!”
Ok—those are some nice ruminations. Now go to the desk.
I hope you are well! Look, its OVER, its finished, we got to the END. Good Riddance to a rough year!
Yes, the calendar may be a meaningless construct, but at least it provides an illusion of forward movement. Bring on something different! Even if it is a mirage. I’m glad the year was turning, but this year I didn’t make any plans. No self-improvements, not even one goal. This is very unlike me, but its a sign of the times. This year I found out, at long last, that I am pretty ok with how I am, and also that just living is an accomplishment. It can be hard to just keep going when everything feels so heavy. And 2020 felt like 2,020 kilos, at least, on the soul.
But enough of that! We’re still here. It’s 2021, so light the smallest firecracker ever and prepare to relive some of the high lights, low lights, and secretive asides of my reading year.
I didn’t plan my 2020 reading, I just let it flow. I started the year with plans to read Middlemarch in March, but not many other intentions. By September I had run out of steam a bit was wondering where is this going? But I did manage to read 12 Books in the end, and I am happy with all my choices and feel that they were worthwhile, and added something to my life and understanding. As I have reviewed most of my reading here on the blog, I will just list the titles in terms of the format I “consumed” them in:
Audiobooks – Beowulf, *Middlemarch, My Life in Middlemarch, Claudius the God, The 12 Caesars, Margaret the First
Physical Books – Coke Machine Glow (poetry), *Middlemarch, The Mirror and the Light, I, Claudius, Normal People, The Turn of the Screw, Elizabeth’s Lists.
As you can see, I added audiobooks to my life this year, and there are many pluses to this, especially signing up for a roll-over credit that comes due every month and inspires you to immediately PICK SOMETHING—(no matter what you pick (nor how many lists you keep) you will always feel like you might rather have had something else!) However, audiobooks are GREAT accompaniments to making dinner, which apparently has to happen every damn day, and they have actually turned this time into one of my favourite times of the day. They also make it easier to get through a huge Classic or otherwise intimidating book. You just float along for the ride. Final advantage: they don’t take up any space!
Diversions:
As usual, other books crept in this year, however, several of them lead to other things, other topics which require more looking into, so I am saving them up my sleeve for now. Here is a short summary of what I didn’t write about on the blog this year:
E.M. Delafield’s Diary of a Provincial Lady – knowing that her life got so sad at the end I couldn’t continue to the last book once I had wikipedia’d her; this was a re-read for me though, and I was a bit surprised that I hadn’t noticed all her servants and level of privilege the first time. Speaking of servants, I got really into first-person accounts of having been servants in the 1910s-1930s by real British working-class people one summer weekend, I read about 6 in a weekend. They are fascinating and there will probably be more to come on this topic. I also read a “popular” science book that was trying so hard to be relevant it was literally unreadable, and, another mistake, I got a bit fascinated by Queen Mary, grandmother of current Queen Elizabeth upon (I know, why) upon an ongoing very slow re-watch of the Crown Netflix series, so I ordered what I thought was her biography (because it looks and is packaged like it should be) but it is actually the notes of things that were not included in her 1950s biography. Oi. It was okay. It was not as good as its back cover would like to think it. Still, there will probably be more themes involving high and low born people of the past showing up on this blog, because it it is a perennially interesting, and boggling, topic.
I also read a short bilingual German-English book which I had bought as a souvenir at the Bach Haus a couple years ago (anything is possible if you leave it in the bathroom magazine rack) called “Luther, Bach and the Jews,” which actually turned out quite fascinating. Did you know that Bach’s music chorales were influenced by Luther’s intense anti-Semitic writings (a pretty good counterpoint to have because we are celebrating Luther like all the time here) and that there are even anti-Semitic verses in Bach compositons? Now they are usually changed or omitted or “sung with less conviction” during concerts. But what is so amazing is that even with all this bad baggage in Bach, it was several generations of Jewish musicians who brought Bach’s music back from relative obscurity, to being played in public again. The book is mostly about the influential Jewish figures and composers who loved Bach because they felt it was just the highest achievement in music ever— and there was just as many women involved in this process as men! As pianists, afficianados, composers and bankrollers. Yeah. Maybe I will get into Bach this year.
In general, I am going to let the chips (read: books) fall where they may in 2021. I’m going to plan reading for July-Dec 2021 (to be announced!) but until then I am going to have a fallow period. I might read, I might not. I have a fairly enormous diss to finish. I will probably write on the blog, as it is my creative outlet, but I am not sure it will be about what I am reading. I cannot be definite, I want a bit of time. Yes, I am SUCH a Slow Scholar that I feel a bit time-pressured by even 12 books a year. I need some time to digest, process what just happened, and also empty space, for unplanned things to fall into. Breathing time.
December’s Book: Margaret the First by Daniel Dutton
I had wanted to read this book, which could be classed as “an imaginative biography” for a long time, ever since I heard it mentioned in Jen from Insert Literary Pun’s youtube video (she loved it) and even after Claire from the Claire Reads Books channel said that she couldn’t quite see the point of MTF because it “is just in no way urgent.” As the things I read are rarely urgent or up to date, rather that didn’t put me off because little of my reading is urgent, rather escapist, this didn’t bother me at all. In sum, this book was “okay.” Perhaps “satisfactory” is a better term. I am glad I had it as an audiobook, as it was mildly historically interesting to listen to, but there is a jabby, short-sentence style to Margaret’s personal thoughts that I don’t think I would much have appreciated reading on paper. In fact during the audiobook I felt like if the snooty-voiced narrator (well, Margaret was a Duchess) said “I chewed my bread.” as a complete sentence one more time I was going to throw my phone out the window. Aaarrrgh gross! Not because chewing bread is gross, but the fact that this phrase (very often repeated) was supposed to signify that Margie was having some deeply contemplative thoughts while at her posh dinner table—-yuck! It stretched belief.
Still, it brings a forgotten woman writer back to life, but you kind of wonder the whole time, hmmm maybe her writings were a bit forgettable. I mean, they seemed to have been built on meaningless fancies, as sort of pseudo-science companions to the scientific experimentation that was going on in 17th century England, where new discoveries seemed to be happening everyday. I don’t want to doubt her merits, just because she was a Duchess (wow apparently I am very skeptical about the gifts of the rich) but I don’t want to believe she was great just because she was a rare thing in her times, being a woman…Although of course the way that she was systematically kept out of academe and kept from knowing things is one of those very old, very tiring, and un-erasable crimes. I am just wondering if her contributions (naturally bordered by her limited education) were in fact worth being included in the scientific dialogue of the times (with the caveat that this scientific dialogue wasn’t always itself all that scientific). I already own a book of Margaret Cavendish’s writings and plays, and on one hand, while I “should” educate myself more about her works and merits, I am not going to, I simply don’t find this figure that interesting.
