Monday, October 25, 2004

keeping it all together

the world is actually organized around the notion of catering to busy people. i've ordered organic vegetables to be delivered once a week so that i don't have to use my time standing in the grocery store, choosing veggies. i have a babysitter who picks up my child when i can't make it home in time. on wednesdays, i pick her up myself and we go to gymnastics together. we get good, quality time together with dinner, the nightly bath, a round of pbs kids (the child is frighteningly brilliant at that website), reading stories and talking before bed. and it all hangs together. frighteningly easily, actually. life is good. and i'm ordering someone to clean this week. what could be better? the fact that i can drop off my dry cleaning at work on mondays and pick it up on thursdays. that's pretty good. and the ubiquity of mobile phones. i like that too. it's really not so hard, this having it all...

Sunday, October 24, 2004

oracle night

i just finished paul auster's oracle night, a slim novel that i devoured in a matter of just a few hours. it swept me in and held me fast, making me question reality and time and the future, just as his character, Sid, did. i hadn't been so taken in by a novel in ages...not since the corrections, i guess. it' s one of those books where you feel wistful that it's over and that you read it so greedily and didn't savor it in order to prolong the experience. but, i just couldn't stop reading, nor could i slow down.

it had a very interesting premise...does writing contain some element of prophecy? can the things we write come true? do we tap into something when writing? some line to the future? even when we speak of the past? it's a fascinating question.

also fascinating were the stories within the story. when the main character is a novelist it gives a freedom exploring various stories that he is exploring. very, very interesting.

the novelist in the novel buys a special notebook, a portugese notebook, and it lures him in, making him able to write like he hadn't written in ages. since i always feel that the notebook in which i write has special significance and i choose them carefully and by holding them and feeling them in my hand, that aspect spoke to me, tho' in the novel there is a sinister element to it as well.

i may have to go reread it already. it's one of those books.

Wednesday, October 13, 2004

no time for sleep

it's so strange, looking back over my agonized posts, as i waited to hear whether i got the job. once it happened, it happened so quickly. the fourth interview, the offer, the signing of the contract, the celebratory dinner, the first day, the first week....and now i'm well into the second week. elated. loving every minute of all of the new things i'm learning and people i'm meeting. the agony of the wait somehow worth it in the end, for what was awaiting me. challenges. growing, stretching myself and finding myself worthy of having been chosen. finding it hard to sleep for an entirely new reason...because my mind is racing with new things, thinking them through, processing them. and in that, there's no time for sleep. and it doesn't feel so bad.