enfinblue's Bluey (credit to Fifi for the nickname!) Diaryland Diary

"I am seeking, I am striving, I am in it with all my heart." -Vinc3nt V@n Gogh

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Short and crisp. That's how I like them. Sentences, that is.

I had an interesting day.

First, I had a lovely run along the canal with C. I love to be outdoors, especially when I'm doing a fun activity that gets me seeing things.

There were ducks with their heads nestled to their chests, plates of ice cracked and heaved up on the shoreline, birds chirping.

I saw a man I've never seen before - clearly living outside, maybe in the bushes, covered in a blanket and with the detritus of a life around him. He was assiduously sewing up the fingers of some gloves that he had in his hand with a needle and thread. I stopped and gave him my gloves. I do not know if this was the best thing to do. Should I have respected the fact that he was taking care of himself in his own way? He was silent.

So then we ran along, Mr. C. and I, up to the lake and around and back again. Altogether very satisfying.

Afterwards we took a walk to the coffee shop down the road and picked up a nice dark roast. Then, we cooked a scrumptious breakfast at his place of eggs (dippy eggs, of course!) and toast strips and fromage bleu Benedictin on German bread. We topped it off with a taste of ice cider. Lovely!

Then I lounged around as C. worked on a letter on the computer. I read a bit of Milan Kundera's Life is Elsewhere. I found it compelling (what's not interesting about savaging poetry?), but some of the details started to annoy me. I will need to read further. It strikes me that I am becoming too analytical, and I am reminded of an interview with Christina Garcia that I heard recently recently. She said that her father never reads her fiction and when she gave him a Graham Gr33ne to read on vacation she could see him take out a pencil and start correcting the factual errors therein.

I DO hope that I don't become such a person.

So after reading I came home. I've been putzing around - on the computer and off - and to be honest I even thought of shutting this diary down. Something is bothering me at the moment, but I don't want to be silly about it. I get pleasure from writing here and I shouldn't allow elements of the milieu to disturb me. I can change the writing - put the can on the personal stuff - or simply ignore what I don't like. It's all quite simple.

I realize, as we most probably do after a certain time - me more slowly than some, probably - that when there's something getting under our skin it often is a sign flashing in red that there is something unresolved in us that we need to clear up. It's time to turn into the self. I did that for a few hours this afternoon. This one will take some time, but I'm making progress.

I don't mean, by any stretch, that I am unhappy. Quite the contrary - I'm feeling like my chipper self again and enjoying things. I have some cauliflower curry soup on the stove at the moment and later I'm heading over to C.'s to watch a movie (or he's coming here). I was just reading Somers3t Maugham's The Summing Up, which on the third reading STILL delights me.

It's a weird quirk of mine: I often read the same books over and over again. It's sort of a trust issue in that I know that the book is reliable, but it's also my detail-orientation that drives me to this. I love the way that new observations and an altered appreciation springs up as one becomes more intimate with a book, a painting, whatever.

So...lovely day.

Here's a quickie from SM himself. A discussion of why I like the gay male writerly voice from early in another century so much might be a discussion for another day.

On the whole I think the most interesting and consistently amusing talker I ever knew was Edmund Gosse. He had read a great deal, though not very carefully, it appears, and his conversation was extremely intelligent. He had a prodigious memory, a keen sense of humour, and malice. He had known Swinburne intimately and could talk about him in an entrancing fashion, but he could also talk of Shelley, whom after all he could not possibly have known, as if he had been a bosom-friend. For many years he had been acquainted with eminent persons. I think he was a vain man and he had observed their absurdities with satisfaction. I am sure he made them much more amusing than they really were.

8:23 p.m. - 2009-03-21

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