It's the slow time between afternoon and evening, a time I never know how to fill. No one I want to talk to can talk on the phone yet-- everyone else is still at work or decompressing from work or eating dinner or something else.
Today I went to the library and spent the afternoon reading Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking. I worry about death a lot so I though I should make myself read it. I actually enjoyed it. I feel like I know Joan Didion now, although I think she would scoff if she knew that I thought that. I also found myself wishing I could live the life she led-- sort of ironic. Not the part where her husband dies unexpectedly and her daughter battles illness, but all the travel and eating in restaurants.
The whole thing makes me wonder what tragedy will eventually befall me...
So my day inspires three questions:
1. What's the emptiest hour of your day? How do you fill it?
2. What's the last memorable book you've read?
3. Hmmm. I don't know the third question. To be continued. Only two questions.
2 comments:
1. This summer has a lot of empty-feeling hours, so it's hard to say. But trying to think back to my "real" life. First thing in the morning is empty sometimes. Also right after lunch. For right now, I usually fill them with reading blogs and celebrity gossip on the the internet. Not good.
2. I first read this question as asking about the "least memorable" book, which seemed ironically difficult to answer. Very postmodern, or something.
But as to the actual question. I'm not really sure. The book most on my mind right now is called "A Framework for Understanding Poverty". It is about class and written by a former schoolteacher and apparently quite controversial. It is on my mind because I don't really want to buy it, but it isn't available at either of the libraries I have access to.
1. Well, when Mr. Junky can get his heroin-addicted ass off the couch long enough to go to work, I hate, hate, hatehatehatehatehate the long, long, longlonglonglonglong hour when it's time for him to get off of work. I fill it by talking on the phone to Meagan, crying, sighing, sitting outside, opening the blinds and staring out them, or yelling at the dog. Now, though, there don't seem to be empty hours anymore. I like the hours when I'm at work, and I like the hours when I'm at home. And the hours that I don't like aren't empty...they're full of rage and full of actions to display that rage. My emptiest hours are probably the times when I go sit in the Food Lion parking lot and cry because I hate Mr. Junky. So I guess I fill my empty hour with crying in Food Lion Parking lots.
Sad.
2. I also recently read The Year Of Magical Thinking. It was interesting, and I felt like I could relate to it even though no one is dead. All that wanting and missing and denial.
I really, really liked the part where she said that she wanted the doctors to do an autopsy so that they could figure out what was wrong with her husband and fix it. I can imagine having that thought.
Doesn't Joan Didion in that book remind you of Meagan somehow? The whole time I was reading, I imagined it was Meagan who was talking.
P.S.
Your blog is fun. You need ads for me to click, though.
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