It is good to take quiet time away from the false busyness and informational pelting that modern technology demands of us.
I can tend to be a natural multitasker. I don't know what it is about this brain that demands many channels of activity at once. The TV is always on while I'm reading. That's just STUPID, but in my world, that's the way it is.
If you factor in the internet, 24 hour news channels, chores to do and other people...I suppose any person would feel somewhat splintered.
I've gotten to have some quiet time. I read some books I've been waiting for. I read Edmund Morris' "Dutch", the official biography of Ronald Reagan. I recommend it to everyone. Morris was unconventional. He wrote himself into the narrative in a fascinating way, but the history is pretty exhaustively referenced and reliable.
In this book, Reagan isn't lionized. Often, when I read biographies...they remind me of bronzed baby shoes. Something's taken and made immutable and shiny. Bronzed baby shoes show that your feet were little once, but you can't tell, through the bronze, where the little cracks in the leather were....or, how you wore the sole of the shoe in certain places more than others...like maybe you were a tip-toe toddler.
They are just a testament to the fact that baby you existed...not WHAT baby you was like.
And sometimes biographies are like that.
I couldn't escape the Jackson coverage. The Jacksons themselves seem to be courting the coverage. A lot of what I've seen has made me appreciate what a gift obscurity really is.
And I've been contemplating my living space. And, of course, cleaning it. And wondering over the fact that I have a lot of stuff that I don't need. I have some stuff I don't even LIKE. THAT is definitely going. I donated around 20 books to the library and Goodwill is going to get a visit, too.
Slowly, though...I'm wading through the sturm und drang and getting to uncover the actual SPACE. Space is nice, clutter is bad. This is my new mantra. I'll never get rid of ALL the clutter, though...because of the actual THINGS I like. They need a place to be. And there's a little part of me that's cluttered. What I DON'T own, are a pair of my bronzed baby shoes.
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