It’s still today. It was supposed to be shorter because of jumping forward an hour. I found it quite long, with no interruptions or visitors and nothing special to cook. I wrote or read all day until I hit a blank wall and wondered what I was doing. So I actually went out, first time in a week. Lovely air. Mailed a letter. Is that why my wound started leaking again? I don’t want to think about it.
The world is so full of a number of things I’m sure I can find something to mull over for a few minutes….
It’s funny how things lose their importance as you go along (while other things gain of course). I can remember a couplet from a women’s magazine years ago. You’ll know how many years when you see it. It was about a teenage daughter trying to fit in:
“Her social standing is in danger
Without the latest record changer”
(Why do I remember something like that?)
I guess we all yearned for things, things that gave substance and meaning to our lives, or so we thought. I can remember wanting (briefly) a silver-backed dresser set: comb, brush and mirror. I didn’t even have a dressing table to put them on. My practical side trumped that desire when I realized that the soft bristles on such a brush would never manage my thick, long hair.
I did own a lot of the things that we, young women of my vintage, were expected to want and to cherish. (Remember heavy glass ashtrays?) After Bill died, I carried on for a while pretending I was still a member of the middle class, having people for dinner and using my china, silver and crystal wedding presents. But as my writing life got busier and busier I lost most of my middle class friends and when I moved north to a (semi-) winterized cottage on a lake, I divested myself of those possessions. I sold my sterling silver flatware and bought a new hot line to keep the water pipes from freezing the water on its way to the house from the lake. In fact, I sold and gave away almost everything, except for my books. I wrote a book about my downsizing; it’s called Enough.
Of course, I still own too much. As long as we live we keep on accumulating. I remember when the Art Gallery exhibited things from Peking Man’s collection, I came away realizing that as soon as people had a pot to pee in, they wanted another one and they decorated them.
We go on we go on, no matter what time it is.