So Glad to Lose

Every few seconds a flake falls slowly to earth.  This is snow on the edge of a desert.  Every day it seems we get a dusting.  I can’t complain much.  I’m thankful for even this modest precipitation.  Anything to combat the dust.  A big magpie just darted across my field of vision.  They seem to be the only birds that can thrive in this weather.  That’s probably why their voice is so shrill.

Reasonably early start.  Attack the week’s work on Sunday, in hope’s that Monday is actually efficient.  After all this time in East Africa with Thesiger, I reached for a West African mix this morning to fuel the calisthenics.  In my mind there is a collection of rare fruit that I’ll one day find.  I had four mixed tapes, twenty years ago, that a friend’s uncle had compiled in-region.  I’m searching for those missing songs when I look on-line, when I buy download yet another Hi-Life mix.  The mix I find on Youtube is pleasant, but there are few surprises.  

Reading “Crime and Punishment” aloud to my older one is a commitment.  We’re coming up on page four hundred and at ten-page-a-go intervals; we’ll be at this many weeks to come.  But the scenes are worth it.  We just made our way through the denouement of Pyotr Petrovitch’s marriage proposal to Raskolnikov’s sister, Dunya.  I marveled at how we can spend ten pages with what might otherwise be a very simple scene:  Pyotr’s been shown to be a vain blowhard and he is bitter about it.  But each sentence illuminates his frustration so plausibly.  Each indignity is catalogued and built upon till we are imbued with the bile of his maddening comeuppance.

Time is running out for this ritual, I know.  I must choose the books that remain to be read carefully.  An “Anna Karenina” could take the better part of a year.  And there aren’t many of these left, till the ritual must end.

I have to go now to play chess.  I had the most wonderful indignity last night.  I lost two games in a row to my younger daughter, playing in front of the fire.  The first game I chided myself for not concentrating.  In the second game I redoubled my efforts and made a fatal mistake once again.  Remarkable.  I’ve never been so glad to lose.