Damn, Fintan O’Toole can write. I can remember greatly enjoying his work: “The
Lie of the Land” from some twenty-years back.
Yesterday I got my second copy the New York Review of Books delivered to
my house and noticed he had a cover article about Joe Biden, whom I otherwise wouldn’t
have necessarily wanted to read about.
Someone else had gotten us a copy of New York Magazine which had a characterized
representation of Biden and Warren and Sanders and Buttigieg on the cover, which I had little
to no intention of reading. But “Mourning
Becomes Joe Biden” was a subtle look at Biden’s trajectory, his identification
as Irish Catholic, his embrace of the dead Kennedy’s and his own, aching T.B.P.T
(touched by personal tragedy). Here was a depiction of a candidate that felt Shakespearean,
rather than polemical.
Loyal readers will know I’m persisting in my slog through
the Old Testament. People I know and
respect have told me when I’ve asked that the Book of Job is a section of the
Bible they quite enjoy. It’s hard to see
how. God is goaded by Satan like a kid in a playground, into ruining the life
of one of his innocent, loyal devotees and sadistically testing the extremes of
what faith can endure. And then he rewards
him with new wealth and new beautiful kids after he’s wiped out the first
lot. Hey, look, a happy ending. What a spiteful, miserable tale. I’m sure I’m missing it all.
What follows though, caught me completely by surprise. Operative word: “Follows,” in the Jewish
Study Bible at least, is “The Song of Songs.”
What a disarmingly romantic, evocative verse! How many poor young men and woman, living isolated
in monasteries with nothing but Job and Jeremiah and Ezikial to consider in the
Old Testament, came upon the Song of Songs and read it over and over again,
wondering why it was that these simple, Mediterranean pleasures had been denied to them in their monastic drudgery? Predictable perhaps, but it was
the first section I think I’ve come across, now, nearly sixteen hundred pages
into the text, where I heartily commenced to read it over again. I suspect I may actually return for a third
helping.
My mom graciously offered us a desk for this room I’m now sitting in. It is a Queen Anne, I
believe and while it is a lovely piece it is too small for my long legs. I went down considered my options last night,
after scraping my knees a third and fourth time, pulling in close, to type. Books were uneven and other nothing else in
eye-shot seemed sufficiently sturdy to hold up the furniture. Down in the basement the four-by-four I’d
hoped to find was nowhere around. But just around the time I was preparing
to give up, I spied a number of similar sized paint cans. And now the desk is resting on four red napkins,
which themselves rest upon four paint cans.
It looks silly but my knees can now slide in and out. Still, the Mrs. will not be one to approve of this junky this set up. I needn’t even wonder.
Thursday, 01/30/20
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