Horses Come and Go

My eyes itch at the end of the night.  What precisely happens to contact lenses and the end of the day?  If I were desperate, and I’ve been desperate, and I had no other lenses handy, I’d wear em’ again tomorrow and in the morning you’d get on with it.  There’d be a sense of compromise, but nothing you couldn’t ignore before long, as you got on with your day.  It must be that the muscles of the eyes themselves sag as the day draws nigh.  I stretch my eye brows and splash some water up in the pupils but it’s no good.  I’m near sighted and the contacts are aiding my distance vision.  I don’t need that now.   

I go up to read with my older daughter.  “Where’s your garbage can?  I need to take these things out.”  As soon as they're out all the itchy irritation stops.  I can’t make out signs at three meters, but text at six inches is now much easier to discern.  We’re nearing the end of our big two-plus year endeavor, my older one and I.  We have about forty pages left to go in War and Peace.  Leo is using this opportunity to convey his theories about the inexplicable complexity of history, anticipating by sixty year or so the ideas of social history.   But I must say I wish we were back with Pierre and the Rostovs.

The one regional cuisine I haven’t made over this prolonged stay-cation, is Middle Eastern food. I baked some couscous with vegies and pulled off a just-right baba ganoush.  The houmous was good, but not great.  Fickle, getting that bit just right.  The trick to the baba ganoush was to grill the eggplant.  Perhaps I should do the same with my next can of chick peas.

Speaking of houmous, I don’t usually do two novels at the same time, but the “Time of What Horses” by Palestinian author, Ibrahim Nasrallah is in the adjacent bathroom and, it’s getting good.  Keeping track of all the Arabic names must be something like what it’s like for people who are not familiar with China, to read a Chinese novel.  “Is this the same Mr. Wu as the one we met before?”  There is a rather extraordinary equestrian focus as the name might suggest.  Horses come and go and then, invariably return.  They fly off try to violate one another.  Thoroughbreds command more respect than people.  Every time I dive back in I stay longer than I thought I would. 

Thursday, 01/03/19