I Can See Horus

Today’s the day.  There are no calls today.  No meetings.  Just me at my desk.  Grading must happen today.  And the first assessment and the second are always slow.  It’s only after you’ve graded a number of works in a row that you get a rhythm.  You get a sense of how long you have to go.  And given my pace with this rhythm I’ve established we’ll be at this way into tomorrow. 

And the phone doesn’t ring.  But wechat hums.  I look.  I reply.  It’s a welcome relief, to have to thumb off a few simple utterances, rather than having to say deeply consider someone’s words and say something of consequence.  I consider putting my phone in another room and of turning the app off on my computer.  I don’t have the discipline to ignore it when it is within earshot. 

Lunch time.  I sit down with a large bowl of tuna salad, which I must have just added twenty different things.  I put a little orange juice in glass and fill the rest with soda water and a few ice cubes.  I don’t recall when I started doing this.  I used to just drink the water or the juice.  I don’t like the hard chairs in the kitchen and as always, I go to get a pillow to sit on from my desk.  But I don’t bring the computer. 

I don’t want to read any more papers.  I have been rereading the hundred-year-old “Cambridge History of Egypt.”  It is infinitely more interesting to read after having visited the country.  I think I must have been rather lost when I read it the first-time last summer.  Now I know where Abydos was, and why it was important.  I can see Horus and Seth and I so enjoy being able to drift back to Egypt for a moment.

Wednesday 7/31/19