Many, Many Months Now

 

I suppose I should read with a pen or migrate like most people to a digital interface where I could easily highlight text and store it and mark it.  Rather, I dog ear the book, and only when I start having epiphanies.  This marks an entire page and says, to the future me, only that something of interest transpired on this page.  I know this is true because I do it all the time.  The book “These Bones Will Rise Again” by David Keightly caused multiple epiphanies, comparing filial China with seafaring Greek and on at least two occasions I’ve wanted to go back and refer to what had gotten me so excited and if I’m determined I can usually find something with the dog eared methodology, but it is clearly compromised. 

 

This morning I was out on my porch waiting for the sun to slowly climb back up the lawn and over the railing of the porch and up on to me, warming the back of my neck so I could take this stupid hoodie off, and enjoy the rays of the sun on my body that hasn’t felt such a thing in many, many months now, I was reading Eli Zaretsky’s “Secrets of the Soul” and I it wouldn’t be far off to say I could physically feel the wind, blown through my mind, as he finished off one or another concluding paragraph stitching together disparate nodes of knowledge like someone tracing stars and forming a Greek hero in the sky. 

My younger daughter is, reluctantly, taking a class this trimester on Greek “philosophy” and when I went over the reading list with her it was clear that she’d be reading a good amount of Greek drama as well.  How many times in China had I thought:  Ah, if only I could have them talk to one of their grandparents who knows this matter well, . . . but alas I’m ten-thousand miles away.   Grandma is only 15.5 miles away these days, according to Google Maps.  Would you?  Could you?  Today?  Great. 

My mom spent an hour going over things Greek drama while my step dad and I took a walk over in Vassar Farms.  We walked passed the little outdoor theatre they have there, where I think, in prepandemic times, perhaps four years ago in the summer I’d seen the summer theatre program stage Hamlet who was played by a woman.  Down the road a bit we came upon that phenomenal oak. "A white oak"my stepdad suggested.  A fine hypothesis.  There aren't any leaves so I can't tell. This venerable creature must be three or four hundred years old.   We both walked right up to it and marveled out the way it had shaped itself to accommodate the hill, drifting down graceful and an then up again, a very long struggle to live which we were only capturing a moment's snap shot of. 

Saturday, 03/27/01