Which brings me to this blog: why am I such an irregular writer? Why am I less engaged? Does it have anything to do with the nature of the blog itself? All of the entries I’ve done thus far (few that they are!) have been easy and fun to write. It hasn’t been a chore. But I often haven’t felt like writing. There hasn’t been a built-in dimension that prompts me to see my day in a way that I wouldn’t otherwise.
And so I’m going to add a new direction to this blog to see if it ignites that noticing differently aspect of writing a blog that I’ve liked in the past. In addition to noting items on the favorite things list I’m also going to pay attention to my favourite things each day and record those. I like the idea of having a record of my favourite daily things from my 50th year (somewhat censored since this is a blog—but I also have a new freedom following from the assumption that since I’ve posted so rarely in the past there is probably no one who reads this anymore anyway!). And I like it even better when I think of it in combination with the favourite things that so many friends and family suggested. And so, from here on in, I will regularly note my favourite daily thing or things and semi-regularly (maybe) note items from the “favourite things” list.
Today’s favourite thing(s): ordinary person favourite thing: getting home in time to make dinner (chili) with Michal; nerdy person favourite thing: listening to students present papers at an all-day colloquium and listening to the exchanges that followed.
And this makes me also reflect on the nature of “favourite things”; they are often so mundane and idiosyncratic and specific to time and place. One of my favourite books is Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children but that is partly related to where I read it (in Varaire, France—one of my favourite places) and all the sensations that went along with that (the smell of hay and jasmine, dropping slices of ripe peaches into a glass of red wine) and so on. There are two (well, more) images from that book that have stayed with me: one character refers to learning to love her husband (by arranged marriage) in fragments (first the hands, then the wrists etc) until she loved the whole man; and at one point when someone dies the death is referred to as a [name of character]-shaped hole in the universe, as if, with that person gone, a piece of the universe in the exact shape of the person were cut away (Rushdie says it much better of course).
And this reminds me of another favourite thing from today: Barbara G noted that in Moby Dick one of the character’s mistook the whale’s awkwardness for malevolence. I like the way that books can get at those very basic things people do: like misreading awkwardness as malevolence. Even better when the observation is made by way of a whale.
And now here is a favourite thing from the list: Lucien Freud. Lucien Freud happens to also be one of my favourite painters; and one of my favourite days of 2010 was spent, in part, at an exhibit of his work at the Pompidou Centre in Paris last March (which was also, easily, one of my favourite art exhibits ever--the show was so well done).
Here is an image I found on the web:
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