The Secret Sharer

october 2005

I can't believe it's been almost a month since my last post. Oh well, the best laid plans....
This has been a crazy month of job searching, and right now I don't have much to show for it except for two upcoming interviews. Also today I turned down a job at the last minute; I felt that it was absolutely the wrong thing for me. I thought of spending the next three months of my life in a call-centre, and I shuddered. The good Illinois-boy inside of me screams that this was completely the wrong thing to do, how could I throw away security like that? But in the end it isn't much security, and I think I would rather eat cornflakes for every meal than try to sell people Bose stereos over the phone. I think in the end the job would have shattered my fragile self-worth, and money just isn't worth thatanymore. On the other hand, there are still plenty of jobs out there that don't involve me selling things to people. I would rather stock shelves at Tesco than do such a soul-destroying thing.
There have been plenty of nice things going on as well. Tupa and I are still running together, although the days are shrinking dramatically. It feels like the days have shrunk by 1 aned 1/2 hours in the last month, although there still are another 2 hours to shave off until the December solstice. I'm not looking forward to it getting dark a little after four in the afternoon, but we have to pay for those gloriously long days of summer at some point. One day we got caught in the woods after it got dark and ended up having to walk the roads home in the moonlight. We didn't realise we had gotten that far away from the village, but it was fun and we rewarded our two hour walk home with sausage and chips in the pub washed down with a couple of pints of real ale.
I have also been doing a lot of reading over the last month. The best book I read was The Life and Times of Michael K by J.M. Coetzee. To put it too simply, the book is about a half-wit who tries to grow vegetables in a war zone. I really enjoyed the book's elaboration on passivity as a form of rebellion, although it does call into question just how effective this passivity is. In the middle part of the book, there is a fascinating section about how much of an effect history does play in one's life. This is done by a doctor who obsereves K's complete indifference to what is going on in the world around him. As with all of Coetzee's work, he challenges your expectations and makes room for many grey areas. Another boon about this particular book is that it isn't very long, although there are many ideas crammed into its pages. I would also like to recommend V.S. Naipaul's Finding the Centre to anyone who considers getting into writing; the book is two masterful essays about writing from within and without one's self.
Also in the last week Tupa has turned me on to the poetry of John Donne. I really enjoy the mix of sensuality and spirituality in his poetry. (Just a note: I have been able to abondon my spiritual preoccupations since the last entry, and am trying to keep Donne's as far away as possible although I realise this will be impossible in the end if I am to explore his poetry. But can there be anything wrong with tying your spirituality to sensuality? My notion is no.) I think I will leave you with a poem I particularly like:

Twice or thrice had I loved thee,
before I knew thy face or name;
So in a voice, so in a shapeless flame,
Angels affect us oft, and worshipped be;
Still when, to where thou wert, I came,
Some lovely glorious nothing I did see,
But since my soul, whose child love is,
Takes limbs and flesh, and else could nothing do,
More subtle than the parent is
Love must not be, but take a body too,
And therefore what thou wert, and who
I bid love ask, and now
That it assume thy body, I allow,
And fix itself in thy lip, eye, and brow.

Whilst thus to ballast love, I thought,
And so more steadily to have gone,
With wares which would sink admiration,
I saw, I had love's pinnace overfraught,
Every thy hair for love to work upon
Is much too much, some fitter thing must be sought;
For, nor in nothing, nor in things
Extreme, and scatt'ring bright, can love inhere;
Then as an angel, face and wings
Of air, not pure as it, yet pure doth wear,
So thy love may be my love's sphere;
Just such disparity
As is 'twixt air and angels' purity,
'Twixt women's love, and men's will ever be.

posted by moor-rambler @ 3:54 AM