I made pasta for dinner tonight.
The 14yo didn’t like the sauce, which as far as I can tell was the same as ever. Cooking for my kids is a bit of a challenge because they don’t like many foods, let alone the same foods, and when one or the other grows out of a food it’s a real bummer. I am much like the biblical Job, a deeply good man being tried by an arbitrary God for reasons beyond my comprehension, yet still retaining my admirable humility. Well that’s me started. Sometimes it’s hard to start, when there’s so little news to report! Ate a lot of chips and salsa. Anything else? Nope.Oh! I went to the library today and got out the novel that was waiting for me on hold and which I’ve abandoned at least twice before because I slowed way down and ran out of renewals. The Shape Of The Ruins. The author escapes me (so far, but my traps grow steadily more sophisticated, making it only a matter of time). It’s very good (hence my plan to trap him so he can read to me and me only), I just have a busy job and poor time management skills (my trapped author will also fix that as I will make him serve as my personal assistant). I’m looking forward to reading it.
Tonight I finished the Boiling Point show then watched the film as well. It’s good. Sad. About work breaking people to pieces, right up my alley. I started The Snapper as well, based on the Roddy Doyle novel. I’ve not read Charlie Savage or the Dead Republic series but have read all his other novels. I’m a big fan of what I’ve read and I like the film so I looked up Doyle books in the library catalog and I’m sad to say there are fewer than there used to be. I am generally at peace with my life personally but the decline in size of public library systems (and their funding) here compared to previous places I’ve lived is mildly upsetting. We deserve better! Of course that applies much more widely and urgently than to public library collections but they’re all of a piece with each other.
The Boiling Point show and film sent me down a Marx rabbit hole, about what Marx calls absolute surplus value and relative surplus value. That was a fun bit of nerdery, whiling away some weekend time. I’d meant to do a bit of walking by wife took the one kid for a walk and then the other so there wasn’t quite the time and I was kind of disorganized as well. I’d like to be better about that, remember to get more exercise each day, I want more of these not notable days to recollect.
I was going to stop there but I remembered I had wanted to say that I remain impressed with novels and the people who write them. I don't know if it's a class thing or a nerd thing or both or something else entirely but I have not lost my sense that the people who write novels are basically magic. I realize much better now the differences between status and income, that novels are fancy doesn't at all mean they're well paid - swine run the world and do not respect pearls - but still. It's probably a conservative impulse to some degree, both believing that there are some people who are intrinsically magical and also thinking there's some elevating quality to art (hence an elevatedness about people who know a lot about and consume a lot of art - consume?!), but I do still believe those things. I'll stress, I don't think artists and art lovers are better than other people for their artiness. I think they're better than they would be were they not arty - arty pricks are a real thing, but their artiness is partially redeeming, even if to a limited degree. I just think art is transformative and I respect commitment as well, so people who have really taken in art have been changed by it and I respect that, admire it (and crave it, to be completely honest), and likewise I respect dedication to making art of whatever kind. Alright enough there, too much really, yeesh.
