happenings
I'm all back home in Manchester now, following on from adventuring all round the country for a couple of weeks. I've been busy, in a sort of not doing anything important way. Yesterday, we went up to Manchester, and today I went supermarket shopping with mum, then I've also been doing a fair bit of baking.
So far this week I've made an apple and cinnamon cake, two fruit cakes and some cherry and almond biscuits, then my sis and her boyfriend have also put in a request for flapjack tomorrow, since they're heading off on church camp on Saturday, and feel the need for provisions. Baking today was fun since I put my laptop on one end of the kitchen counter and watched two episodes of Six Feet Under (season 3) while cooking.
I've also been rereading one of my favourite books, Last Watch of the Night by Paul Monette, who was a gay writer - he wrote both fiction and non-fiction, tho I've only read his three autobiographical books, Becoming a Man, where he describes growing up gay, Borrowed Time, which is the story of his partner's death from AIDs (he died quite early on in the epidemic), and which makes me cry every time I read it, then Last Watch of the Night, which is a collection of essays written as Monette was dying of AIDs himself. I wanted to share a quotation from the end of the last essay, where he's talking about the 'can't take it with you' attitude towards possessions/wealth:
"I see the difference now between mere baggage and what the hearth possesses. Not that the latter is any less stolen goods - the brimming of love and the joy of a comrade - requiring every bit of a pirate's brazen stealth. And no less snatched in the end by the icy clutch of Death than all the baronies and all their rummage.
But the hearth transformed in the process, no longer just a thing that ticks and no longer simply mortal, though half in shadow already. There's a cautionary tale in there as well, perhaps, involving a soul-deep self-delusion - but not worth the caution anyway. Something lasts, firm as the pen in my hand. Jackals and buzzards cannot get at it. Its price doesn't translate into dollars. Saved as it is in the spending, till nothing's left in the vault. Invisible in the blinding shine of the setting sun, weightless as a mid-ocean breeze. To have greatly loved is to sail without ballast - with neither chart nor cargo, not bound for the least of kingdoms. Nothing remains, except this being free."
I just love the cadence of his writing, something about it just *gets* me somehow.
So far this week I've made an apple and cinnamon cake, two fruit cakes and some cherry and almond biscuits, then my sis and her boyfriend have also put in a request for flapjack tomorrow, since they're heading off on church camp on Saturday, and feel the need for provisions. Baking today was fun since I put my laptop on one end of the kitchen counter and watched two episodes of Six Feet Under (season 3) while cooking.
I've also been rereading one of my favourite books, Last Watch of the Night by Paul Monette, who was a gay writer - he wrote both fiction and non-fiction, tho I've only read his three autobiographical books, Becoming a Man, where he describes growing up gay, Borrowed Time, which is the story of his partner's death from AIDs (he died quite early on in the epidemic), and which makes me cry every time I read it, then Last Watch of the Night, which is a collection of essays written as Monette was dying of AIDs himself. I wanted to share a quotation from the end of the last essay, where he's talking about the 'can't take it with you' attitude towards possessions/wealth:
"I see the difference now between mere baggage and what the hearth possesses. Not that the latter is any less stolen goods - the brimming of love and the joy of a comrade - requiring every bit of a pirate's brazen stealth. And no less snatched in the end by the icy clutch of Death than all the baronies and all their rummage.
But the hearth transformed in the process, no longer just a thing that ticks and no longer simply mortal, though half in shadow already. There's a cautionary tale in there as well, perhaps, involving a soul-deep self-delusion - but not worth the caution anyway. Something lasts, firm as the pen in my hand. Jackals and buzzards cannot get at it. Its price doesn't translate into dollars. Saved as it is in the spending, till nothing's left in the vault. Invisible in the blinding shine of the setting sun, weightless as a mid-ocean breeze. To have greatly loved is to sail without ballast - with neither chart nor cargo, not bound for the least of kingdoms. Nothing remains, except this being free."
I just love the cadence of his writing, something about it just *gets* me somehow.