Weather Report (bis)
The Hamlet was struck by snow! A foot of snow isn't that much in the grand scheme of things, but in a place like hamletino that is entirely unprepared for snow, this might as well be a natural disaster!! The Hamlet turned into a ghost town. SUV's stuck in the snow, stores closed, snowplows broken - quite the scene of turmoil!
At about 2pm yesterday, I finally decided to dig my car out of the snow, for fear that it would all freeze overnight, and i'd never see my poor hatchback again! A kind soul loaned me his shovel, and then stunned by my ineptitude, helped me shovel the show around my car. Turns out he and his wife are from the Northern Metropolis, and what is more, went to my rival highschool!!! Crazy coincidences happen in the hamlet:)
Every so often, I'm reminded of the power of stories, narratives. I'm reading Alice Munro's View from Castle Rock and can't put it down. I love being 2/3 of the way through a book -- you're already entirely ensconsed in the novelistic universe, you know the characters, you've lived with them for hours (days? weeks?) and yet you know there is still more to come. I find myself getting anxious as I near the end of an engrossing book. I don't want to part from the Laidlaw's. I want more of their adventures in this new land they discover -- a land that happens to coincide with a landscape i find utterly idyllic -- southern Ontario, about 150 km north of the Great Metropolis, around Georgian Bay -- a place I discovered by chance two summers ago, and one to which I'm instinctively drawn. Not extravagant beauty, or culture, or stunning sunsets or anything. I'm not sure what it is exactly, about that stretch of land, but it almost seems foreign to me in its familiarity. Rather, familiarity that I'm surprised by time and again. It's Alice Munro's land, I'm realizing, and I wonder, for a minute, if I somehow fell in love with it because I had internalized it through her stories. Is that where the familiarity came from? Who knows....
Anyhow. I recommend View from Castle Rock.
Saw Schultze Gets the Blues -- a German version of About Schmidt -- brilliant and touching. Recommend that one too. The soundtrack for today is still Mozart's Dissonant Quartet (C major). It's been just over a week, and I still can't stop listening to it.
Two more lectures & the semester is over. Funny how these endless things always do come to an end.
Anyhow, brilliant sunshine outside. Time for a walk.
At about 2pm yesterday, I finally decided to dig my car out of the snow, for fear that it would all freeze overnight, and i'd never see my poor hatchback again! A kind soul loaned me his shovel, and then stunned by my ineptitude, helped me shovel the show around my car. Turns out he and his wife are from the Northern Metropolis, and what is more, went to my rival highschool!!! Crazy coincidences happen in the hamlet:)
Every so often, I'm reminded of the power of stories, narratives. I'm reading Alice Munro's View from Castle Rock and can't put it down. I love being 2/3 of the way through a book -- you're already entirely ensconsed in the novelistic universe, you know the characters, you've lived with them for hours (days? weeks?) and yet you know there is still more to come. I find myself getting anxious as I near the end of an engrossing book. I don't want to part from the Laidlaw's. I want more of their adventures in this new land they discover -- a land that happens to coincide with a landscape i find utterly idyllic -- southern Ontario, about 150 km north of the Great Metropolis, around Georgian Bay -- a place I discovered by chance two summers ago, and one to which I'm instinctively drawn. Not extravagant beauty, or culture, or stunning sunsets or anything. I'm not sure what it is exactly, about that stretch of land, but it almost seems foreign to me in its familiarity. Rather, familiarity that I'm surprised by time and again. It's Alice Munro's land, I'm realizing, and I wonder, for a minute, if I somehow fell in love with it because I had internalized it through her stories. Is that where the familiarity came from? Who knows....
Anyhow. I recommend View from Castle Rock.
Saw Schultze Gets the Blues -- a German version of About Schmidt -- brilliant and touching. Recommend that one too. The soundtrack for today is still Mozart's Dissonant Quartet (C major). It's been just over a week, and I still can't stop listening to it.
Two more lectures & the semester is over. Funny how these endless things always do come to an end.
Anyhow, brilliant sunshine outside. Time for a walk.