rebeccmeister | Thresholds, Imperfect Titles

I'm currently battling a moderate cold. It's not terrible enough that I can declare, "I'm sick!" and stay home and shirk work, but it has made me disinclined to get up early and row or ride my bike (besides, I can still point to last weekend's adventures as justification to take a break). Altogether, I can't even really complain, as it's the first time I've been sick since The Mono. That doesn't make illness enjoyable, though.

Right before I fall asleep, I am reading The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, by Haruki Murakami, as recommended to me by

trifold_flame, and it is a pleasing novel for its concreteness and vagueness. It allows me to imagine my own version of scenes with a pleasing photographic quality even as I read the story of someone else. I think this has to do with the mention of everyday objects, particularly foods: a ham sandwich, coffee, hard-boiled eggs. Also, alleyways, houses, tall grass, raindrops.

I have been away from fiction for so long.

Meanwhile, I am tempted to also let myself fall into the grips of a work of non-fiction, a book about a particular set of studies of leafcutter ants in Panama. It's written for a scientific audience, and yet has the pleasing story-telling quality achieved by a set of good writers who write to illuminate and not impress. The difficult balance is that this book blurs distinctions between work and leisure, and I must consider it in conjunction with other considerations for my time.

For quite a while there, I was caught up in trying to treat my time as a precious thing, saving it for something, trying to allocate it cleanly to this or that. But if it is too cleanly compartmentalized, my personhood is severed (this part belongs to work. this part belongs to rowing. this part belongs to cooking. this part belongs to ceramics. I am fragmented.). In contrast, when I do things like riding to Tucson, I feel more restored to myself, especially as I watch the sun arc across the entire sky in the cycle of the day.