The salt mines, pt. 841

Back at the high school: making copies, moving heavy textbooks. For this I receive, daily, a heap of praise. At home, I dredge the Internet for PDFs of other people’s dissertations. I read their acknowledgements, abstracts, and introductions; and if I decide, “I’m doing better than this poor sap,” I write for a couple of hours. Then I watch Law and Order: Special Victims Unit (Karin is present for some of this). Then I go to bed. This is the routine I foresee for the next nine months – along with tutoring, which I’m on holiday from, one more week.

I go to the school at six-something each morning, with Martin. Mary has retired from teaching. She got a job at a nice little public library. Next week she will go back to college to become a nurse.

“An earthquake will destroy a sizable portion of the Pacific Northwest. The question is when.”

A modest ambition

Side-project: a paper on “atomism” in political theory, though the heyday of that discussion was in the 1980s.

Turns out, the Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor was born exactly 50 years before I was, on November 5, 1931. His own “atomism” paper was first published in 1979. If, by 2029, I publish something of that caliber, or calibre, my ambition will be fulfilled.

(I have no ambition to write anything comparable to Sources of the Self.)

More and more weddings

The raccoon went away during the night.

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David is in town for E&S’s wedding.

David: “I just passed my comprehensive exam. Now, all I have to do is write the dissertation.”

JP: “I just wrote a section of my dissertation. The section contains some nudity. I ask the reader to consider a thought-experiment about the world’s most famous clothing-optional swimming pool.”

David: “Um.”

JP: “I’m a character in the thought experiment. It goes like this.”

David (pretending to quote me): “‘Imagine me, nude …’”

JP: “No, no. I am not nude. But I am exposed to people who are nude.”

David (pretending to be a member of my thesis committee): “‘Your degree is withheld.’”

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

JP: “What book is that?”

David: “Ian McEwan.”

JP: “Which Ian McEwan?”

David: “The newest one, The Children Act.”

Martin: “Is he the writer of Atonement?”

David: “Yes.”

JP: “He’s also the writer of A Horrible Wedding Night at the Beach.”

(David chuckles.)

Martin: “Is that what it’s called?”

JP: “It’s called On Chesil Beach. But I call it A Horrible Wedding Night at the Beach.”

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Martin & Mary just got back from Florida, where Martin’s brother and Martin’s brother’s wife had a “destination wedding” on the beach. I stayed home and took care of Bianca. In homage to M&M, I bought Finding Florida, one of those liberal, revisionist histories about how awful the United States is. The prose is mighty good. The content is less than charitable (and, I gather, somewhat untruthful). I highly recommend it.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

E&S’s wedding is tomorrow.