I can’t believe how little time I’ve got, even without working. I used to keep a spreadsheet of how I spent my time. I’ll have to do that now because I don’t know what’s happening to it. I’ll do a review of the week on Sunday, and see where I am.
Today a dark cloud arose and unleashed a hailstorm. The sun was still shining, and made the hailstones glitter. I took a photo from the kitchen.
It’s strange how unfashionable wonder is. In my French class, we’ve just finished the novel No et Moi, which is a typical modern novel, especially one for teenagers. The assumptions are that people are selfish and life is miserable. Any happiness is a dim candle in a dark universe of suffering. I feel sorry for the authors, and I’m glad I don’t meet them at dinner parties.
I think of what Dickens said towards the end of Pickwick Papers: we mustn’t be like bats and owls and only develop eyes for the darkness, but we must be able to see the light between the darkness. It’s not even difficult. Physical light is a good place to start.
I paused several times today to look at light coming through a window and across a chair or down a wall, and I thought, “Should I take a picture of that?” I don’t know why I found it fascinating. I just know fascination isn’t captured by a camera, so I didn’t take a photo. Do you know what? Maybe I’ll try next time. That’s the point of these six months: to stop more.
Incidentally, I found another cabbage picture today. It was a graphite rubbing of the linocut. It’s how you get a preview of a print: you put tracing paper over the linocut and rub it with a graphite stick, and then you’ll see if your lines are deep enough and in the right place. I like the image. I wonder if there’s some way you could do a rubbing of a photograph.
