Sunday, July 5, 2009

this is part of me writing a paper

The magical evening light. I'm at the synthesis phase, the trying to pull 500 years of history into a storyline phase, the working-on-order phase. I am eating astonishing quantities of popcorn. I am drinking Diet Coke with Lime. I am stacking and rearranging hundreds of pages of photocopies of out of print books and articles and uneasily eyeing a stack of several dozen books hiding behind the couch.

The world is alive. The sunlight, itself, is shy and alive. The tablecloth hangs just so in the other room, and the blinds sway almost imperceptibly on a tentative breeze.

I think Josh's questions about the stories we inhabit are very, very important. Please go comment on them.

2 comments:

  1. Hi-
    Some things different 100 years ago, (more like 150): most people farmed, had large families, no TV, worked 14 to 16 hrs per days, (or dawn to dusk), expected children to have work chores, worked 6 days per week, died young, paid no taxes, had little or no credit (unsecured debt), had tiny houses, had no refrigeration ( read no left-overs), had no electricity, no in-door plumbing, read few newspapers, books, or magazines, no phone, no internet, no paid vacations or sick pay, no insurance, no car, ect. They worked alot and many never made it past 6th grade. Many died of diseases that are easily treated today. I think most were happier than we are today, but I am not sure. I think they worried less and had lower expectations in life and so were less often disappointed, depressed, and frustrated, but short of finding diaries or letters we will never know thanks to the proliferation of revisionist history. Many of us try to recapture this simpler way of life on vacation (camping), gardening (recreational), and making homeade things (cooking and crafts), but this is by choice, not of necessity. You can't turn back time. It is what it is.

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  2. Sorry, I posted my comment on wrong entry.

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