time will always progress in one direction at the same speed no matter what? As I think about time passing quickly (or slowly), the concept of time seems extremely strange to me. How it can drip and drip and drip, and then suddenly, surprisingly, as if you hadn’t been watching it accumulate all along, overflow. Like the demons of impossible tasks from The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster, except that if you keep at it long enough, you really can empty a well with an eyedropper.
I believe this saying is original to my father: Wait six months, and everything will change. Time and again this maxim has proven itself true. Sometimes I reflect on six months ago, and yes, indeed, it was very different than the present. (For instance, exactly six months ago, I was in the middle of a very difficult semester, writing my thesis and trying to make decisions about graduate school. I was not engaged. I was not a graduate. I was unhappy–but now I am a happily engaged graduate. How things change, no?) And sometimes I wonder what my life will be like six months from now. (I will be married, living in a new state, working at a new job, etc.) I will miss the past a little, but looking back usually makes me only more grateful for the present. Excelsior.
I begin to fear that these are not allergies, but a cold. Also, I tried and failed to read both Blue Angel by Francine Prose and Palace Walk by Naguib Mahfouz. Now I’m working through The Master by Colm Tóibín, but I’m contemplating betrayal in favor of The Blue Sword by Robin McKinley.
Quote of the Day. “This is Alejandro, my Spanish-speaking lizard friend!”
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