I think I woke up grumpy today. For no reason I can think of. Male menopause or something.
I tried to alleviate it by playing a fugue from Bach’s Art of Fugue. That did help a bit, I think.
As I treadmilled this morning I read most of a short story in the recently released Best European Fiction 2010. The story is called “The Sky Over Thinkvellir” [link to Googlebooks rendition of it] and is written by Steinar Bragi. I think Googlebooks let me read almost all of it. There might another page. Anyway, I think I will probably purchase the anthology or something. I want to re-read it and think about it some more.
Sample:
“Musicians and artists have always known…. [t]here is no reality. Everything is beauty. Impressions are made on our neural receptors–across clouds. We’re clouds wearing pants! The earth we’re sitting on is a cloud, and our brains are crackling clouds full of lightning!”
I quite like that. The story is about a couple. The girl is getting ready to break off the relationship, the guy is a stupid guy getting ready to give her a gift to show his “love.” The story oscillates between both of them having interesting and dumb points of view. By the end of the Googlebook excerpt they have left the story and the omniscient narrator is talking about the midges on the mountain… pretty cool.
Couldn’t find any books on Amazon by Steinar Bragi.
I should be working on church stuff. But I’m feeling grumpy and truant. Yesterday I read quite a bit in my recently received copy of “The Metaphysical Club” by Louis Menard. In chapter nine, after setting up some of the members for the previous eight chapters, he finally introduces the club itself. The club is more of a metaphor for conversations that went on between Oliver Wendell Holmes, William James and Charles Pierce after the Civil War. Dewey gets in there also and a new guy for me: Chauncey Wright.
The idea is that these men were thinking about society and science right after the war. William James concludes that “certainty breeds violence.” But the exchange of ideas they have is quite interesting. I’m enjoying the read.
I need to quit and do work. Bah.