NYC day 10

A reassuringly typical Saturday: I did my long run (90 as 3:1, with virtually no soreness in problem area of lower back/hip/glute/R posterior chain - still can't get over the near-magical efficacy of just putting a second orthotic in left shoe to counter leg length discrepancy), got into bed with my copy of Clarissa and promptly went to sleep for two hours. Haven't read as many pages as I'd intended to, but that's fine.

I was somewhat unsettled last night by the all-pervasive sound of sirens - I always hear them, I'm only about two and a half blocks from St. Luke's Roosevelt, but with so little other traffic and more covid-19 cases arriving in ambulances, it was pretty dramatic, and again when I woke up in the night for an hour or so.

Comfort reading recs #3 and 4. Two novels about music and dysfunctional families and love: Rebecca West's The Fountain Overflows and James Baldwin's Just Above My Head. Really these are two of my absolute all-time favorites, and I am due for a reread on the Baldwin. Interesting to me that Baldwin and West are in some sense most admired for their nonfiction - Baldwin of course is much superior to West as a serious novelist, she didn't write another one that's really up to the standard of this. I contemplated adding a third rec here, Richard Powers' The Time of Our Singing; it's my favorite novel of his, I do really love it, but I think it may be more of a niche book than the other two.

Linkage!

I slept for twelve hours, seriously - today is the first day in well over a week when I didn't have to set an alarm - and am finally feeling as though I'm on the mend. Probably need to give it another day before exercising (lungs still with some junk), but this is a relief - amazing how poorly an ordinary cold can make you feel.

Two good mouth links:

I've been following the fortunes of this endeavor for a long time now, and am absolutely delighted to see this great news about Bertie's Cupcakery! Bobbie is a very good athlete, wife of triblogger DC Rainmaker, and an extraordinarily gifted and imaginative baker - she created these nautical cookies to send to my brother and sister-in-law to congratulate them on the acquisition of their first boat....

Another thing I'm keen on: anchovy taste test!

Closing tabs

Sleeping subjects.

5000-year-old games.

Unremarkable men walk 40 miles for no particular reason. (Via Liz.)

Like Colleen, I'm excited for Sara Ryan's upcoming graphic novel!

Survival

I want to read this journal issue; even though I swore this spring I'd never write another novel again, that conviction has waned and I can't help but think there might be a zombie apocalypse travelogue (horror! survivalism!) in my writing future. Part of the appeal is that I wouldn't have to make up the characters or places, just the nature of the zombie apocalypse and the obstacles and dangers our party of adventurers would face. I have the full cast of characters and locations already, in my life....

I did manage to write the lecture (on the first of St. Aubyn's Patrick Melrose novels, truly a work of genius) and also the letters of recommendation. Had an extremely strenuous and rather glorious run in the late morning, in short sleeves - temperature was in the mid-50s, perfect running weather. Class went well, but by the time I got home from work I was ready to collapse.

Finished reading the most recent Phil Rickman Merrily Watkins novel, The Secrets of Pain. Will go to bed shortly.

I have the luxury, for the first time in many days, of not setting an alarm, and I hope to take maximum advantage of the fact that my first actual engagement tomorrow is boxing class at 2pm! A long night of sleep is in order.

Closing tabs

Z-z-z.  (Via GeekPress.)

Ed Park's "Two Laptops: A Short Story"!

Phil Dyess-Nugent on Gore Vidal.  (Also recommended: Inigo Thomas's 2007 LRB piece on the last installment of Vidal's memoirs;  Marcie Frank's How to Be an Intellectual in an Age of TV.)

Elaine Scarry on literature and empathy.

I'm currently slightly under the weather with dental woes.  It is not a particularly interesting backstory; my teeth are otherwise pretty good, but I had a root canal about 10 years ago, and at my annual check-up in May, the dentist asked on the basis of the x-ray whether I'd been having any trouble with it.  The answer then was no, but a week ago I had some swelling and redness/soreness; yesterday I had an appointment with the endodontist that I imagined would be purely brief and diagnostic (I thought I would book whatever treatment was likely to be necessary for perhaps mid-September), but instead I found myself in the chair for an arduous and really fairly unpleasant 90 minutes of excavation!  Walked out slightly reeling, with face still half-numb from the anesthesia.  Am taking a couple days off from exercise, and will continue to be careful over the weekend not to put undue stress on the immune system; apparently they don't give antibiotics for this as a default, only if it gets infected.  I have a follow-up next week for the rest of the work to be done, assuming it's healing properly, and am strongly hoping that it won't be as major as yesterday's appointment!  The co-pay was $400, but it would have been over $2,000 if my insurance didn't cover it, so I can consider myself fortunate that the Columbia dental plan has improved considerably in recent years....

Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America

Closing tabs:

This may come in handy one day.

Good advice from my former student Juli Weiner!

Sleep as science-fictional adventure?

I want to see this show....

(The Audubon image is from the Morgan Library website.)

Production of quota

c. 1,000 words, for a total of 42,305 words.

There are 19 more days in January, if I can just keep this up till the end of the month and keep the whole shape of the thing in focus I will be looking at a full draft in early February...

(The beginning of the spring semester is always especially busy - we have six job candidates coming in to give talks in the first two and a half weeks or so of term, and I'll need to do meals with some or most of them too. Because of the MLK holiday, I only teach one class next week, on Wednesday, but Monday-Wednesday-Friday early-morning boot camp at Chelsea Piers starts on the 17th regardless: I'm in the 7am rather than the 6am class, but it's still going to be brutal, I am not at all one of nature's early risers! The alarm was set for 8:30 this morning for instance, which seemed reasonable enough, but in practice I turned it off and slept till after twelve. I suppose I hadn't fallen asleep till nearly three, so it is not unreasonable, but I prefer to be on the world's schedule rather than that of the creatures of the night...)

(Postscript: I am hoping to ride my bike down to Chelsea Piers in the early morning once the snow clears, but at least for the first week I am going to have to take a taxi, the height of decadence!)

Production of quota

Better late than never: c. 1,200 words, for a total of 37,100 words.

I still haven't gotten out for a run, having spent both yesterday afternoon and this afternoon in bed; I don't think I'm actually getting sick, but I feel completely exhausted and have rather swollen glands, so I guess I will just have to put up with the feeling of uselessness in the meantime - I really cannot stand the notion of getting sick again, I will do anything I can to avoid it!

I need to do some advance planning for the next stretch of novel-writing, but don't want to interrupt quota-writing to do so, and am also starting to feel the pressure of responsibilities for the forthcoming semester. Will have to see how to balance these priorities over the next week and a half or so.

"The same goes for the bed"

From Georges Perec, Species of Spaces and Other Pieces (translated by John Sturrock):

We generally utilize the page in the larger of its two dimensions. The same goes for the bed. The bed (or, if you prefer, the page) is a rectangular space, longer than it is wide, in which, or on which, we normally lie longways. 'Italian' beds are only to be found in fairy tales (Tom Thumb and his brothers, or the seven daughters of the Ogre, for example) or in altogether abnormal and usually serious circumstances (mass exodus, aftermath of a bombing raid, etc.). Even when we utilize the bed the more usual way round, it's almost always a sign of a catastrophe if several people have to sleep in it. The bed is an instrument conceived for the nocturnal repose of one or two persons, but no more.

Authorship, insomnia?

Hilary Mantel on a Manchester doctor's diaries from the 1960s: "Jan 17th: At 5.20 am, extreme angor animae [fear of death]. Eased off after hot tea."

Wakefulness

At the LRB, Jenny Diski on sleep.