Mysterious twinges of eye pain, not good in someone with a history of glaucoma and retinal detachments, so I have been lying in a darkened room with a wet cloth over my eyes. Dogs mystified. It might be just the effect of too much harsh sunlight and I feel better now.
Better, but invalidish and a bit pathetic. The last surge of summer and I would so much rather be outside pruning roses or walking under oak trees, meeting with friends, finishing first and second drafts of stories, essays, reviews.
Moving back and forth between Proust and Henry James with slow almost voluptuous pleasure. My heels are cracking from running around barefoot in dust and gravel so i cream them and prop them up on old pillows while I go on reading. or lying down with a wrung-out cloth over my face and a dog whining at the bedroom door.
The housemate perfects siesta smoothies with ripe bananas, passionfruit and yoghurt. Tall glasses of coolth in the stifling heat. On the back step and brick paving there are motionless silver and grey-green lizards glistening in the sun, thawing a little from their reptilian cold-bloodedness. The olive trees are bristling with green pips that in time will become green ovals and then big purply-black olives.
Note to self: do you want buckets of brined olives standing about in the kitchen for three months? Go on, the results will be worth the trouble.
“Live all you can: it’s a mistake not to. It doesn’t matter what you do in particular, so long as you have had your life. If you haven’t had that, what have you had?”
― Henry James, The Ambassadors
