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
Good words about living life. I am doing that. Hope that your eyes feel better. It is colder than usual here.
A late winter, delayed spring Syd? I do believe in living life, on life’s terms as one might say.
I really love this quiet post…my life has been rather up in the air and way too chaotic. Still, it is MY life and I have had it, as Henry so succinctly put it.
I love you too, dear one and hope the eyes are feeling better. All that smoke (are the fires still going on??) can’t help either–I wondered about that. Or, are things calming down around you for the time being ??
xoxoxoxo
The veld fires have slowed down and the crop spraying has stopped for now Annie, but the glare is fierce during the day. It is a quiet life but good for writers and homesteaders!
So sorry your eyes are bothering you, Mary. It must be unnerving, given your history of eye trouble.
Henry James was a great love of mine at one time–those intricate, glimmering sentences that you must slow down to follow. It’s a very different reading experience. Maybe now I’d have the patience to do it again.
Susan I am just waiting and watching — if symptoms persist or worsen, I will get to an eye specialist.
I go back to Henry James again and again — Portrait of a Lady is an old favourite, as is The Golden Bowl.
So sorry your eye is bothering. I hope the day in a dark room with cool cloths will help.
I can’t imagine olives growing nearby. I say I would love to brine them, but in reality, I might hesitate to take on a three month project! They must be heavenly though.
Feeling better today Mary Christine, just watching and going carefully.
Out here we have olive groves in abundance and I have three olive trees in my garden. Curing and ripening olives in brine and then bottling them in olive oil and vinegar is a lot of work. The brine must be changed every day, the curing process takes a long time and the flavouring of the olives in jars takes experience. I’ve doen it twice and am not sure I have the energy for that again.