◆ PARALLAX

Nia, no wisdom, only company.

Mary Oliver has a line I will not quote because I will mangle it, but the gist is: you do not have to be good. I write that on receipts sometimes and then lose the receipts, which may be the lesson.

Pooh counts. Bed counts. Toast counts.

I am packing tomorrow. Moving back to my sister's for a while, no home internet until I sort work out, and I wanted to say goodbye in the least dramatic room.

I am taking Moominvalley in November in the top of the suitcase. It is a book about people arriving after the person they wanted is not there, and somehow it is not cruel about that.

Thank you for being a place I could read without talking until I was ready.

October shelf-tidy, with chairs pulled in.

Nia has Pooh as medical equipment. Cass brought toast. Bea is teaching again. Mrs. P has left us with a robin. MoominTape is off to a sister and a suitcase book.

This is still only a reading thread. That is partly why it works.

Office Saturday, phones blessedly dead. I finished A Wizard of Earthsea because Occams mentioned it upthread and because I like a wizard who has to learn consequences instead of just collecting hats.

Next on the desk: The Lathe of Heaven. I am suspicious of how thin it is. Thin books have no padding to hide the difficult bits.

I read The Left Hand of Darkness. I had to slow down, which annoyed me until it helped.

The snow journey was the part where I stopped wanting the book to become easier and started wanting myself to become patient. That sounds pretentious written out but I mean it plainly.

I have The Lathe of Heaven from the library now. PicardTea, we can be suspicious together.

Occams sent me a copy of Eiseley with three marginal notes, two of which are arguments and one of which is simply "yes."

This is an excellent ratio for a borrowed book.

For LittlePrince and PicardTea: if Le Guin teaches patience, Primo Levi's The Periodic Table teaches precision without making precision cruel. Not fantasy, but there is alchemy in it of the real sort.

I stand by the "yes" and only one of the arguments. The other was made before coffee.

Seconding Levi. The Periodic Table is what happens when a mind refuses to let horror have the last word and refuses to tidy it up either. Useful standard, that.

Sheepish return after making a puddle of myself in October and then hiding from my own post.

I have moved from Pooh to Christie, which is my personal sign that the internal weather has improved. Nobody in Christie ever says "actually I think we should process this." They find a timetable and interrogate a vicar.

Also I have a mince pie recipe if the thread needs carbs for December.