1. This first line is from 'Year's End,' one of eight short stories in Jhumpa Lahiri's book Unaccustomed Earth. This title was named one of the best books of 2008 by the New York Times Book Review for good reason. Lahiri's writing is luminous.
2. She uses the following quote from Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Custom-House to introduce this collection:
Human nature will not flourish, any more than a potato, if it be planted and replanted, for too long a series of generations, in the same worn-out soil. My children have had other birthplaces, and, so far as their fortunes may be within my control, shall strike their roots into unaccustomed earth.
Read it again. How profound is that?
3. After going more than a week without a computer to call my own (mine fried, the husband's and son's machines don't count), I am the happy new owner of a lovely laptop with Windows 7, an incredible graphics card and lots of shiny bells and whistles.
4. The best part of a new computer is the ability to start over with a clean slate, leaving two years of technological detritus behind and building from scratch. I'm inspired - even tempted - to empty out whole rooms of my house and start fresh toward the same end.
5. Speaking of detritus...have you seen the show Hoarders on A&E? Wow. I mean, just...wow. What more is there to say? The show breaks my heart and captivates me in that train wreck kind of way, all at the same time.
6. And speaking of hoarding...there are more than 1000 posts on this here blog. That's a whole lot of something being said about little bits of nothing. Kinda boggles the mind a tad.
7. It also boggles the mind to think that the holidays are nigh upon us. In less than two weeks, family will begin rolling in from various map points and lo, the season shall be greeted. I'm quite sure I say this every year, if not every week, but time? She flies like a bird heading south for the winter with a winter squall on its tail.
8. So, I'm reading this book called Columbine, written by a journalist named Dave Cullen who has been on the story since about noon the day of the horror. I feel very confident in stating that history will prove this account to be the definitive authority on the circumstances leading up to and following the events of April 20, 1999.
9. I'm not sure how or why or even when I developed this obsession with full fledged examinations of they hows and whys of true crime American-style, but it's there. Not the sensational tabloidy rot, but the deeper examinations of the basest human behavior, its cause and effect. It's almost a neediness - to understand the inexplicable, to comprehend the incomprehensible. I don't know. But I do know that this book rates right up there with Capote's In Cold Blood, Mailer's The Executioner's Song, and Bugliosi's Helter Skelter in terms of laying bare the psychologies inherent in the criminal mind while exposing some of the social realism of environment's unwieldy role.
10. I'm equally afflicted with a lifelong obsessive bent regarding Russia's 'Time of Troubles,' the ascension of Tsar Nicholas, and the ultimate gruesome fate of the Romanov family, for what it's worth.
11. Cheery today, aren't we? Here's a lighthearted note: a box just arrived at my door from Coldwater Creek. Granted, it contains a black cardigan/jacket and a dark gray mock turtle pullover, but there's also a pumpkin colored sweater to brighten things up. Happy now? I know *I* am.
12. Our late afternoon sky of late has hovered thickly, emitting that gauzy steel gray 'snow is coming' foreboding. Perhaps my mood and mindset are just following suit. When the snow actually does fall, it will be a delightful thing. But the brooding weather leading up to it seems to guide my soul like the whims of the moon direct the rise and fall of the ocean's tides.
13. It's probably good I've reached the end of the week's thirteen random thoughts already - who knows how deep into the rabbit hole I could go were I to permit myself to ramble on with no set end point in mind today. I'll leave you with this:
...in my head, a person who was out walking and walking in the dark comes
to a little house with a light on. She waits at the door for a moment, and
then goes in and finds such a welcome that she stays. ~ Elizabeth Berg
Soon enough, the light will come on again. It's flickering a little in the distance, even now.