Win of the week: Getting through each day
Looking forward to: All the outings we have coming up next week
a week’s worth of shōkakkō
Sunday: The relief of getting through a gruelling stomach bug
Recovered from the stomach bug, but appetite hasn’t entirely come back yet. Glory to God that I’m able to eat again though. Fasting, having stomach pains, and feeling queasy and sick was no fun.
Monday: When you submerge yourself in a hot bath
The moment you sink your whole body into the bath and feel yourself melt and dissolve into the water. Absolutely divine.
Tuesday: The thrill of writing and not knowing where it’s going to go
Lots of short fiction ideas coming to mind lately — unsure if this will be for film or short fiction or novel-length stuff. But I’m just writing down whatever comes to mind. I wrote a couple of scenes for a random idea; had some characters and dialogue and pictured the scenes in my head and wrote them out. I know nothing will come of it, but it was fun just to write!
Wednesday: Chopped scallop rolls
Nigel made sushi for dinner and the chopped scallop rolls were delicious.
Thursday: Small cubes of golden-brown tofu sizzling in sesame oil, garlic powder, and tamari sauce
Friday: Feeling the warmth of sunshine on my skin
The previous day we experienced four seasons’ worth of weather: rain, wind, snow, clouds, and sunshine. So it was refreshing to see blue skies, sunshine, and feeling the temperature rise!
Saturday: Seeing the Pascha baskets coming together
With my mental health in the gutter and having missed church quite a bit due to various colds and illnesses, it was hard for me to feel like we were nearing the end of the fast and going through Holy Week. But putting together the Pascha baskets did bring some excitement.
what we did
- Homemaking: Lots of laundry, lots of dishes, cleaning
- Struggled incredibly with my mental health; feels like I’m withering away sometimes
- Went to the library
- Went to the grocery store twice; once to get groceries, the other to get birthday and Pascha stuff
- Went to the dollarstore
- Got to sleep in a bit a couple of days this week
- Went on a post-nap walk
- Elora received her Melissa and Doug fairy ballerina puzzle from Nana
- Kids hung out a lot and played in the front yard before dinner
- Attended Great Saturday service at church
- Baked a lemon blueberry loaf
- Wrote down more short fiction ideas
- A feature film idea came to mind and have been working on expanding it
content consumption
Reading — Books
Finished: A Thousand Feasts by Nigel Slater — FINALLY. I finally finished it. It was a struggle to finish most of it (sadly). I had to take my time reading it because it is kind of like a secular liturgy of hours. You can only bite off so much in one sitting. I enjoyed the accounts of meals in Japan. Some of the writing was corny and redundant. I can see what adjectives Slater likes to use in his writing from how often certain words repeated…I’m looking at you ‘treacle’.
Started: Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones — I love the Studio Ghibli film adaptation so I want to give the source material a try!
Reading — Articles
Tolstoy and Dostoevksy (and Christ) by Leaves in the Wind aka David Bentley Hart — Although I’m not really a fan of Hart’s voice and tone (it just irks me lol), I do agree with his points on Tolstoy > Dostoyevsky.
An open letter to fellow writers and artists by Michael D. O’Brien — An encouraging reminder to practice humility and subservience to the Holy Spirit. I have so far enjoyed two of Michael D. O’Brien’s works. I hope to reread Father Elijah some time soon!
Watching — Anime
Delicious in Dungeon — Watched an episode of this show. Struggling to get into it even though I’ve heard nothing but praise for this show. I think I’m just not in the mood for it, but I know I will complete it eventually.
Witch Hat Atelier — I’ve only read up to what the first two episodes cover (probably won’t continue reading the manga just because I don’t have the time). Really pleased and impressed by the animation, creative use of different art mediums, and the OP! What a pretty opening theme song and video.
The Ramparts of Ice — This is on Netflix and I’m giving it a try. Not remarkable or well-done by any means. It’s more of a laid-back, winding-down kind of watch.
Watching — YouTube
Ocean Vuong Teaches the Art of Writing by David Perell — I’ve not read anything by Ocean Vuong yet, but I was very encouraged and inspired by this conversation on writing and creativity. It was really uplifting and it makes you want to sit in on of his MFA classes. The wonder and curiosity for crafting stories and writing sentences “our species has never had yet” was contagious and palpable. I really liked the parts when they talked about seeing vs recognizing, enchantment/estrangement, and much more.
words worth remembering
“It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule.” – J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Return of the King
Excerpts of Ocean Vuong’s video —
From Tolstoy’s diary: “I was dusting in the room. Having come full circle, I approached the sofa and could not remember if I had dusted it off or not. I couldn’t because these movements are routine and not conscious, and I felt I never could remember it. So, if I had cleaned the sofa but forgotten it, that is as if I was really unconscious. It is as if it never happened at all. If the whole of life of many people is lived unconsciously, it is as if this life had never been.”
From Shklovsky: “Automization eats up things: clothes, furniture, your wife, and the fear of war. What we call art exists in order to give back the sensation of life, in order to make us feel things, in order to make the stone stony. The goal of art is to create the sensation of seeing and not merely recognizing things. The device of art is the estrangement of things and the complication of the form, which increases the duration and complexity of perception, as the process of perception is its own end in art and must be prolonged. Art is the means to live through the making of a thing.”
On Poesis: “Poesis for Aristotle is the moment of process. It’s the moment in between what’s known. You have a rose, then you have the bud. Those are two mimetic moments because they have names; they’re nominal. The rose is a thing, the bud is a thing. However, there are infinite moments between the bud and the rose. When the rose tears open on its way to the final rose, when the bud bursts, all of that is still part of life. That’s poesis. Heidegger calls this the threshold moment: What is the moment when the rose becomes a rose? Where is the threshold? That’s where so much poetry and wonder, enchantment, and estrangement comes in.”
“The question is, are you satisfied with what the dictionary has given you? Are you satisfied calling it a “red sunset,” or do you call it a “low red sun rolling over the hills as if beheaded?” Is it stars, or is it boats rowed out too far? Moments like this are where the human being steps in and creates something closer to a thumbprint. You and I each have one thumbprint that no one else has.”
the good and the beautiful
Anything I found beautiful that’s worth mentioning
- The clouds of that sunset; the clouds were shaped like a DNA strand
- Toddler tummies
- Watching and reading really well-crafted stories
