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Day 206, unless I've lost count, of the "What are you reading, and why?" project, and Micah is reading The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, because he is interested in Milan Kundera, and because he wants to finish it before the serious, relentless reading of graduate school begins (6 books in just 1 of his courses) later this semester! And before student teaching begins, followed by teaching a section of freshman comp.
He was also looking for The Unbearable Lightness of Being, but couldn't find it. I have found it, the unbearable lightness of being, but in the positive sense, via that euphoria that has survived a brief uncharitable feeling toward the mulberry trees* that spring up everywhere some bird poops seeds. (I love birds, I love seeds, I love trees. A mantra born of laughter and forgetting.)
At Babbitt's, we had Immortality, but nothing else. Hey, immortality ain't a bad thing to have!
I had recently put The Unbearable Lightness of Being on the New Arrivals shelf by the door, so, evidently, it had recently sold.
At Babbitt's, we have, by the way, a zillion new arrivals. Really, a zillion. Count them. And no shelver. Sigh....
*Feeling a bit guilty about that mulberry, thanks to Kim, I should link you to a poem in Apparatus, called "Mulberry Tree." Yes, it's the "backyard along the fence" mulberry tree that's poking up among the morning glories in yesterday's less-than-charitable blog entry.
Or, as I refer to this particular morning glory photo, a lovely tumble.
Mary, a great reader of books, actually ran out of books on her birthday and 1) requested The Cookbook Collector at the library and is on the waiting list and 2) is catching up on her magazines.
Speaking of magazines, 1) my guilty pleasure* subscription to Vanity Fair ran out, and I am not renewing it, 2) literary magazines keep me busy, and 3) I just re-read "Riding the Happy Train," by Judith S. McCue, a review in The Common Review (print magazine with online presence) of Generosity: An Enhancement, a novel by Richard Powers, because of the word "hyperthymia," defined by a character in the book as a condition of being "excessively happy."
OK, 1) I am excessively happy, and 2) this is an actual condition, a feeling of serene wellbeing, possible if your thyroid is whacked out, as mine is occasionally, that is, whenever I am reading my Merck Manual, 8th edition, 3rd printing, March 1951. Don't ask me why.
OK, I'll tell you why. Thyroid vulnerability runs in my family, and is rampant in the Great Lakes region of the Midwest, where I grew up. Put the two together and you get goiter, especially if sometime in the past a houseguest left a canister of uniodized salt in the house, and you and your family just used it as regular table salt, until stress on the body (childbirth) caused a little fever, then, and thyroid enlargement, later, together with a brief interlude of hypochondria induced by reading an outdated Merck Manual.
Fear not! 1) We now have plenty of iodized sea salt; iodine is the prevention and cure for most of this kind of thyroid problem 2) I am already over my hypochondria 3) and, while I did look like a cross between Nikita Kruschev and Buddy Hackett as a baby, I was not, as my mother had at first feared, a cretin, which is a serious thyroid problem, and 4) I am still excessively happy, but I consider this a spiritual state. Plus there is some really, really old iodine in the medicine cabinet. If I have to, I'll drink it.
Wait! I have a topic?! Oh, yes, books.
Speaking of guilty pleasures*, I was eating/reading What Feeds Us, by Diane Lockward, at the rate of one chocolate/poem a day, and then I gorged on it and finished it today, while my computer was doing a full scan for whacked out thyroid problems. It is a lovely book, full of beautiful food, funny and human moments, and a lost boy that keeps breaking my heart. Plus fiery breasts. There are bees on the covers, on peaches and sunflowers, and scary bees stinging people intermittently.
Coincidii of the bees: 1) one is crawling down the throat of yesterday's morning glory 2) bees form a vestment in Sarah J. Sloat's poem "Vestment," announced in her blog yesterday as being taped for Whale Sound, which you can find at the right on my blogroll.
Coincidii of the blueberries: 1) when I resumed reading What Feeds Us today, it was with the poem "Blueberry"--Be a glutton and stuff in a handful, your tongue,/ lips, chin dyed blue, as if feasting on indigo--2) soon after reading about blueberries in Mythology and Milk.
Wait! Is that a mulberry rearing its annoying branch up through the morning glories? Yes. I hope they strangle it.
