My day yesterday was immeasurably improved by reading Autumn by Ali Smith. I'd only vaguely known of her as a famous, Booker prize level of writing fame, writer.
But the other participant in our Tiny Email Book Group was rereading it, a bit puzzled but game, so I got it on Kindle, and started.
Several hours later I emerged from the kind of dream state I got into on first reading Virginia Woolf and James Joyce, that headlong rush of thoughts and images and time shifting back and forward, and shafts of wisdom, and I returned reluctantly to the everyday.
In order to say I wish I'd read it years ago, but glad to be already familiar with a lot of its raw material, Joyce, Woolf, the Profumo scandal, pop artist barrier breaker Pauline Doty, postwar treatment of women collaborators, Klee, Kandinsky, sexism in the world of art history, so as to distinguish the factual history from the work of the storyteller.
At one point the two main characters, an old man and a young girl, discuss taking raw material, an accepted story, and changing it for better truth telling. Facts are not synonymous with truth, is the underlying message. And the storyteller, the magician herself, is showing us the secret behind the illusion, right at the moment of performing the illusion. It's not really a book to read, more of an experience to have. See if you agree.
On a more material plane, lunch. Yesterday I had that broccoli dish, with enough for two more meals. It was okay but a bit incomplete. So I thought briefly about making it into pie, putting frozen flaky pastry on the grocery list, then decided to just make a simple tortilla type pastry, and make Cornish pasties.
I like food you can pick up and eat, and made the dough right away.
So I made circles, stuffed two circles with the broccoli mixture, folded over, sealed the edges with a fork, couple of holes in the top, baked at 400f for about 25 minutes, and here's one of them, a nice workmanlike lunch, to pick up and eat.
This is another possibility for sausage and mushrooms, come to think of it.
Later today the Misfits box arrives. We'll see what happens then.
