Longing

Our internet connection is down and so I'm blogging longhand (the technical term for longhand blogging is "longing" - did you know that?) - actually, I was going to blog longhand but then my brilliant young son Felix, who also has to do some writing right now and is likewise stymied by the lack of internet access, pointed out that one could just write in Microsoft Word. So does that count as blogging longhand? It's not exactly shorthand and I'm also not online. OK. We'll call it typing.

 

Oh so much to write about. Here are all the posts I've wanted to write:

 

- about reading in German (high literature, trashy stuff, things originally in English and things originally in German, plays, a really interesting book about a woman who had a baby in the concentration camps and what happened to her there [not good, no happy ending] - each of them deserves a big long blog post and I don't know if it's going to happen!)

 

- about our play-reading group, and myself reading plays, lots of plays, in addition to the group - some to prepare and because I'm looking for the right plays, and some just to read because I was collecting and looking for material, and some because I figured out it wouldn't work for the group but I really wanted to read it anyway. Der Besuch der alten Dame [The old lady's visit] by Friedrich Dürrenmatt is in the overlap category - reading plays *and* reading in German - what an amazing play that was/is! I had never read it before. I was reading along, and then I got sideswiped once, and then I got sideswiped again, and then even I think possibly one or two times more. That is a truly amazing play.

 

- about my Weight Watchers group / about my large son going to India and blogging from there (ask me separately for his blog link if you're interested and you don't already have it) / about jogging in the woods and my 10K race on Saturday / about finishing one job and working on another and the grounding provided by work that has to be done, deadlines that keep me to it, the closeness of attention that has to be paid . . .

 

That kind of thing. And I take these long hiati (that is the plural of hiatus, right? looks a little bit like a short three-line Japanese poem) because I think oh, nobody's reading this blog anyway, and then I hear from one or two or three of you dear people saying that in fact you are keen to be reading it and I think oh for heaven's sake, how hard could it possibly be to write, say, fifteen minutes a day (the answer is: hard, apparently!).

 

Back in a sec with something, surely. Kim, Alex, Michel, and Lisa from Toronto - thank you for the encouragements! Ruthy and Amani, you too!