Attempting to make commonplacing actually commonplace
Illustration by Chris Gugliotti, made especially for me
A new idea, or more accurately, an old idea I’m reviving. A collection of passages that caught my attention, warmed me, sparked thought, in my week’s reading. What I’d like to do, and we’ll see if it takes, is come back to update this post as the week rolls out. Or, in a week like this one, I can collect things I’ve marked, saved, or shared elsewhere.
In today’s internet, updating a blog post is an odd thing to do. But after nearly twenty years of stashing words in this space, I know the blog’s most important purpose is to serve as a storehouse of memories. It’s a living (if sometimes ignored for a stretch) record of a thought-life.
…the days are more fun than the years which pass us by while we discuss them. Act with zest one day at a time.
—Horace, Odes, translated by Derek Mahon, quoted in Oliver Burkeman’s Meditations for Mortals
Most of the long-term benefits of reading arise not from facts inserted into your brain, but from the ways in which reading changes you, by shaping your sensibility, from which good work and good ideas will later flow. ‘Every book makes a mark,’ says the art consultant Katarina Janoskova, ‘even if it doesn’t stay in your conscious memory.’
—Oliver Burkeman, Meditations for Mortals (emphasis mine)
Moominpappa at Sea, chapter 2. The Moomins are in the middle of the sea, searching for the lighthouse island Moominpappa knows is out there somewhere.
“We shall see it soon,” said Moominmamma. Her head was full of little thoughts that she couldn’t really get organized. “I do hope it’s working,” she thought. “He’s so happy. I do hope there really is a lighthouse somewhere out there, and not just a flyspeck after all. We can’t possibly go home now, particularly after such a grand start…You can find big pink shells, but the white ones look very nice against the black soil. I wonder whether the roses will grow out there…”
It’s late August in Moominland, but this passage has such a December ring to my ears. So many small thoughts zinging around. Mind full of shells and soil and roses and lighthouse hopes. Safe harbor behind us, mysterious seas ahead. Island or flyspeck? Reading maps is a risky business.
“Isn’t it just!” I can imagine Little My exclaiming, with relish.
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