Today my partner reports back that unusually he took his walk in the rain and how it grew on him. It was atmospheric and he enjoyed “the ambiance of the clouds, the glow from the ships and city lights and the vortex created by the blackness of the water.”

Ha!!

He is also wearing the jumper I knitted him for xmas. The first jumper I have ever knitted in this lifetime. It’s is so endearing this creation ! And when I see it on him, well I get a little chesty smile at the sight of it. It really has a bit of a Middle Earth look about it (due to a number of technical challenges with the wrong sized needles and having to go avant-garde on the pattern as a result).

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The last two days were the equivalent of a literary long distant- no-sleep truck drive.  But Malarky is on her way to you. Enfin! Thank you so much to everyone who is showing such warmth and curiosity about my novel. It was a long haul. (10 years)

My wrists aren’t doing what God intended them to do (or what I want them to do)

The weather is not doing what I forecasted it would do two weeks ago

It’s a limp Wednesday indeed.

My brain aches every time I attempt the continental knitting, but when you are knitting a jumper for a good man it knits beautifully.

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Ringing the nitwit knitter

At 2.53am I convened once again with Denis Donoghue’s The Practice of Reading book and chapitre 2 where Denis scuba dives into “theory”. If you have insomnia, wrestling Denis is a productive solution!

Consider:

“Theory is chiefly interested in spinning larger and larger webs of its own vocabulary” (This is from the paragraph that begins “The main arguments we hear against theory …” on p22)

Then consider reading the above sentence at 2.53am. Add to that sentence several pages of impressive rumination.  Recently I’ve been considering how stunting “theory” and”theory dependence” can be and observing how people latch onto three buzzwords or two names and reference and re-reference them tirelessly and you rarely hear any of their own ideas. Rather than departure points, the references become bus stops with no buses, just poles that are banged over and over with the back of a pan.  It’s akin to watching someone lick the same piece of wood over and over again. Yes they never get any splinters in their tongue … but the listener ends up hearing the first sound of whatever their doctrine begins with and becomes weary-eared. There’s a hiding behind references and doctrines that obscures how the actual texts speak to and from (and onward, backward, sidewards) each other. Theory leaves so little room for noticing.

It makes me wonder if the way we are “instructed” on what to read could be part of it. Systematic reading rather than curiosity reading. I’m convinced there needs to be much more discourse on reading out and bouncing about with and within reading. But this could be because no one has ever told me what to read since I was in secondary school. My reading has always been self-determined and I practice a hoarders or collage approach to reading. I have something of an aversion to the sequential. I think in paragraphs rather sentences.

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I have had another major knitting calamity. The jumper I am trying to knit is the size of an elephant despite having the correct number of stitches and following the pattern. I do not know why I am so unsuited to knitting and why the Sellafield effect keeps occurring. It’s like being devoted to a religion and receiving constant telegrams from the source of your worship “I do not exist, cease and desist Dumbo.”

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Last night at gymnastics I learned a new move on the rings with a name this morning I cannot pronounce or remember. Unfortunately I appear to have also left my right shoulder and left armpit behind on said rings.

The consolation is the memory of this incredibly eccentric young Chinese woman break dancer, who jumps up and down on the spot, talks to herself in an excitable tone  and then bombs at a crash mat to do a front somersault, except she refuses to use her arms, holds her fists down like two chicken wings and screams blue murder as she turns over in the air while we watch her and her poor neck narrowly escape an ambulance. I have seriously not met anyone as wonderfully eccentric in about 20 years, who wasn’t carrying a bucket in Rural Mayo.

Thanks Robinson (1994) & Robinson in Space — you made my weekend.

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The Bach Choir was also lovely, (thanks Ita, Tara) I knitted my way through it and through the family “birthdays” dinner (Thanks J, Gma, L et al) and through to needing an icepack from muscular protest from over-knitting at 1am.

All good men are born in December. My two good men are anyway. One of these good men will soon have a very handsome jumper if I do not end up in traction first. It is an olympic knitting pace to get this jumper finished.

Knitting raving Glenda

Knitting rage. Size 9 needles. What was I thinking? Thankfully Glenda provides comfort in The Maids. 

I am thrilled to see people arriving at my blog with “weather” related search terms and especially Vancouver weather related inquiries. Yes! I have landed as a weather forecaster (or rather past-caster). To this end I note today as a perfect Autumn (Fall) day. Fresh bit of wind, dry, snatches of sunshine to be got. Ruddy cheeked freshen up weather!

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The overnight lows are falling. We wait in anticipation of the promised La Nina freeze yer arse off winter. I must find some good online thermal links. Get out the knitting needles. I am convinced much malaise can be dissipated by the gentle act of knitting.

I was fortunate this evening to enjoy a walk home from gymnastics. The baseball match was on at the stadium so I took a lift up with my males who attended the match with Gpa. It was such a lovely evening, darker than I expected, as Autumn (fall) approaches. I knitted, while I walked which is something I love to do from time to time.

My shawl or cardigan, whichever it turns out to be, is a rainbow wool that is growing and becoming heavy on the needles.

As I wandered home knitting, I was thinking about the thunderstorms forecast on the other side of the country. The night was so still here.

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Beckett’s letters have succeeded in doing what nine yoga classes failed to do for me. I read them mainly to discover what books he was reading and to read about his walks. He was a great man for walking.