‘How shall the summer arise in joy,
Or the summer fruits appear?
Or how shall we gather what griefs destroy,
Or bless the mellowing year,
When the blasts of winter appear?’

An album I’ve recently listening to as a sort of sublime, relaxing mid-day music is the three-disc orchestral adaptation of poet William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience, composed by William Bolcom, conducted by Leonard Saltkin, and performed by the University of Michigan Symphony Orchestra and quite a divers cast of singers. In my wild machinations to make the baby the most intelligent person on the planet he shall be listening to quite a lot of this.

NPR’s Morning Edition interviewed William Bolcom about the project back in October.

Today marks six months of marriage, and, oddly, the beginning of the second trimester.

In the interest of keeping track of the books we’ve read this year, the ways we’ve passed our time, and what images have crept into our head and reside there without notice, the monthly listing:

Sarah
I. The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco
II. Can Poetry Matter?: Essays on Poetry and American Culture, Dana Gioia
III. To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf
IV. Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage, Alice Munro
V. Walking to Martha’s Vineyard, Franz Wright
VI. A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man, James Joyce

On my way, I hope, to reaching fifty for the year.

Nathanael (you’ll have to correct this later)
I. A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man, James Joyce
II. A Biographer’s Tale, A.S. Byatt
III. Lots of books of forest gardening?
IV. Mission to Asia, Christopher Dawson

Is there any trick to keeping spray roses alive longer? They seem to always shamelessly pass on after about three days. Are they, perhaps, hybrids of some sort?

It’s only after being married and tending to a house that I’ve begun to call to mind, with something of an absurd grin to myself, and in broken phrases, all those verses in the Bible about silver tarnishing, moths eating holes in garments, and flowers wilting. These are, I should think, some of the more elementary lessons in temporality.

Went on some errands to Fort Walton last night, tried to kill some time by seeing Oceans 12 on an impulse. On a side note: isn’t it maddening when theatres don’t post shows and times on a electric marquee? For a film that, it seems, attempted solely to be impressive (I wish there was a way to make the word ‘impressive’ have flashy lights), it rather flopped. While looking at the remake of Oceans 11 through the spectacles of the original was interesting and perhaps slightly nostalgic experience, the commerce between Oceans 11 and Oceans 12 is hardly something to keep one’s concern, and as Laura Clifford points out, walking out of a theatre with the pestering feeling that you’ve just paid for a self-congratulatory overseas party for the rich and famous of Hollywood and didn’t receive an invitation in return isn’t most people’s idea of a good time. We’d rather watch the Academy Awards, and, perhaps, learn something. Ah well.