Bones

I finished another book yesterday. That's three books over the last month. Only one of note. I kind of dinged one of them for you in my last 12 of 12. 

This last book, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, had potential. It has strong elements. It was a Nobel prize winner for fiction. It is from a Polish author, and it's translated, so maybe (?) something got lost in translation?  The title is taken from a piece from William Blake. 

Clearly, I don't know what Nobel level writing is supposed to be, but I expected more. Chunks about astrology, at some point I started skimming those when they kept going, as they never actually tied back into anything. Sorry - spoiler alert..........kind of. 

Still, closer to the end, apropos of nothing, one paragraph make me prick up. 

I felt seen. 

A friend, knowing I (used to) read the obituaries daily, asked me to keep an eye out for a certain someone who passed the other day. I had to break it to her that it had been months since I've clicked on a link for the Cleveland Plain Dealer. 

I have no idea who has died or not. I cannot roll my eyes at the advice Carolyn Hax (though she's pretty on the mark) or Dear Abby (she is not) doles out. But my decades long habit of reading each obit is gone. Unless 710 tells me something about local news or local / state politics, I have almost zero idea what is going on. 

Granted, deep down I know this is not the way to live. But not so deep down, I know that at least for now this is how I have to be to cope. I was going to say I literally wring my hands in my anxiety, but as I was about to draft that very line, I found myself actually wringing my hands. I'm anxious about possibly being anxious. That's not a great sign.

That said, I'll take partial headlines that show up any other place on Al Gore's Intertubes™, so I'm not exactly blissfully unaware. I'd like to think I've avoided higher anxiety. Who actually knows, but I feel like it has been for the better.

Song by: Radiohead