Quiet

As I turn the corner into the last fourth of Ford's The Lay of the Land, I'm making an effort to read more of it during the day, rather than just as I go to sleep. This helps me get better into the groove of the book, and appreciate more of just how good it is, despite its occasional quasi-Joycean density. Or maybe the fact is that many books have something good in them, and that when my head is in the right place I am better able to distill and appreciate what that is...

As the most wise author of Stuff White People Like has noted, one thing that unites all of us white and would-be white people is the allure of Living By the Water.  Since we now live up the hill from a lake, we can check that box. Fact is, when there are leaves on the trees, when I'm anywhere in our now forcibly open-planned house we can see the lake down there, but not all that much of it.  Most of the time, it occupies not more than 10% of my visual field. But it draws the eye, and it suffices. Just a bit of that movement, the rippling, the shimmering, is enough to do its work and serve as a constant reminder of the continuity within flux which is the permanent condition. Combined with the wind blowing the leaves and branches around, we're pretty much good to go, or, rather, stay.