It’s been a momentous month, or anyhow a month of moments, what with the last days of John and Laura and Kian’s visit, our 59th wedding anniversary, my 80th birthday (something definitely watersheddy there), the annual mileposts of my mother’s birthday (her 124th) and sister Alice’s death day (the 13th) …and preparations for a hurricane that went to Nova Scotia instead, an invitation to participate in a photography show in Portland in November, a decision to not spend $9K on a tooth replacement, resumption of contact with Adrian Lewis (last heard from 20+ years ago), participation in nephew Nick’s difficult move from one house to another (the most horrible physical experience memory can summon), health crises of an old friend and spouse, and then being laid low myself by the COVID I’ve been successfully dodging for 3 1/2 years, and and a locally world-altering fire in Port Clyde just two days ago…

Lots of reflection on advancing age and the anthropology I’ve laid claims to as an Identity for about 60 years, and the usual excesses of reading and writing, some of it epistolary, and a lot having to do with a Convivium Question on dreams and dreaming that was postponed twice… . Dipping into Jung, into Anthony Powell’s epic Dance to the Music of Time (which I hadn’t the perspective to finish 50 years ago), into Surrealism, into several intersecting literatures of Mind, into several David Mitchell books.

This is the sort of discovery that gives me pleasure, found in a London Review of Books article on the Hudson’s Bay company:

When Elizabeth II visited its former territories in Manitoba, The Hudson’s Bay Company governor presented her with the gift its charter mandated for a visiting sovereign: two live beavers, which promptly copulated in front of her…

and a marvelous description of a somewhat sad character in Anthony Powell’s At Lady Molly’s:

…He also gave the impression of an old dog waiting to have a ball thrown to retrieve, more because it was the custom in the past than because sport or exercise was urgently required…

Tomorrow is sure to bring further delights and distractions.