An afternoon with too many words

I am happy to say that my resurrected relationship with Netflix is going well.

Although I have to admit that the constant reminder that my tastes run to the 'witty' and 'quirky' and 'cerebral' is a bit galling on many levels (not least of which is the knowledge that no matter what I try to do, anti-intellectualism will always be a problem in my life (compared to things like hunger, rampant disease, living on a trash heap and war on the street outside, I'll take it)).

My own specificity is hardly a thing I need shoved down my throat. Nor do you need me to shove it down yours, so, yes.

Moving on.

I started a letter to my niece a couple of days ago and then lost it, have found it and added to it and would like to finish it today, only I'm seriously tempted to go on at some length about The Book of Kells and then The Secret of Kells and then scriptoria and the history of texts in the 7th to 10th centuries and how I really want to go to Whitby and Wearmouth-Jarrow and Iona and also Bobbio and Monte Casino and how sublime it is that humans can create such a beautiful thing as a hand-written, hand-decorated and illuminated and bound and covered thing as these texts are. There is nothing of waste in the continued contemplation of a well-turned phrase or deliberate decoration. The repetition of form is what has made us and every other thing on the planet, our attempts to be involved in that creation are occasion enough for pause and reflection.

These are hardly thoughts fit for a 12 year old who is less trusting even than I was at that age. They were the stuff of most of my ramblings over the summer. I fear The Porch may have begun to thrum to the familiar words spoken out in different orders again and again in between dancing princesses and wandering writers seeking ink from artists in communes deep in the jungle, finding reeds born from fungus made of blood. There is a whole story. It is too long to tell right now, and does not fit without the ground I have walked to get there.

I have forgotten how to make the sentences that invite, that fascinate without obligation. There is little of gentleness in my written manner; I am too focused to be less than sharp.

I want to watch a little movie. Something easy and predictable and human. I want Tom Hollander and Eddie Izzard to be brothers running an import business from a shop in the middle of some crowded neighborhood. They live in the world immediately around them and do not worry about the rest of it (a nice counterpoint to the global nature of their business, eh?) until they fall in love with, oh, I don't know, Emma Stone and Rani Mukherjee (who are both blessed with husky voices, yes.) and it's not so very angsty and there's dancing and a bit of spontaneous singing in the shop (I don't know about you, but this is a thing that happens regularly) and it's 3 hours long and somewhere in the middle is an adventure involving a runaway muppet who stole a packet of cookies and also puts sugar in people's potatoes without asking.

Only: surprise! Can't find it. Very cranky.

May have to settle for A Bit of Fry & Laurie again. Season 3, if you can believe it.

Some day I will quit complaining.
and then you will know that I am dead.