Today is a First Saturday. Usually the only dates I make note of are the Fourth Mondays: every fourth Monday since I was 19, I have got my period. There have been a couple of intermissions, but I've been on the pill pretty much straight for 16 years. Until today.
Today, I did not take a breakfast treat upon arising. (When I first went on it, there was a snack food called the Stella Dora Breakfast Treat, hence the moniker.) Today, I declare hormonal freedom. Too bad I have no mountaintop from which to proclaim it; a website is anticlimactic. Happily, that's the only thing about today that is.
...get down tonight.
We resubscribed to The Nation and The New Yorker. We received a subscription to the former as a wedding present but eventually let it lapse, and I've missed it since. I haven't really missed The New Yorker, but I'm glad of it. I have been reading short stories by A.S. Byatt, Julian Barnes, and Haruki Murakami, reviews by John Updike and John Leonard, columns by Katha Pollitt, punditry in poesy by Calvin Trillin.
Finally! We might not get much, but we're getting some, and there was much rejoicing.
This morning as I toweled my hair (which is, strangely, nearly sufficient to dry it), I cocked my head because surely that couldn't be what it sounded like...? I peeked out the window. The goofy neighbor was indeed raking his leaves through two inches of snow. They are really unclear on the concept, these people.
I am so glad I found José Saramago. In addition to writing prose that bowls me over even in translation, he is obviously a dog person. I first heard about him because Blindness's Dog of Tears appeared on a list of the most memorable characters of the last century. In The Cave, the stray dog, no longer lost and named Found, captured my heart. Of course Saramago is a dog person: all the best people are, plus he lives in the Canary Islands.
The cave, the potter, the fading popularity of goods made of clay, the pressures of the kiln, the significance of all of these did not elude me. And I'm pretty sure what the denouement means, but not quite. I was hoping the Portuguese words for kiln and cave would be related, but they're kiln and caverna.
According to Merriam-Webster,
"Etymology: Middle English kilne, from Old English cyln, from Latin culina kitchen, from coquere to cook -- more at COOK
Date: before 12th century
: an oven, furnace, or heated enclosure used for processing a substance by burning, firing, or drying."
and
"Etymology: Middle English, from Old French, from Latin cava, from cavus hollow; akin to Greek koilos hollow, and probably to Greek kyein to be pregnant -- more at CYME
Date: 13th century
1 : a natural underground chamber or series of chambers open to the surface
2 : a usually underground chamber for storage [a wine cave]; also the articles stored there."
Saramago is 80 years old. That means I will one day have read everything there is, and there will be no more. I am halfway through.