I suggested this for bookclub because it's short, deals with -isms, and is (kind of) a book told from a minor character's point of view. But I remember so little of Jean Rhys's psychological history of Mrs. Rochester that it was pretty much new to me. I read it in 1991 or 1992--it has so very much to do with medieval history--sitting in Fugly on Horse Barn Hill in the rain. I don't even remember when I first read Jane Eyre, but I remember that afternoon clearly.
Of course she was driven mad by confinement and lack of sun. John Sutherland asks, Can Jane Eyre Be Happy? Because she's a freak of fiction, yes; for any other creature, no. Mr. Rochester is cruel.
The first outdoor swim of the year happened in ocean, which is best; but the first outdoor swim of the season happened today, in a heated pool. Yesterday, when the pool opened, it rained and I did a lot of wallowing. Today I swam a very long kilometer, long because I barely kicked. The blisters are no longer raw and the right one is fine, but the left does not enjoy being flexed. Because I didn't use my legs much--in half the laps not at all but used a float instead--I could easily go seven and nine half-strokes (where a stroke is both arms) between breaths.
I didn't swap storms for screens today despite its being a time-change day. That will no longer be a reasonable schedule anyway, since as of I think next year, daylight saving time is legislated to encroach even further into actual time, before it's warm enough for screens. Yesterday and today I savored the quiet house: no forced-air heat (if I had a scrillion dollars I would change Formigny to steam heat: silence and even though slow heat is a fine exchange for noise and responsiveness) yet still two layers of glass against city noise.
I had mostly decided that beforehand but a gusty wind made me feel prudent instead of lazy about it: handling glass sails up a ladder v. not doing that. The wind was so strong that it knocked over and rolled away my water bottle at the pool (and I didn't find it in the flowerbeds or in the leisure pool or anywhere) and blew away the gym's towel (which probably didn't escape the walled enclosure to become litter, I hope).
Afterward I grocery-shopped and, home again, had my lunch on the porch swing with the buddy and a book. The north wind was so strong I heard the lion roaring. Occasionally we hear the sea lions barking during feeding-time, and I've heard an elephant trumpet a couple of times, and it's easy to hear the several wolves howl or the dozens of peacocks cry at roosting time, but the lion's roar was new. It perhaps shouldn't be, at less than a mile away, but perhaps in areas where you really need to hear the lion's mood, traffic doesn't drown him out.
The porch swing sojourn, however pleasant, was short, because I had been gone more than two hour-years in the buddy brain and he was begging for step-up (holding one foot out flat and waving it frantically: pick me up, pick me up!). Inside the house he can come out of his cage, and he did, joining me on the chair not to snuggle into my fleece sweater (sunny but windy) but to play in his box. I gave up sun for an invisible box buddy.
I spend the rest the REI dividend on a dress I can hike in: no waist, unlike my hiking skirt. It's pale blue, not periwinkle, not frost or smoky blue. Just pale. Pastel, in fact. Yii. Also a fleece sweater that has, get this, horizontal stripes of periwinkle, celidon, peach, ivory, and pink. That's what I wore today, dress and sweater, and I look like an Easter egg and entirely unlike myself. Horizontal stripes! Sherbet pastels! More than two colors at once, and none of them a neutral! The color on one half not picked up anywhere in the other half! It's craziness, I tell you. But I think kind of pretty.
