Sleepless in San Antonio

I was awakened at around two-thirty by Pop's opening and closing of doors as he goes to bed, and I have not been able to fall back asleep. I am tempted to blame Pop, but I know that I would have gotten up on my own inside half an hour most likely for a bathroom run. I really don't care for this pattern at all.

When I got up, I remembered that I still had yet to put out the plate for the cats. Sammy was the only one there. However, when I got back to bed, I thought about how I intended to mow the lawn, and I realized that I should leave the cats hungry, so that they will come inside in the morning, and so I went back outside to retrieve the plate.

I then finished "Great Expectations", and I have been struggling a little over the meaning of the last line. Do Pip and Estella stay together?... Wait, as I type this, the answer comes. Pip will never see another parting from Estella, because they will never meet again. A very satisfying ending. And I am inclined to think that this must be Dickens's best novel indeed.

Incidentally, upon coming to Pop's office and firing up the computer, I mutter to myself, "I'm being mean to my cats." It's already five in the morning, but instead of making them wait for another couple of hours, I bring the plate back outside. Coco and Ash are there. A big reason why I relented is that I remembered earlier that I need gas for the mower, and Pop is not going to be up and raring to go until around noon, so I said fuck it, and I will play it by ear. You see, I have a library trip green-lighted for Wednesday, and this is also grocery week, making for a busy Thursday and Friday. And did I mention that it is suppose to rain over the weekend? I cannot juggle this many balls in the air.

One more interesting incidental, upon signing into Dreamwidth and checking out that little love note, I see that baby4love has been suspended. So, it was neither budding love nor a joke, but presumably an imaginative spammer.

Three hours of sleep

I went to bed at six, hoping I might snatch a good hour of sleep, or maybe even two hours if Pop doesn't kick on his country music. But that sleep never really happens, even without Pop's music.

I absolutely don't like this pattern. Three hours of sleep is nothing I can live on.

my book-blogging

I'm working on my next post for "Atlas Shrugged".

After finishing "Great Expectations" in the wee hours of the dark morning, I thought about how much I really loved the story, and wondered whether I should drop "Atlas Shrugged" from my book-blogging in favor of Pip's sad tale.

But I'm sticking with Rand's mammoth novel for now, in part because I remember how much I was awed and touched by it, and in larger part because it is more meaningful than the Bible in terms of understanding America's soul, or the soul of it's business and financial elite.

Of course, I could just throw in the Dickens book into the mix. Since its text is freely available online, it would be especially easy to blog, requiring only so much copying and pasting. But I want to hold off for a while. I got enough on my plate to keep me busy, and I cannot imagine that any of my readers would get more enthused by the addition of another book into my blogging routine.

Atlas Shrugged (1,1) A Fading Masterpiece

Eddie Willers continues his walk through the city to return to the office, and Ayn Rand uses the opportunity to convey through her descriptions that sense of a country and civilization in decline:

the shafts of skyscrapers against them were turning brown, like an old painting in oil, the color of a fading masterpiece. Long streaks of grime ran from under the pinnacles down under the slender, soot-eaten walls.... A jagged object cut the sky above the roofs; it was half a spire, still holding the glow of the sunset; the gold leaf had long since peeled off the other half. The glow was red and still, like the reflection of a fire: not an active fire, but a dying one which it is too late to stop.

This is juxtaposed against descriptions of what a thriving, vital economy looks like, while intimating the threat that hangs over such rich living, along with further hints of the fading of this vibrancy:

Eddie Willers shifted his glance down to the street, to a vegetable push cart at the stoop of a brownstone house. He saw a pile of bright gold carrots and the fresh green of onions. He saw a clean white curtain blowing at an open window. He saw a bus turning a corner, expertly steered. He wondered why he felt reassured - and then, why he felt the sudden, inexplicable wish that these things were not left in the open, unprotected against the empty space above.

When he came to Fifth Avenue, he kept his eyes on the windows of the stores he passed. There was nothing he needed or wished to buy; but he liked to see the display of goods, any goods, objects made by men, to be used by men. He enjoyed the sight of a prosperous street; not more than every fourth one of the stores was out of business, its windows dark and empty.

I like to think that the sense of unease over “the empty space above” is that grand metaphysical vulnerability of life against the vastness of the universe and whims of chance, so that people need to appreciate what they have in a rich city and keep working to maintain it; it does not maintain itself. And for Rand, the sky is indeed empty, there is no God to watch over us.

I imagine some critics might argue that Ayn Rand over does it, and she could shed some pages by cutting all these descriptions and heavy-handed intimations, but I think it helps to entrench the reader in her story, and that her story is worthy of all this layering.

And gold carrots are a new one on me.

A float?

"A float? I didn't think of that!"

Pop did get strawberry ice cream, and we do have Big Red. I'll enjoy it over Anthony Hopkins's "Othello".

I got the mowing out of the way. I didn't start until close to one o'clock, after lunch, but, fortunately, it was not a bad afternoon, with the temperature hovering between 80 and 81 degrees, with a little intermittent cloud-cover to help make it manageable. But it was a tough chore, make no mistake! The moral: refill the gas immediately upon emptying the jug, instead of counting on getting it sometime before the next mow.

for the midnight feeding

Filling up the cat plate for the midnight feeding, who do I see staring at me through the glass sliding-door, but, you guessed it, Bushtail. She cannot wait to get her feed on.

She does appear well kept-up. Is there any chance that she is a domesticated cat with a happy home in the neighborhood, and this is just where she comes when let out for the night?

sleep

After only getting three hours of sleep last night, and putting in a heavy afternoon of mowing the lawn, and being completely deprived of any nap time today, I sure do hope that I get some solid sleep this night.

In fact, I am a little worried that I might sleep straight till nine or ten in the morning, when I have a bus to catch. Maybe I should hope that Pop cranks up his country music at around seven-thirty.