So what am I doing now...

As I wait for the fatigue from the radiation to lift (no it hasn't yet), I'm getting a little bored. I only have a few minutes each day when I have enough energy to do art work, so the other activities I find to preoccupy myself have to be rather passive, like reading, doing crossword puzzles, or watching TV.

God knows I already watch enough TV, my brain can only function in crossword land for so long, and I own a tremendous number of books I've never even read. Shopping in used book stores used to be a great passion of mine, back in the days before Amazon, when it was a real challenge to find anything not currently in print. I'd try to keep the names of authors and books from the past that I was interested in or had seen referred to in other books in the forefront of my mind, and scan the inventory of each used book shop I went into, hoping to find one of my must-haves. It was fun, and whenever I found something from my mental list (or better, something related to something on the list that I didn't even know had been written) I felt a great sense of victory.

I no longer buy books. I live one block from my local branch of the library, and there just isn't that much in print that I need to read more than once. However, there are still a great many untouched volumes from my voracious used-book-shopping days on my shelves.

This one by Elizabeth Bowen is proving to be very enjoyable. I was last in Rome 16 years ago, and although she provides no maps or illustrations in this slim volume, her descriptions of the city are so lucid and rich in detail that I can picture where she is in each chapter perfectly well, my imagination combining her experiences with my memories of each place.

And don't you wish they still took author photographs like that one for the dust cover? So clearly posed and so clearly designed to show off her credentials as an intellectual (she's reading James Baldwin's "Go Tell it on the Mountain" and in her lap is Simone de Beauvoir's "The Second Sex"). This is the kind of thing the Kindle cheats you out of.

I still go out to lunch every day during the week, and I try to see Della and Rene at least once a week. Cito has such a busy social life of his own these days that I don't see him as often, but when I do, it's always fun. He's grown into the dearest little boy, much nicer than I was at his age.

My old scooter got repaired after all, and good thing, since the new one is held up in Chicago getting inspected by the EPA, with no projected or promised release date. My linoleum block print class starts again this week. It's going to be tough to get through Wednesdays until this dadburn fatigue wears off, but I'm going to force myself, because it's so worth it.

I went ahead and signed up for the AIDS Walk, even though I doubt I'll have the energy to walk it this year. I've already met the goal I set, but I like to try to raise more money each year than I have the year before and I'm not there yet this year. If you 'd like to sponsor me, here's the link.