All quiet on the book-buying front, thank God. Or rather, O Dear! Buying = cheerful, but abstinence = despondence. O dear o deary dear. Still not quite right from the Christmas virus, I suppose. Can't think of anything I want to read particularly except fluff and postcards. Deep down, I know that I am a complete lightweight.
When I feel full of energy, I completely over-estimate my capacity for reading and schedule a bizarre programme that entails waking up extra-early to make room for 'intellectual' reading. But strangely enough, I don't schedule in any of the huge pile that I have to wade through for my doctorate: o no! I'll choose some random tome that I imagine will give me some deep insights but, because I am not versed in the language of that particular discipline, I end up abandoning it like some leaky tub. Amusing books are failing to amuse and I feel more and more like the hero of Huysmans' 'Against Nature' trying all manner of things to pique a jaded appetite and calm jangled nerves. Stephen Fry is failing to keep me either awake or interested. Yesterday I just sat, gormlessly staring into the middle distance, doing nothing, thinking nothing, unwilling to move until asked if I felt alright. Yes, I feel alright, but I am certainly not the person that I was a few weeks ago. My get up and go has got up and gone. At least temporarily. The lassitude has also crept into my writing: sitting at my desk today, I struggled to make sense of anything that I wrote last week, or even to care. Not helped by the presence of a dischooled child. I should maybe curl up with Thomas Aquinas, or Epictetus, or.......
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