housekeeping

this weekend my list of to do's felt quite overwhelming and i get to a certain point where my coping mechanism goes from procrastinating to completely shutting done and feeling immobilized. i decided to not fight it and instead did very little. i drank coffee, read, and looked out my studio window a lot. I've been toggling between a few books... In|Different Spaces: Place and Memory in Visual Culture, Memory Quest, and Housekeeping. i spent the most time with Housekeeping this weekend. first, because it was the easiest read for my half-working brain and second, because i could escape into the book whereas the other two have me examining my own world. Marilynne Robinson was given the PEN/Hemingway Award for this, her first novel. I haven't pleasure read in so long that i think i've forgotten what it is i like to read. i do know that her writing sticks with me. i can already think of words that have lodged into the recessed crevices of my memory. 'It was a discomfort that was not to be relieved, like an itch in an amputated limb' or (this one i lifted out of the book to do it justice) 'And she would feel that sharp loneliness she had felt every long evening since she was a child. It was the kind of loneliness that made clocks seem slow and loud and made voices sound like voices across water. '
i think her writing is quite beautiful and the storyline is something that resonates with me.... the impermanence of people and things in our lives.
birdseed doily by jess witte