1. For much of the day, I confined myself to the Vizio room and plunged deeper into the tangled story of Bleak House. I am about 90% finished. Oddly enough, I'll be disappointed to finish. I'm experiencing Bleak House as less driven by plot than I might have expected. That's a funny thing to say about a copious novel with countless stories all going on at once. It's remarkable how Dickens keeps them all going, with story lines beginning throughout the book. Many overlap with other stories. Others come to a conclusion -- or seem to -- but are resurrected and take on a new life and then, like Coal Creek flowing into the North Fork of the CdA River, become subsumed in a larger story.
Dickens' returns again and again to the way his characters, and, I'd say, human beings, can become cancers unto themselves. The cancer (my metaphor, not Dickens') originates in one's past. It might be a dark secret. It could be an act of neglect. It might be a habitual way of behaving. It might be the station or the conditions into which a character is born. Whatever it is, this cancer becomes a terrible reminder that, from Dickens' perspective, the past never goes away. Things that happened, things characters did, live in them, often haunt them, shape their personalities, define their masks, and, most importantly, shape their destiny. The good news is that this applies not only to wickedness and injustice, but also to deeds of kindness, of benevolence. Goodness, too, can become a habit. It can also shape one's fate.
With all of this in mind, I'll spend Saturday seeing how this epic tale concludes. There are plenty of questions to be resolved, or left open ended, as I work my way to the end of Bleak House.
2. Debbie transformed previously transformed leftovers into another transformed soup. We have almost finished what started as Portuguese stew. I've lost count of the different ways Debbie has made it into another meal. Debbie also made a leafless (chopped?) salad made of zucchini, Kalamata olives, red onion, feta cheese, and walnuts. She dressed it with a snappy vinaigrette, one I would wager Debbie invented on the spot.
3. I put down Bleak House and joined Debbie to watch less than an hour of news and unrest. I prefer to read about turmoil and look back on it rather than watch it occur live on television and was grateful when we switched gears.
For some unknown reason, something moved me to put Monty Python and the Holy Grail on. As we got further and further into it, I suddenly realized that, over the years, I had watched parts of this movie, but hadn't, to my memory, watched the whole movie straight through.
It's brilliant. It's brilliant not just because its satirical sketches are funny, but also because it's not escapist. As satire, it reveals human folly and the human bent toward violence. Watching it was hilarious and sobering simultaneously.
We capped off our night with The Andy Griffith Show. Opie harbored a runaway kid from a neighboring town and Andy taught Opie lessons about loyalty and obedience and when it's necessary to bend the rules a bit.
Here's a limerick by Stu:
Past yearbooks aren’t all as they seem.
Pictures showing school pride in extreme.
Drill Team and Pep Club,
Plus, GAA’s a poor sub,
As not one single girl’s on a team.
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