1. Back in the good old days when I used to hold a weekly Wednesday night course in Shakespeare at LCC, if/when we studied the play Much Ado About Nothing, I would tell my students that when the play was written, the word "nothing" was pronounced the same as "noting", meaning to observe, notice, or pay special attention to -- it could even mean to spy. If you know the play or have seen the 1993 movie version, you know that much of the play's action centers around characters spying on, noting each other to both comic and tragic effect.
Wilkie Collins divided The Woman in White into three "epochs". Today I finished the second epoch and started the third.
The middle part of the novel, in particular, is all about characters noting. Characters read others' mail. They eavesdrop on others' conversations. They spy on each other, sometimes as agents for other characters in the story. Marian notes all she observes through writing in her journal. One character even exploits a certain situation, finds Marian's journal, and reads it, noting is content with malevolent interest what Marian has herself noted.
What will all this noting come to? More than nothing I imagine!
I'm wondering if Tuesday might be my day to finish this book. If it is, I'll be happy to learn its outcome, but sorry not to be reading it any longer. Wilkie Collins has been a superb companion.
I see Collins' Moonstone somewhere in my reading future.
2. Debbie and I are thinking about sprucing up the back yard a bit and continued to yak about ways to improve how things look, but in a low maintenance way.
3. I took a beneficial walk today. I strolled over to the Avista building parking lot and dropped off our bill payment in the box outside and I also had a prescription to pick up at Yoke's. I enjoyed the very mild temperature. As I crossed the Hill Street bridge, the sweet perfume of some kind of plant hit me. I don't have any idea where the smell was coming from, but it made me think of how foul and metallic that once heavily polluted gray river smelled when I was a kid. I loved the new smell that hit me so hard today.
Here's a limerick by Stu:
There are things you receive if you’re driven.
Other blessings are yours ‘cause they’re given.
No matter your past,
Your time here won’t last.
So, today get on out and start livin’!
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