Poor Attention Span

Happy New Year!!

The skies have been morosely overcast all week – even and consistent grey blocks -- hardly pathetic fallacy as I am behaving quite unevenly and inconsistently…

I find it incredibly difficult to concentrate on any one thing when I’m at home which may be why I often prefer to go out to do my reading (See for example Monday November 21, 2005 "Saturday Reading", Friday December 2, 2005 "Rereading/Revisiting Happier Saturday Reading", Thursday December 8, 2005 "Claustrophobia 2"). At home there are constant interruptions, distractions and an enormous number of unfinished tasks staring me in the face – especially if there’s a whole week to contemplate them…plus it always snows at least once at this time of year…

My reading has been distracted, interrupted and mostly unfinished. I seem to flit around, picking up papers, books and magazines and reading them sometimes with purpose and sometimes without. For example, two days ago, I was looking for something on a shelf and ended up crouched on the floor reading the McMaster Centre for Dance Performance Newsletter “profiles” page. Then, I needed to sort out my plans for next week so I had to go and find Ami and Aldo’s embossed purple, silver & white wedding invitation. I had read it quickly when we got it a couple of months ago but I hadn’t paid attention to the times and address. I had noted the strange insertion of a middle name for Ami (she is now Ami Elizabeth – perhaps after Elizabeth Bennet – as Ami is a big P&P fan). I’ve known her for over twenty years now and one of her ongoing laments was that her parents didn’t give her a middle name…so, I guess, at a time when she is changing her surname anyway, it made sense to totally “get the name right” (although the choice of Elizabeth surprises me a little). A part of the invitation I hadn’t read before was the “poem” to the left of the hardcore times & addresses information. It seems pretty standard and appears uncredited. Here it is:

For hearing my thoughts
Understanding my dreams
And being my best friend…
For loving me without end…
I do.

Beyond reading newsletters and wedding invitations, I’ve also been trying to read an article all week connected to the academic paper I’m revising (See Tuesday December 6, 2005 “In order to serve you better..."). It’s a very clearly written and mostly interesting article partly about bees, partly about Amazons but mostly about shifts in perceptions about women and gender roles in eighteenth-century Britain (“On Queen Bees and Being Queens” by Dror Wahrman). It’s a good comprehensive contextual article for me. It reassures me in some ways by confirming and solidifying what I’ve already found out about bees but it’s different enough from what I’m doing that I feel that what I’m writing is actually worth writing (a common affliction of writers, I think).

Another bit of reading I’ve done this week is connected to the “Summons to Juror” I received in the mail on Friday. This is the fourth time I’ve been summoned in the last fifteen years (please tell me if this seems like a lot of times for a process that is random selection!!). I read the enclosed flyer called “Some Commonly Asked Questions about Jury Duty” several times mostly out of disbelief…

P.S. Just so you know…DQ and Sancho are just entering El Toboso as DQ prepares himself to address Dulcinea. D& G have stopped talking about vampires for now and are looking at the brighter side (in my opinion) of the outsider, the anomalous…