Pascha - Polygraph - Reading Around

St. George did Pascha - that's Easter to you belonging to the Western Church - last night. Starting at 11 pm and stopping around 2:15. It was actually two services, but just go with it was Easter service. Why start on Saturday? It seems to me it fit with the symbolism of the service - the harrowing of Hades - in which we left the church in darkness, holding candles- and then coming back into a church fully lit. Then came the Eucharist. When it was over, there was a community meal. That we passed on. I got home around 3:30 AM.

This may explain more: Pascha - Dr. Valerie Karras.

The following is more secular.

Then it was up at 8 am because MW was coming to take me to the polygraph in Carmel. She came early - about 30 minutes early. I babbled all my way to the polygraph. We stopped and I showed her the church. 

The polygraph went as it should - fine. Nothing asked reflects me or my behavior. It is the one thing I can be sure of with a clear conscience. I almost fell asleep.

MW dropped me at BSU around noon. I have been reading and writing since then. Now I want to go home.

Odds and ends follow.

From DM, Mary Shelley on the Surest Remedy for a Sunken Spirit and What Makes Life Worth Living. Only if you want to think on what makes a good life.

From last week's Brisbane Times book reviews I found A glorious debut novel with shades of Zadie Smith and George Saunders interesting for the reviewer naming his fear:

Unbowed is as close as I can come to describing the continuing sense of engagement I had as I read Middleton’s book. In fact, I had been reluctant to read it, as it was another one to make me feel despair and guilt about everything I cannot face right now. I’ve been potholing for the right words since: confronting, audacious, ambitious … all in play, but not quite nailing the imaginative grandeur with which this has been conceived. Eight years it took to write.

And kept me going by pointing out the writer's ambition:

Middleton won the Vogel’s Literary Award  in 2016 for a collection of stories. He now writes full time. He reads, obviously, indiscriminately because this book, set in a particular area of inner-Melbourne, shimmers with ghosts of Victor Hugo’s particular Paris. Other readers might channel ghosts of White Teeth or Lincoln in the Bardo. More than most books, No Church in the Wild made me aware how we filter a new book through every book we’ve ever read.

Unlikely Stories has a new volume out.

Tobacco, witches and chess: a Jacobean drama has the funniest opening paragraph I have read in quite a while.

I spent #25 submitting "Road Tripping" to Press Pause.

 

sch 7:26 PM