Yesterday I finished Middlemarch by George Eliot.

I don’t believe the following is a spoiler, as I don’t refer to the plot or individual characters, but if you are going to read the book, wish to start with a blank slate and don’t even need the persuasion, you might want to skip this, in case.

It was a surprise of a book… a slow and graceful waltz which illustrates life in a small English town in bygone days. I didn’t know if anything more would come of it, but in fact the pace quickens and there’s a strong finish.

George Eliot is at pains to point out that life continues after that climax, with people either becoming what they want to be or getting lost along the way. Eventually they pass on, leaving room for young hopefuls, who tread similar paths while thinking them new.

Major social events (such as weddings, births and funerals) tend to be skirted around, with the main focus falling on events both before and after: the things that make all the difference.

It’s remarkable how a person’s life and character can be so affected and changed by individual decisions, both great and small. One person getting married or deciding to do good instead of evil, evil instead of good, or walk this way instead of that, could utterly transform the lives and characters of the people around him/her.

It reminded me of An Inspector Calls in that respect… how separate and apparently irrelevant actions by different people could impact on one individual’s life in a major way.

Parts of Middlemarch are dry and hard to follow, but there is plenty of humour and liveliness, and the style in general seems to loosen up in the latter half of the book. A quality I like about some of these older books is that there is a focus on redemption, forgiveness and change of heart, whereas many of today’s books and films have a shallow quality, demanding indignities and vengeance to be inflicted on unsympathetic characters.

“What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult to each other?”

Sometimes I couldn’t decide if I liked or sympathized with a Middlemarch character or not, which is like real life in that we don’t know everything about people. Our views are irrelevant anyway, because people have both good and bad things about them, and have good and bad experiences regardless of our opinion, and they make friends with people we like, even when we wish that they wouldn’t…

“‘I suppose we never quite understand why another dislikes what we like, mother,’ said Mary, rather curtly.”

I was amazed at the corners and shadows of human nature that George Eliot explored; it made you wonder what she has experienced in life to know all of this. Some of it falls in your own experience. It’s unsettling to know that you are thinking and feeling no differently from people back in the 1800s, but then you ask yourself what else you expected? As George Eliot said, these paths have been trodden and these stories have told many times before.

“I protest against all our interest, all our effort at understanding being given to the young skins that look blooming in spite of trouble; for these too will get faded, and will know the older and more eating griefs which we are helping to neglect.”

“…people were so ridiculous with their illusions, carrying their fool’s caps unawares, thinking their own lies opaque while everybody else’s were transparent, making themselves exceptions to everything, as if when all the world looked yellow under a lamp they alone were rosy.”

I whiled away the time by searching for a new ISP, but I haven’t found one that’s at all satisfactory. They cost too much, have too many unwelcome stipulations (e.g. routers you don’t want), have too long a contract, offer too low a download limit, don’t appear to have good customer service, etc etc… at the top of the ISP review site should be a sign: “abandon hope, all ye who enter here!”

Had a short break from Middlemarch while my Kindle recharged. I could have read it while it was recharging, but that would have chained me to my desktop. I picked up a paperback (Homeworld by Harry Harrison) but Middlemarch is my first priority. It would be too infuriating if I stopped at the same spot I broke off at before!

By joining Facebook, I have shaken the resolve of a friend who was determined not to, and now she’s wondering if there’s anything in it for her too. I think it’s a bit of a tiger to have by the tail, but could bring certain benefits. Was going to talk to a cousin about family history.

I wonder if I’ll be able to get into my blog tomorrow… fingers crossed! We haven’t exceeded our download limit, so it’s not that.

I tend to hibernate at this time of year… and just now, the early New Year, is always the worst part. It’s a time when I should be doing this or that, but can’t put my mind to it.

Will potter off now… (Fails to get up from chair).

You do have to have your brain switched on. Fortunately I read this half of the book before, making a surprising amount of sense out of it (more than I do now!), so I can afford to coast a little.

I finally got dragooned into using the dreaded Facebook and it’s a bewildering world indeed. I thought I could just sit there in my Faceburrow and only talk to three or four family members, but I seem to have befriended others along the way. Facebook isn’t interested in people staying walled off. It says “there are all these people you could be friends with; they know everyone you know!”

It unnerves me how you have friends from the next village talking to your family who live several towns away and have never met. It’s a weird feeling, like mixing curry and cheese.

I suspect the main reason for my finally joining Facebook is that I noticed I could annoy people from my Kindle with highlights, notes, ratings and “I bought this novel on Amazon.” I rather wanted to do that. Of course, instead of impressing them with some of the weightier titles I downloaded beforehand, I seem to be going through a Children’s Books phase. So at the moment it’s “I downloaded Five Children and It!” Maybe I should keep quiet till I’m back to George Eliot and her like…

My excuse for downloading A Christmas Angel (if asked) is, “I went looking for Jean-Paul Sartre but got side-tracked.” It’s true, after all…

I worry (ludicrously) that I will zoom so quickly through all the books available to my Kindle that there will be nothing left in the world that I haven’t read. Maybe my mother had a similar sensation when she was young… she said she read everything that came her way, in no particular order. (I was asking if there was any reason why she picked Pickwick Papers as her first Dickens read).

For the Kindle I downloaded two free books today: The Enchanted Castle by E Nesbit and Daddy-Long-Legs by Jean Webster. I chose the first because I don’t think I’ve read it, and the second because I read it ages ago and enjoyed it.

I’m still slogging through Middlemarch. Still finding a lot to highlight, despite the heavy language. It’s interesting how she switches through different varieties of heaviness depending on the speaker.

We went to a neighbouring town today, and the Kindle came along in my trolley. I didn’t think I would get a chance to read it, but it was nice to know it was there. I was giving it a little polish just now with a microfibre cloth. They say you can’t get fond of ebooks the way you get fond of printed books, but I’m not sure I want to, any more… an e-reader is risky as it is; it becomes ‘all books’ to you, or at least ‘most books’; a kind of companion.

You begin to understand why some might try to cut themselves off from possessions in an effort to just ‘be’… to avoid negative emotions connected to desiring things or trying to keep what you have. Someone was saying in a Kindle discussion that you have to move on from your old books, even if they meant more to you than books you obtained more recently. He doesn’t think we should have our Wind in the Willows (or Narnia books or Rupert the Bear books or whatever) just sitting there because we’ve always had them and can’t imagine letting them go!

It did surprise me when I had a look inside some small Asterix paperbacks I’ve had since the 80s — I found those (despite my care of them) were going slightly yellow. Books (printed ones) get old. That’s how much time has passed since I was a student…. yellowing time!

But I wonder if it’s unreasonable to think we shouldn’t get attached to possessions… it’s part of who we are. You get used to things, especially the useful things that you handle every day. There are the objects that act as ‘landmarks’ in a sense…. “you are here… nowhere else.” What is unsettling is the sensation that things are lost as you go through life. Books come and go, as do other things…. people and animals come and go… homes and places change… some find that places they knew change out of all recognition, and they don’t want to go back because it will be just like any other place. And, right at the end, all that you are is lost as well, and seeps away into the cold and dark.

Perhaps books continue to hold a spark for us of people who have already gone, but we don’t need the old yellow copies in order to love and keep them.

A while ago I blogged that Middlemarch by George Eliot was one of the classics I felt guilty about not reading, so I made a point of starting it one day. I only got halfway through. But it wasn’t because I didn’t like it; I was quite curious about what going to happen next. The problem was this: I looked at the condition of the paperback itself (an old second-hand one)… and didn’t want to touch it any more!

That was several months ago.

My sister gave me a Kindle e-reader for Christmas, and it hasn’t left my side! I love it. I have downloaded a lot of old ‘freebie’ classics, and also bought 99p bargains from the 12-day Kindle Sale on Amazon (over now). I finished Little Lord Fauntleroy today, and was about to start one of the others… then I thought “what about Middlemarch?” I downloaded that free from Amazon and have begun again from the beginning.

It has American spellings, but I can live with that for now… at least I am able to highlight things. I have got so used to highlighting all the bits I like that I find myself reaching for the ‘highlight’ button even when I’m not on the Kindle! If you say something pithy in an email, I want to highlight it and keep if forever in my clippings. (Not that I can — I don’t get emails on the Kindle!)

I have no previous experience of George Eliot, as I have read absolutely nothing else of hers… and in a way I wasn’t expecting much. I figured the books might be very dry, and possibly a bit depressing, and that’s about it. But the highlight button got into top gear from the first page of Middlemarch. Some of it seems to express how I feel… the blundering through life, unable to turn your ideas (or ideals) into any kind of material shape. Perhaps this is how women in particular felt back then, but it’s a feeling that hasn’t gone away.

Sometimes when there’s a lot going on inside my head, my blog seems the place to visit, but I worry that would be a mistake. You wonder why anyone would want to know what you think about things. If they have the same ideas already, they will not be impressed; if they have different ideas, it might be because they know better. Though I love to see my ideas out here, already expressed by others… that makes me feel that we are all the same underneath. Even if, in general, you can’t make people out, it is reassuring to discover (through some medium or other) that they have the same experiences and concerns.

It turns life into a Comedy of Errors, I think… if we are so cut off from each other that we think we are the only ones to feel stupid or scared, make mistakes or come across the wrong way, life swings towards Tragedy. Nothing is more frightening than aloneness.

This is why we like books; we can make contact…. get a glimpse of someone else’s thoughts without being kept at arm’s length by all the “hello, nice day!” stuff. Small chat can be draining in a way that a good pithy book is not.

The concept of ‘following’ another person’s Kindle highlights and notes bemused me… but after thinking about the above, it makes some sense. After completing a book, I look to see if others have highlighted the same bits that I did. I got the feeling that a lot of people, after an enthusiastic start, went to sleep in the middle of Diary of a Nobody… but they woke up towards the end.

It thought for a moment, then the following words appeared on the screen in green letters.

 Working on blog post….

 Working on blog post…

 Working on blog post….

 [Click click whirr].

Well, I read some WordPress posts saying we should blog often, even if busy or tired, so I’m trying. I got busy doing five pictures at once (one for a small informal contest… nothing special or grand) and when I started posting them, it all turned into a bit of an anti-climax. I’m still working on Pictures 4 and 5, and have even added a Picture 6, but the pace has slackened noticeably.

Maybe it’s time to socialize a bit… all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy!

Mum caught me looking abstracted the other day. I explained I was thinking how naive I was as a 20 year-old. My friend Honey and I didn’t know that the slang word ‘barf’ wasn’t a cute word for ‘bath’! But another 20 year-old… a boy… knew perfectly well what it meant.

I was wondering how both Honey and I got to the age of 20 not knowing that, and she said little boys always collect rude words to impress each other!

Perhaps. But I’m glad it was not just me! Possibly Honey and I realized we had exactly the same depth of ignorance, and so we were in the same boat… hence our friendship, which still goes on, though on different sides of the Pond.

In those days we didn’t have the internet. I’ve learned a lot from it since I got online, and I can’t imagine doing without it. I probably wouldn’t even be using software like Bryce… might not have heard of it. Might not know as much as I do about Photoshop etc. Won’t have heard of certain bloggers, and be wondering how they’re doing…

Thinking how nice it will be to get some sleep, though… that’s something that comes with age. I remember telling my favourite primary teacher that I never wanted to go to bed, but in the morning I never wanted to get up, and it seemed rather odd. She said when I got older, I’d be very glad to get to my bed, though not wanting to get up in the mornings remains about the same. Some things we can always count on.

It wasn’t all that personal a letter so I don’t know why I wouldn’t post it… this British trait of fearing to seem ‘too earnest’?

Perhaps we think being too earnest tempts fate and earns ridicule. I would rather have written something very light, amusing, and happy-go-lucky! Anyway…

The following image was part of the letter… I found it that day and was surprised, as I didn’t remember doing any panoramic images. I remembered trying, and finding it was impossible to do a good one unless you have the right kind of tripod or lens (way too expensive for normal people). But it seems I did end up with pictures to make me think “oh yes, those surroundings are so familiar!”

This one is only half of the garden… it was a bright day, so I assume the other half was over-exposed.

Click image for slightly larger view.

“WHAT gunk?”

“Varnish… tastes like banana.”

1: Who reads other people’s lists?

2: My top ten lists change, often in the middle of writing them.

3: So many things are equally deserving… for instance, do I give xth place to Vincent (Don McLean), SOS (Abba), Sealand (OMD), White Flag (Dido), Soolaimon (Neil Diamond), Bridge Over Troubled Water (Simon & Garfunkel)…?

4: They are often brief by nature… summaries instead of a full piece of writing.

5: Probably a Top Ten List would look better if it was set to music, surrounded by graphics, counting down dramatically to Number One… but in most cases it wouldn’t be worth the time and trouble (see 1 and 2).

6: The dullest Top Ten Lists (probably including this one) are identical to everyone else’s. In a list of favourite things, most of us love chocolate, coffee, reading in bed etc.

7: Top Ten lists take a lot of time to write… either you have to pick the best from a plethora of options, or search your mind because there are too few.

8: When reading other people’s top ten (especially Top Ten Tips), I always wonder which important items weren’t included. I don’t want just ten tips, in that case… I want all of them!

9: Top Tens which are a general choice (from a public vote) are often disappointing: items that deserve to be high on the list never are.

10: It’s especially unsettling when you view a publicly voted Top Ten that is nothing remotely like your own (e.g. the funniest comedies)… you start to wonder if your own sense of humour or taste is so different from everyone else’s — are you so behind the times, and what it is that you are missing?

If I feel the urge to write Top Ten lists, however, I will write them.

That was the latest WordPress ‘post a week 2011′ prompt, if you were wondering.

It makes me wonder though… there are so many things I wouldn’t normally dream of doing, that other people have done or do regularly! Impulsively, as children, or without even thinking. I’m a goody two-shoes, maybe, but I don’t know why that’s such a bad thing…

I haven’t been on the computer a lot lately; it seemed so dark and cold at the back of this room. For several days I didn’t even turn the computers on.

Suddenly thought of science fiction shows… Star Trek, Stargate or Babylon 5. People sitting in dark shadows with glowing computer screens. Communicating with each other, or doing painstaking research. A lot of the light on my face and hands is from this screen… spooky, strange. Anything could happen… somebody invisible could be swooping around the room! Maybe my messages are being intercepted by some starship full of aliens. And with a whoosh, a portal will open in the wall, and when I look through, there’s a raging snow storm in another world.

Instead, it’s just shadowy and gloomy, and I type in the glow of

AARGH!

Excuse me, I’m not kidding. I got that far, and there was a ‘boing’ and a thud, and cold air… somebody standing behind my chair. I twisted round, and it was Mum, scowling crossly and holding a notepad. (I didn’t hear her come in because, no hearing aids!) I felt stupid about this message I was typing, so I chivvied her out into the hall saying I didn’t have a pen (I didn’t. They disappear). But I found a pen in my bedroom, the one I write my personal journal with at night.

The ‘alien’ wrote down: “Fancy having a gigantic desk and no pencil! If you are up early tomorrow we can go to Morrisons.”

I can’t wait.

I was listening to a Neil Diamond CD I imported to iTunes, and really enjoyed it for a couple of days, then suddenly couldn’t make it out. Songs I knew and loved for years sounded of nothing.

I realised that both hearing aids were sounding a little distorted, though still working. Actually one sounds just a little distorted; the other was really bad.

I’ve been trying to dry them out (though I did nothing foolish like leaving them in a steamy bathroom) but have had no joy so far. Switched to an older hearing aid (a spare). Played ‘Castles in the Air’ (Don McLean) and ‘Catch the Wind’ (Donovan), as I know them quite well… but I wouldn’t have known what they were if I couldn’t see their titles.

Then I switched to the other computer (just in case it was the first computer that was distorted, and not my aids!) and could just about hear Mamma Mia… but all of the twiddly bits were gone. You get the crashing piano chords and the voices when they are low (just about), but you can’t make out any of the higher bits.

I immediately switched back to the first computer and played Mamma Mia there (it should be better as it has a small set of speakers with amplifier)… and it did in fact sound better; I could make out a brassy quality where the high bits are meant to be.

But it brings home to me how much of my enjoyment of music these days seems to rely on my remembering how the songs go. If I can’t quite remember / equate it to what’s coming out of the speakers, then it’s just a wall of sound. My chances of getting to know a brand new song are low.

Have turned off iTunes (again)… am annoyed at the thought I have to go back to the clinic and sit in a beastly waiting room just to keep these hearing aids working. You think “what’s the point?” It’s like striving to keep something that was never really mine anyway. I should just give up; lead a quiet life (except for those songs that still play in my head!)

Song in my head tonight: ‘Walk on Water’ by Neil Diamond. Off for some sleep now.

I don’t want to describe any of my actual grudges, but I had a thought that although we eagerly forgive and move on, forgetting is quite another thing. We are taught that it’s a good thing to ‘forgive and forget’, and maybe most of the time we do, but some things are burned in our memories and continue to shape our lives.

In a somewhat less than Pollyannaish way, we may be mistaken about how negatively we were impacted by something. If we were done out of a job or promotion that we really wanted, our loss might have led to a better path in life, or to our meeting someone we otherwise wouldn’t have met. But to us the original sin remains… it was an an injustice, and will be remembered as such.

We may bear a grudge against someone without realising how much he/she has been hurt by us in turn. We don’t know everything that goes on in other people’s minds, so sometimes all we remember is our own pain.

In The Full Cupboard of Life (from the No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency novels by Alexander McCall Smith), Mma Ramotswe said she believed in forgiveness. “Why, she asked herself, why keep a wound open when forgiveness can close it?”

Though I remember being confused by the way Mma Ramotswe approaches forgiveness… She forgives people and moves on, but cuts them out of her life. That’s something I can’t square with my notion of forgiveness. Perhaps it’s just another way of saying “I forgive but I never forget.”

I meant to say there are REASONS why we remember — we must try to avoid similar experiences in the future. We were always told pain has a reason… to stop us doing something damaging like putting our hand in the fire.

Most grudges should not be allowed to affect future relations, except where they safeguard us from future harm… they do have their uses. But we should not be TOO self-protective… if we remove people from our email lists for every slight — real or imagined — none of us would have any friends.

Mum says, “life is too short… the only acceptable reason one could have to end a friendship is boredom.” With our Grudgometers alive and ticking, I don’t think any of us will ever be bored.

Mum said it should save me a fortune in CDs.

Today it’s something that sounds like a James Bond theme tune… I can almost see the sinuous dancing figures, flames, and suited spies. If I look a bit faraway, don’t be surprised! I can’t hear your voice, or the TV, or the kettle… this tune is stronger than anything else.

If I hadn’t listened to so much music when younger, I wonder what I would be hearing instead? I can’t imagine anything other than music.

Crossed my mind I keep putting the ‘postaweek2011′ tag on my posts even if I’m posting every day, or once a month, or haven’t taken up any of WordPress’s suggested topics. So I scrolled back through past suggestions till I found one I liked: “What makes you feel like you’re still a kid?”

Oh, let me count the ways…

(1) The temptation to take all the credit to myself.

(2) A certain perspective from halfway up a hill… when you look back down at a tiny building at the foot, and everywhere else is countryside. That’s an odd one, I admit. I know the view I’m thinking of (halfway up to visit my grandparents) but I’m not sure why it had the impression it did. Why not my first view of the cottage, when the car crunched round the tight, pineconey corner at the top of the hill and through the gates? Why was I so struck by looking back down the hill at the garage?? But every so often I see something similar, and there’s a feeling of magic.

(3) Remembering what enthusiasm feels like… for a few seconds!

(4) When something really tickles my funny bone and I laugh out loud. For instance, when I borrowed ‘Simon’s Cat’ from the library today.

There’s a second part to this topic: “What makes you feel like an adult?”

(1) Pain I think, more than anything else. Sullied memories, disillusion, fading hopes, eroding health.

(2) Realizing I can keep quiet and not ask for reassurance from anyone. The whole ‘keeping it to yourself and not worrying others’ thing.

(3) The feeling that you’ve seen it all… at least in your corner of the world. Boredom with things you thought funny or interesting when they were fresh and new.

I wonder if I enjoy playing in Photoshop because it absorbs my thoughts for a while, and I don’t need to think about anything else. I have control over a little world of my own — for instance, I’ve been making houses in Photoshop (not very well), but (when I finally got there) I loved creating the details. I’m looking down on the top of those houses, come to think, and I love them best when they look distant, as though I could pick them up and hold them in the palm of my hand.

They haven’t gone anywhere yet, but I did post the jewelly wallpapers:

Living Emerald

Lurking and Glowing

This was taken out of my study window. After a lot of hasty clicking (had to get them before the clouds moved off or the light changed), I noticed an elderly neighbour pottering around his garden… I hope he didn’t think I was photographing him.

Here I’m introducing you to our tea collection. I suspect that’s only part of it, if there are other boxes lurking in a cupboard!

As Thomas says, ‘click to imbiggen’.

Other people online have complained about pain in the wrist and palm after using this rather flat, sensitive and twiddly gadget… you can’t rest your hand on it, as you would scroll and zoom without meaning to!

I don’t like the new, flat Apple Mac keyboards either… I’m a reasonably fast typist, but these boards make my hands feel strained, and I make a lot of mistakes.

I guess there are three things I should do:

(1) take a break from the computer!

(2) cut my talons (these flat keyboards were not made with long-nailed ladies in mind, and I end up stabbing the keys with the tips of my claws)

(3) dig out my graphics tablet again, and do all that Photoshop dab-dabbing with a pen instead of a mouse.

Tomorrow….

Also when I’m actually reading, there is a lot of space on either side, but I don’t have to scroll down as much as I do on the smaller Mac. As I couldn’t have a more recent browser on the old Mac (cheese cheese), it wasn’t working very well, and scrolling could be a sticky business. I wonder why I waited so long?

I seem to have recovered my creative spark (touch wood) and have been making more desktop wallpapers… few of which ever get posted! I always find a reason to hold back, and I made three versions of the same one today. Haven’t decided which I like best, yet.

Have finished reading Snobs by Julian Fellowes, which I enjoyed. Before that, I read Watching the English by Kate Fox, which was also enjoyable. Part of the reason I wanted to read it is that sometimes I wonder how British I am! There are things that have thrown me about other Brits (or folk in general?), and I wondered if the book would help. I recognized myself in some of the descriptions, but not others… (the pub culture, for instance. Any kind of pronounced drinking has always seemed to me bizarre, whether of tea, coffee or beer… but Kate Fox offers an explanation for it).

Both of those books have something in common — a wry look at the English class system.

Because of all the recent faffing about out-of-date browsers, I had to switch my blogging from my small old Mac to my big new one. I didn’t want to, but I suppose it will be easier to post pictures to my blog… this is my picture-making machine.

I have been buying our Patrick O’Brian novels all over again… we invited a bookseller to our house to look through our books, and he took a lot that weren’t actually for sale. I’m still upset about the strangest books… like my small collection of Asterix comics, including one in French. (‘Ils sont fous, ces Romains!’) I bought most of them as a student, as a kind of ‘end of the day’ treat; a break from studying.

My mother said she misses books too… she had some in her possession longer than she’s had me! Her mother lent out a book she bought with her pocket money when she was a girl… Scottish Chiefs by Janet Porter. All these years later, and she’s still upset that it was never given back.

I guess I knew that books were important to us; worlds such as The Wind in the Willows are almost homes on their own… and you get used to having those particular books sitting there, lining the walls like bulwarks against the world. I still have my Wind in the Willows paperback copy. Printed 1973, quite battered, and with my name written inside along with ‘Primary 7′! But I feel that it’s MY copy, and not a replacement bought recently. This is the very copy that made me cry when Moley sensed his home nearby.

Still, it was a shock that I felt so strongly about losing the other books… you think “did they really matter so much to me?” Simply replacing them (possible in some cases) isn’t enough… you want your original ones back, like my grandfather’s copy of poems by George Mackay Brown. (I got my other GMBs back, but he had already sold that one after having it for just one day).

You would imagine this would label me as a die-hard ‘printed book’ reader, someone who would never use an eBook reader. It has had the opposite effect, though… the thought of having books that can’t be passed from my possession to someone else’s is suddenly very attractive. I can see an e-reader lurking in my very near future.

They are just books… so I tell myself! But I’m tightening my defences.

I would say that people can’t be pigeon-holed, and nor can artists. If they could, it would make them less part of the world; less real.

I’m inclined to wonder if there’s a ‘let’s make everyone else feel they’re of no value’ thing going on… perhaps in every field you care to think of. It’s as though people ‘possess’ the field they are part of; they make up arbitrary rules and impossible standards to try and keep everyone else out.