i think we live a fanciful life. it's ideal for us. so why do we need a break from it? why a vacation? we are able to spend most of our time together anyway? and we set our own hours for the most part. why take the time and spend the money to escape our perfect little life? i ponder as we are packing up the room today. we're leaving this evening and making serious plans for our return visit. we wandered the beaches all week together. we planned our day around 3 criteria.....beach time, eating and....i guess it was just 2 criteria. we both read most of the day by the waves. i mentioned before.....that was when i knew luxury was afoot. when i had nothing to take me away from reading. i brought 4 books. and have just begun book #4. tom brought 2 books, both of which i'm interested in reading as well. so we are nicely stocked. if i finish mine today, i'll bust into the one he just finished. our library consisted of 'the crossing' by cormac mccarthy; 'the englishman's boy' by guy vanderhaeghe; 'half broke horses' by jeannette walls; 'the sentimentalists' by johanna skibsrud; 'divisadero' by michael ondaatje; and 'the paper garden' by molly peacock. i loved noticing as we wound through the oily brown bodies poolside, that i could find the canadians based on recognizing the books they read.
so, off i go to read away the last few hours of our vacation beside the sea, in the hot sweet january air of jamaica. tomorrow we'll be reading next to a fire in the january weather we are more accustomed to.

this evening i started my winter journey. since the time i was searching for my own direction in my mid-twenties i've wanted to read proust. i was intrigued with him. and i knew that the people who's lives i read about and obsessed on had also been intrigued with him. i outgrew many of those personalities, but not my distant interest in marcel proust. he is pointedly french. and his work circles in and around the parisian and provincial life. gallic. and since my life in france, so many years ago, i feel that connection profoundly. i've started reading swann's way many times. but a few weeks ago for my birthday, tom gave me the entire set of volumes.....everything together waiting for me to become part of them. the past weeks have been so busy with the house, i've wanted to settle in during the rainy evenings and start reading....but i waited until tonight. the house is listed, and i now feel free to start this new project. i'm hoping to read 25 pages a day and while the winter away with proust. i'll let you know how it goes. À la recherche du temps perdu.

lately, i've been waking up in the middle of the night. i love the silence and lonely darkness. but i can only wait to fall back to sleep for so long. the moon usually makes long, leafy shadows on the wall above the bathtub. and sometimes i can hear the rustle of animals knocking over garbage cans. or raccoons crying in the trees around the house. and if the wind is strong, the branches scrape across the roof. if i don't fall asleep in 15 or 20 minutes, i read myself back to sleep. there are usually cats on our bed. and my husband asleep beside me. so, i pull the covers over my head, with my book and my little reading light. and there is a glowing tent where i feel like i'm 8 years old again, with a pilfered flashlight and archie comics that were hidden under my mattress, tented in my bed long after i was supposed to be asleep. with the same moon spreading different braches across different walls. but more alike than different. i love the same things about it now, as i did then. the sheets are exagerated folds. i can hear each breath i take. and it seems like no one on earth knows where to find me. until i want to be found. and reading just seems sweeter when you are hidden away in a duvet tent.