May 3, 2020

Another day of pleasing accomplishment. Wrote well in the morning. Planted what described itself as “red velvet” sunflowers, the last packet of seed in the bag. For the first time since moving here I planted everything I bought.

Over the course of my academic career I forgot how to read for pleasure. Trying to ease back into reading a little now, a little later, lingering in the fictive world rather than trying to ransack it, wring it dry of meaning. Reading Anne Enright’s Actress . Picked it up in Eason’s on Nassau Street in Dublin. It’s the first thing I’ve read for no particular purpose in thirty years.

The quarantine seems to be fraying at the edges. Face masks are by no means as universal as they once were, and the streets of cities fill with people protesting the lock-down for various bad and good reasons. I don’t think Covid-19 will go away just because we’re sick of it.