False Inspiration

I have been, I realize now, often the victim over these last 30 years or so of false inspiration. Failure to burrow through to the end of it. Common with many I know, David H and Ross among them, I think.

Time is not at an end yet.

Automobile

Used my car for the first time in about a month. Although it is in a covered parking lot, it had become covered in dust and dirt. I had to take it to a car wash, even though I'm not very fussy about such things.

Went to the map and travel book store. Across the street I discovered a good bookstore. Bought three things at the map/travel place and Mad Mary Lamb by S.T. Hitchcock, and the accidental by Ali Smith.

Eventually, and reluctantly, I went to Walmart to buy a bathroom scale. Bought a beach towel there too. 194 pounds. Need to be 185 by Aug 25th.

Going to see the Dada exhibit at the MoMA in NY at some point in July. It seems somewhat difficult to plot the highways to take from Ottawa to New York.

One of the original editors of the divine NY Review of Books passed away this week.

Saw the film Water by Deepa Mehta yesterday. Not bad, but perhaps a touch more melodrama than is to my taste. Beautiful shots - in fact as I hurried in from the bright and pale streets of Ottawa into the darkish cinema and the beautiful colours of the screen, I wondered whether it is better, or more palatable, to consume life in the dark of the cinema.

Reading Aloft by Chang-Rae Lee. Good book. Breaking my rule about reading books in the order they were written. Have to go back and read the first one later.

Also reading the Rough Guide To London (Nov 2005 edition). By chance the Nottinghill Carnival is going to happen the weekend I arrive (last weekend in August).

Lamb pub - where near Rugby Street where Plath and Hughes met. Hope to meet TD there.

Just Read

I just read 151 pages of the book "Freud" by Jonathan Lear in order to get to his discussion of the death instinct, only to find that Lear thinks that the concept of death instinct is a fundamental error in Freud's thinking. Which is neither here nor there in terms of what I want to use it for (part of the novel), still it is dissapointing. All this "research" was, in a sense, a diversion from having to write anything.

Still the book was good.