The number of books I’ve read has dropped over the last couple of years because I no longer have a commute during which I can listen to audiobooks. And given the choice of working from home and reading fewer books or working in the office and listening to more audiobooks–that choice is trivially easy for me.

One consequence of this, however, is that I’ve read nearly zero fiction since COVID. Audiobooks were always the way I read fiction; I found that the format was perfect for fiction, less so for nonfiction. So I’ve been feeling the itch to get back to some fiction this winter. I’ve been accumulating a list of possibilities and I’m open to any suggestions:

Finished reading When the Body Says No: Exploring the Stress-Disease Connection by Gabor Maté. Fewer case studies and biological details would have made this a perfect book for me—but I realize that’s a weird thing to ask of such a book. Nevertheless, extremely important ideas here.

I made Indian Pudding and whipped cream. (Not exactly the most accurate or sensitive name for it.) It’s pretty good! The molasses makes it taste old-fashioned, so maybe not for everyone. Rachel says it tastes like the Depression. 😂

Finished reading Owning Your Own Shadow by Robert A. Johnson. Great, short introduction to the subject by a Jungian analyst. It’s an important idea, despite its popularity among young people who have not lived long enough to have developed much of a shadow. 😉

New Aesop Rock album release day is a good day.

Thankfully most of my CPA continuing education can be done via webinar—but today’s is on the north side of Indianapolis, requiring ninety minutes of driving in heavy traffic to listen to an eight hour talk in a drab office park about what’s new in accounting. sigh

James Hillman, “The Poetic Basis of Mind”:

Because symptoms lead to soul, the cure of symptoms may also cure away soul, get rid of just what is beginning to show, at first tortured and crying for help, comfort, and love, but which is the soul in the neurosis trying to make itself heard, trying to impress the stupid and stubborn mind–that impotent mule which insists on going its unchanging obstinate way. The right reaction to a symptom may as well be a welcoming rather than laments and demands for remedies, for the symptom is the first herald of an awakening psyche which will not tolerate any more abuse. Through the symptom the psyche demands attention. Attention means attending to, tending, a certain tender care of, as well as waiting, pausing, listening. It takes a span of time and a tension of patience. Precisely what each symptom needs is time and tender care and attention. Just this same attitude is what the soul needs in order to be felt and heard. So it is often little wonder that it takes a breakdown, an actual illness, for someone to report the most extraordinary experiences of, for instance, a new sense of time, of patience and waiting, and in the language of religious experience, of coming to the center, coming to oneself, letting go and coming home.

It was a great time tonight, despite the unseasonably cold weather. (36F!) Every year we have hundreds of kids through our neighborhood. The number was down a bit this year but still more than expected. It’s truly a special thing we have here.

Happy Halloween!

Appropriately enough for the opening of Allhallowtide, the print shop finished the scan of an 1864 letter written by my great-great-great grandfather–Private David S. Morgan, G Company, 49th Infantry, Union Army. I’ll be framing a copy printed on cardstock and keeping the original in an archival quality folder.