By the almanac, yesterday and today were good days for destroying noxious growth. I pulled some weeds and cut some vines and tree branches that were growing all over the top of my Simpson's Stoppers. That corner of the yard is one of my favorites for window meditation and I am not to be defeated by wild grapevines and smilax.
The next two days are for destroying weeds, not the best vibe for working with background to Camus' The Stranger, but I'll approach it with the idea that we are cutting through the myths of cultural isolation that surround the novel. The weeds I would like to destroy are the notion that Meursault has no emotions, thanks to Spark Notes, ahem, and the identification of Camus as a French writer whose novel happens to be set in Algiers, a very French place with some Arabs, rather than Algiers, a very north African place with some French transplants going about their daily lives. Thus the tension.
As I look at the almanac prognostication for the week ahead, I see that the week builds up to fertile days that I hope will give us a leg up into the senior oral commentaries the first week in March. I also notice that Daytona Bike Week is not until the second week in March, so there is hope that I could go to the vintage races and see the hand-shifters working their elbows around the third curve. That would mean taking a day off work, which I never do any more for anything but my beautiful niece and nephew, Martha age 3 1/2 who just last weekend pooped on the big person's potty, and Sacha age 1 1/4 who has trumped his already physically precocious sister's deadlines for crawling and walking. Nobel prizes to come.
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