This past Christmas, the arty daughter gave me (among other things) this owl screen print she made in her printmaking class last semester. It had been sitting on my dresser, but at last I've gotten around to procuring a frame for it, and here it is, to the left of the kitchen window. It fills the space beneath a framed image we've had for a long time --- if I recall correctly, we even had it shipped to Cambridge, as a thing we couldn't do without. It's the cover to a now-defunct periodical, Books & Religion, featuring lines from Christopher Smart's Jubilate Agno, and the outline of his famous cat, Jeoffrey, who lives in those lines. I thought the owl made a nice companion for Jeoffrey, though they're hardly likely to put to sea in a beautiful pea-green boat.
Yesterday afternoon, after a mercifully quick and uneventful dermatologist appointment, I went in to the Abbey for the diaconal ordination of Brother James Rayburn, O.S.B., after which (though unconnected with which) was a lecture by Ross Douthat of the New York Times, and a dinner. Came home, walked the dog one last time, fell into bed.
TODAY:
Got up and finished Martin Chuzzlewit with my coffee. Now for Barnaby Rudge, the only Dickens novel (besides, oddly, Oliver Twist, which I guess I'll read next, even though I do know the story). Then I suppose I'll embark on Dickens' novellas and short stories. And then I'll be looking for ways and reasons to insert Dickens into all my literary conversation from now on.
Not much on --- thank goodness. I still need to pull clean sheets out of the dryer and put them back on the beds upstairs, which have had several days to air out completely. So I'll make those rooms back up, the only real housework I have before me. Then I'll finish my two Sun essays, on the extremely odd Jones Very and on Sir Philip Sidney's "Psalm XIII." They're written, but I haven't put them up on the site yet, because I wanted to look them over and tweak them again before I did.
MORNING PILGRIMAGE WALK:
We made 3 miles on this leg, and will undoubtedly get in at least another mile before bed tonight. So far, in total, we've walked just over 34 miles, leaving us about 86 miles to go. By tonight, then, we'll have reached and gone just past Bury St. Edmunds and the ruins of the great Benedictine foundation of St. Edmundsbury, turning north to Walsingham.
I had thought it was going to rain today, but it's actually glorious out. Cooler, but very pleasant. Trees in flower everywhere:
Wearing today:
Camellia, with thrifted blue merino cardigan, old purple leggings, wool socks from Target several years ago, thrifted Birkenstock hiking boots.
I'm feeling very tired today and am glad to have gotten as far as 3 miles in one stretch. I had thought I'd try to knock out a whole 4 miles, but nope. My out-of-shapeness is catching up with me. I hope to push through it, but 4 miles seems a perfectly reasonable goal for today.
I have done various things on these walking stretches, by the way (including woolgathering). Some of the more intentional pilgrim things:
*prayed Morning Prayer on my phone (hard to do with Dora, who resents the phone and will try to knock it out of my hand)
*prayed the Morning Offering
*prayed the Divine Praises
*gone over all my prayer intentions and conscrated my steps for those intentions, as well as in reparation for my sins
*meditated on my psalm verse: Show, O Lord, thy ways to me, and teach me thy paths
*recited, in my head, the words to "Jesus, My Lord, My God, My All," which I have memorized, and which I frequently use as a prayer before Mass
So I am really trying to make this a pilgrimage, step by step, and not just a walking discipline. I hope that eventually I'll be able to walk 4 and 5 miles without feeling so tired, but I do hope for other things as well, that will outlast the body.
And now . . . Dora's taking a rest in her crate, and I have some work to settle down to.