June 11: Thoughts; Reading

[kinetic_elaboration]

Spent a while cycling through and rejecting different writing ideas and now I give up. I feel like I have just as many days when I do this as when I actually write. And after I’ve written something, I’m always like ‘that wasn’t so hard.’ Well it was actually. It is. And that’s okay.

Anyway, I’m terrified of going to sleep too late today and I neeeeed to shower, I am gross as hell. So I am not continuing with that futility.

I am…40-some pages, I think, into Quo Vadis and I’m really getting into it. I’m reading a little bit faster now that I’m not stopping all the time to look up words. I think there are actually fewer unknown words, but I also have a sure enough footing to gather more by context clues, I think.

It’s fun seeing the contrast of Petronius and Vicinius with people like Lygia and Aulus and Pomponia, especially when the point of view switches abruptly, because truly these first two people are amoral and selfish and emotional and the second set are upstanding and serious and care about honor. And both of them judge the other set. Well, not Lygia, the definition of a sweet summer child, at least so far.

I want to talk about this book more than I feel like I can because I just haven’t read that much. I mean I don’t have deep thoughts of any sort. I can see the yarn starting to unwind though. And I feel like I’m getting a sense of this historical period that I haven’t had before, which makes it feel more real. Close, even. I’m excited, no particular reason, to get to Nero in the next chapter.