Second Order Feelings

I'm in a good mood and I am happy that I'm in a good mood. I'm in a good mood because I just remembered that I know how to take care of myself! I know how to sleep in a bit and then get up and make tea and delicious scrambled eggs. I know that, actually, you don't need a toaster to make toast, you can just use a pan! I know that it's fiction week on Slate and that I can read lots about books. I know that I have a book that I want to read and that there is a hot shower waiting for me whenever I can manage to get out of my pajamas. I know what bands to listen to in order to amplify my happiness. I do.

Today I've just got this growing sense that I know myself well enough to seek out the things that I need and want. I know things about myself that are not circumstance dependent, things that I can always come back to. And even when I have trouble explaining myself to others (oh, say in Spanish, for example) I stilll...well, I still have myself. Maybe that is the sort of sentence that will make me cringe when viewed from a week's distance, but there it is.

And, although I'm not crazy about Myla Goldberg as a novelist (OK, I've only read "Bee Season" but that book gets pretty messy in the end) I do really like this quote of hers from Slate about books that you are supposed to have read, but haven't:

"As much as I admire and value intellectualism and experimentation, I've discovered that unless a book has a throbbing heart as well as a sexy brain, I feel like the story is a specimen in a sealed glass jar and not a living, breathing creature I want to take by the hand and talk to for hours on end."

Yeah, exactly.