More specifically concerning: housekeeping
the doubtful guest
17 November 2011, around 8.50.
Mrs. Boswell reacts to a visitation by Samuel Johnson.
a definite achievement
6 January 2013, around 7.01.
Wittgenstein on organizing one’s library
A view (44)
2 September 2015, around 11.20.
midday, Portland
audax
13 April 2016, around 10.37.
A rather large spider has taken up residence in the living room. Well, it is not so much that the spider is large as that it has, shall we say, presence: one notices this spider. Indeed, it notices one right back, turning and glaring (if indeed spiders may be said to glare) when one comes […]
angular
7 May 2019, around 10.11.
Noticing new angles.
imperfective
28 August 2020, around 5.06.
In the mending basket were three pairs of trousers waiting in diverse states of wear and disarray. They had been waiting there for some months, and weighing on my mind for longer – indeed, since I gathered them together with patch and thread and needle to undertake the task of repair, before setting them aside […]
household humors
22 April 2021, around 13.54.
I don’t think the illustrator got the phthisical phiz of Lorry Slim quite right in this dapper sketch of a portly parson. Idleness does not cause disease primarily and in itself, but by means of excess. For parts of the body characterized by idleness become weaker and less robust, as each excess comes about due […]
destressing
5 October 2022, around 13.55.
The historian’s relative choice, with respect to each domain of history he gives up, is always confined to the choice between history which teaches us more and explains less, and history which explains more and teaches less. The only way he can avoid the dilemma is by getting outside history: either by the bottom, if […]
other work
27 March 2023, around 14.23.
It is the itchy time of year, that small collection of days when one notices the dusty cobwebs gathered in the corner and along the picture rail, when the dirty streaks on the window vex a spot of sun that shines too brightly but does not linger long. The piles of books pulled out for […]
ambient
10 April 2023, around 14.48.
If you lose the spirit of repetition, your practice will become difficult. —Shunryu Suzuki (Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, p. 55) These waters must be troubled before they can exert their virtues. —Edmund Burke (A Philosophical Enquiry into […]the Sublime and Beautiful) Monotony is the most beautiful or the most atrocious thing. The most beautiful if […]
qualms before a storm
1 May 2023, around 15.55.
Not a skunk cabbage. The swamp discourages casual camera-carrying. It is the short period of the year when the ground is damp enough, but the weather is dry enough, that fires for burning yard debris are permitted. A week of sun has more or less dried out the massive pile containing three years’ worth of […]
disjointed
19 June 2024, around 4.08.
…this element itself is neither living nor dead, present nor absent: it spectralizes. It does not belong to ontology, to the discourse on the Being of beings, or to the essence of life or death. It requires, then, what we call, to save time and space rather than just to make up a word, hauntology. […]
in line
1 August 2024, around 9.19.
The first peculiarity which strikes us when we reflect on the equivalent form is this, that use-value becomes the form of the appearance of its opposite, value. —Marx (Capital, vol. 1, trans. Ben Fowkes, p. 148) It is supposed to be warm today. We have been out of town due to the great building repair […]
baton
14 August 2024, around 16.35.
There are several large piles of sticks and fallen branches that need either to be burned (during burn season) or chipped by a brush chipper (during wildfire season). As it is wildfire season, the deadfall needs to be slowly moved from several smaller inconveniently located piles to one larger pile where the chipper can get […]
hail
17 August 2024, around 17.04.
Am trying to stay up to date on the housekeeping, which usually ends of happening (for the larger tasks) on the weekend. So today was spent scrubbing the propane tank and trimming some of the smaller branches on the trees near the property line and hauling the refuse over to a pile for the brush […]
not to scale
24 August 2024, around 19.51.
Spending time doing things around the house, small household tasks that are inessential in themselves, but might make things easier, more pleasant, different, anyhow. Then I sit around waiting for the mail to arrive; it has been on hold and there should have been two books in along with the assorted envelopes that look ominous […]
Adversaria (23)
28 February 2025, around 4.27.
‘Men may come and men may go, but the truth of the multiplication table does not budge’ —Philip Wheelwright (Heraclitus, p. 29) ‘The carer, after all, also eats, wears clean clothes, washes herself. The more you read, the more Dorothy Wordsworth seemed to be describing a radically sane life, rooted in the hour-by-hour reconciliation of […]
ascent
16 June 2025, around 8.31.
Bin guter Stimmung, habe wieder gearbeitet. Am besten kann ich jetzt arbeiten während ich Kartoffeln schäle. Melde mich immer freiwillig dazu. Es ist für mich dasselbe was das Linsenschleifen für Spinoza war. I’m in a good mood, worked again. I can think best right now when I am peeling potatoes. Always volunteer for it. It […]
thrift
3 September 2025, around 16.11.
The local thrift store has been a surprisingly fruitful source of reading material this past year. The shop in town has produced d’Alembert and multiple volumes of Quine, while the shop at the mountain has yielded treasures such as a lightly pruned edition of John Dundas Cochrane’s A pedestrian journey through Russia and Siberian Tartary, […]
paltry
15 September 2025, around 10.00.
But I forbear to dwell any longer on a matter which has hitherto worn too loose a garb to admit even of an accurate inspection of its real shape or tendency. —The Federalist Papers, No. 36 Not quite the first frost, although there was a fine layer of mist on all the parked cars when […]
a minor delight
21 September 2025, around 14.17.
Between enthusiasm and scientific criticism one could find countless shades of opinion if one followed the history of ornithology. But this is not our subject. Let us note in passing, however, that we have here a controversy over values that often deforms the facts on both sides. And who knows if this fall, not of […]