There is something really delightful and magical in contrast. In the warm glow of a lamp amidst  the gloom and gray seeping through the windows, filtered partly by the shade. In the comfort of sheets, warmed through and through, folding around you; falling away at the shoulders to let in the cold. In bright, glorious days ending in stormy nights, and tenuous, unreadable mornings that refuse to promise anything.

I am in a mood to go on, poetically, without rhyme or rudder. To merely meander in thick, wordy sentences until the birds stop their half mournful, half mirthful conversation. And yet, there is a part of me which wishes to be doing, to be focused upon a point and be able to measure my approach. I wish to document how much time I wasted yesterday not knowing what I was about, and how many plans I have for today, and Sunday, and all the tomorrows to come after. I want to get up and, in defiance of the weather which has chosen my day off to be nasty, ride my newly repaired bike through the neighborhood, across the busy street, and down the wooded trail that leads to the library.

Yet, how nice it would be just to sit here and soak in the gothic beauty of the day, as if I were in a Bronte novel.

I’ve already done that, though. I have read the first chapter of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. I have read it and exulted. Already, in the sixteen pages that make up the first chapter of the first volume, there has been one whole page made up almost entirely of footnote. I love footnotes, and, in a fictional work, they leaned such an air of bookishness   and respectability – believability, if you will. And with the book being about Victorian gentlemen – regency really, I suppose, so pre-Victorian – who make the study of magic dull to nearly everyone else and value books and discussion over all – well. I do have many weaknesses, but not many as deep as the one I have for descriptions of someone’s private library.*

But I suppose I really should wind-up here. Should shower and dress and arm myself against the pervasive air of laziness. How can a morning be so divided? For the very cold that makes me want to curl up and read on grabs at my toes and tugs me towards an adventure of my own making. And the birds, as they penetrate the solemnity of the damp and clouds, send thrills of possibility down my spine with every other chirp.

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*See Inkheart