I like to ease into my day with a cup of coffee and more than a few minutes of reading. I try to carefully chose these early morning books. This year I pulled off my shelf The Assassin's Cloak: An Anthology of the World's Greatest Diaries edited by Irene and Alan Taylor. I used this as a morning reading years ago, but since reading Thomas Mallon's A Book of One's Own (here) my interest in diaries and diarists has once again been piqued. The Assassin's Cloak gathers three or four entries from diaries corresponding to each day of the year. I love reading these random entries from the past. This morning there was an entry from 1849, a couple from the 1930s and 1940s, and one from 1970. I never know who is going to show up. Samuel Pepys? May Sarton? James Boswell? Dorothy Wordsworth?
No mention of Elvis's 80th birthday today, though.
I also will be reading through a book I bought last April when I was in New Harmony, Indiana, entitled Daily Wisdom: 365 Buddhist Inspirations edited by Josh Bartok. Since I began the book in April last year I still have wisdom from the first months of the year to savor.
Here is today's from Bhante Henepola Gunaratana:
No matter how hard you pursue pleasure and success, there are times when you fail. No matter how fast you flee, there are times when pain catches up with you.
For a little more early morning inspiration, I am reading a chapter-a-day in Creating a Charmed Life by Victoria Moran and 30 Days to a Simpler Life by Connie Cox and Cris Evatt. These each contain short essays and won't take all year to get through so I will come up with others to round out the year.
For my evening mystery, I stumbled on The Evil Shepherd by E. Phillips Oppenheim which was published in 1922 and was offered as a free e-book by Early Bird Books. It is really more of a thriller and is quite entertaining. Mr. Oppenheim was quite prolific and penned over one hundred novels and many short stories.
And, because I am always on the lookout for tips on simplifying and systematizing, I picked up a copy of The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up written by the Japanese home-organization consultant Marie Kondo. She advocates discarding and organizing your entire home in one fell swoop - perhaps in three to six months - instead of tackling one room at a time or one drawer at a time which means you are constantly working against clutter. Do it once, do it right. But more on this book another day.
I am quite happy with my morning choices. Do you have any books in particular that you are starting your day with this year? If so, I would love to hear about them.
I have been entertaining myself this morning by thumbing through an assortment of diaries looking to see if anything exciting happened on this day in the lives of anyone. One book entitled English Diaries (1930) and edited by Elizabeth D'Oyley contains the musings of such worthies as Samuel Pepys, John Evelyn, Fanny Burney, Dorothy Wordsworth, Sir Walter Scott, and arctic explorer Captain Robert Scott.
I couldn't find any entries for December 22 by any of the diarists in that collection, so I turned to The Assassin's Cloak (2000) edited by Irene and Alan Taylor. This is a wonderful compendium of diary entries by a wild variety of folks and is both entertaining and thought provoking.
Here is one of the five entries included for today written down by J.R. Ackerley, a British writer and editor. Mr. Ackerley (1896-1967) was the literary editor of The Listener, the BBC's weekly magazine. I must say I have to agree with his sentiments...
December 22, 1952
The Movietone News this week had a Christmas feature. A large number of flustered turkeys were driven towards the camera, and the commentator remarked that the Christmas rush was on, or words to that effect. Next they were seen crowded about their feeding trough, making the gobbling turkey fuss, and the commentator observed, with dry humour (again I do not remember his exact words), that it was no use their holding a protest meeting, for they were for it in the morning. Similar facetious jokes followed them wherever they went, hurrying and trampling about in their silly way; for to make them look as silly as possible was no doubt part of the joke and easy to achieve: turkeys, like hens, like all animals, are beautiful in themselves, and have even a kind of dignity when they are leading their own lives, but the fowls, in particular, look foolish when they are being frightened.
These jolly, lip-licking sallies, delivered in the rich, cultivated self-confident voice of one who has no sort of doubt of his own superiority to the animal kingdom, raised no laugh from the considerable audience, I was pleased to note. I took it from the silence that many other people besides myself would have been glad to be spared jeers and jibes at these creatures who, parting unwillingly with their lives, were to afford us pleasure at our Christmas tables.
...How arrogant people are in their behaviour to the domestic beasts at least. Indeed, yes, we feed upon them, and enjoy their flesh; but does that permit us to make fun of them before they die or after they are dead? If it were possible, without disordering one's whole life, to be a vegetarian, I would be one; nothing could have been more disgusting and degrading than the insensitiveness displayed by the exhibition I have described.
I seem to have quite a collection on my shelves of day-by-day books. One is Irene and Alan Taylor's The Assassin's Cloak which is an anthology of diary entries from different people written in different years but for the same day. Another one, Simple Abundance by Sarah Ban Breathnach, provides a year full of daily suggestions on ways to add comfort and joy to your life. A shorter one is Thirty Days to a Simpler Life by Connie Cox and Chris Evatt with tasks laid out that can be done in an hour or so and leave you with a serene, uncluttered home and life.
Another book along these same lines is Creating a Charmed Life by Victoria Moran. Although not a 'daily' read, nevertheless there are 75 entries ranging from "Enjoy Your Eccentricities" (of which I have many) to "Call a Truce with the Clock" to "Drink Good Coffee, Eat Good Food."
One entry, Number 16, is titled "Live Your Life in Chapters" which seemed appropriate for a book journal post. Ms. Moran suggests that if we believe the notion that 'everything has to be done today' nothing gets done. And in our frenzy of running around trying to accomplish our dreams all at once, all we are left with are frantic feelings.
Instead, she advises, think of your life in chapters - like a long novel - and focus on one chapter at a time. This way you can devote attention to just this time of your life. So you may be in your college student chapter, or first job chapter, or children-and-family chapter, or retirement chapter.
By living in your chapter, you are not expecting to have it all right now. You pay attention to what your life is now and don't need to worry about times past or yet to come.
In conclusion, she writes:
Decide what chapters you want in your life story. Accept that fate may insert a few others. Give yourself without reservation to the chapter you are on. Trust that living this chapter fully will prepare you for what will next unfold. Don't worry that a choice like putting off college to volunteer overseas or taking time to be with your children is foolhardy. Such an experience will make you richer as a person and more valuable to the world. It could also be the finest chapter in your biography.
I seem to be in my writing, reading, online book journaling, yoga-ing, watercoloring, traveling chapter. It is titled "Staying Engaged with My Creative Life."
How about you? What chapter are you focused on right now? What is its title?
