I recently read a very good novel, THE SECRET OF SANTA VITTORIA, set in an Italian hill town during WWII. I highly recommend it with the single reservation that there is a part where the SS is torturing men that is deeply disturbing. The scenes are essential to the story, but if you want to avoid or skim them, they occur in Part 7, The Rat in the Throat, in my Kindle edition from about location 5950 to 6250.
As I have written before, while I love being in San Diego and have history here that goes back more than sixty years, I expect and hope that my San Diego time is drawing to a close and that soon GANNET and I will be in Hilton Head, South Carolina. I thought that I was trying to unify and simplify my life, but toward the end of THE SECRET OF SANTA VITTORIA I discovered the real reason I must leave San Diego.
The mayor turned to Fabio.
“One rule, Fabio. One law that must be respected. Never grow old where you once have been great,”
I trust you know I am smiling.
I am also smiling at a poem by Thomas Hardy I read last evening, ‘The Ruined Maid’. I think you will too.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44332/the-ruined-maid
I need to go sailing. Seriously need. You understand. And I don’t know when I am going to get my Torqeedo batteries back.
Also last evening I watched the jungle episode of the Netflix series, NIGHT ON EARTH, in which low light and infra-red cameras have been used to photograph images of wildlife never seen before. Whenever I watch such documentaries I am struck by how life feeds on life, every possible vulnerability exploited by another life form specifically evolved to do so, by how consciousness resists unconsciousness, how DNA ‘demands’ to be projected endlessly into the future, even imposing sometimes death creating imperatives to do so.
Above is my new coffee cup. My old one ceramic broke. It was until now my favorite coffee cup. Short, squat with a low center of gravity, good on a boat. I found the above Yeti cup at Dick’s Sporting Goods while looking for something else. It is metal and seems indestructible, even better on a boat. Like most things Yeti, it is expensive. But then I may never have to buy another.
