De Miseris Mondayensis

It's around 1:30 in the bookshop, a thunderously grey day only without the thunder and the sky has dissolved into white cloud cover, and the very new heavy foliage of the trees gives a peculiar weight and fullness to the scene. I hadn't been outside much since the Friday before the holidays, if at all, and it was all very new to me. There are even dandelions blown to seed in the garden patches at the street.

During the white night I read about the Osama bin Laden stuff and wrote the blog post beneath, which I may delete eventually because it doesn't seem nice or helpful, and it feels revolting to be so cheerful about someone's death (Mama felt that it was murderous and Papa was angry about it, I think). I also still don't understand why someone dying should make me feel so much better. Someone came into the bookshop to drop off a book for us to sell on commission, and he solemnly stated that yesterday was an important day in history. I must admit that I replied, facetiously, "Because of the Pope?". As I was going to write on a Facebook update I never posted (not wanting to attack people with political controversies), I think that this would be an important day of history if bin Laden's death made the people who died in 2011 (or in the African embassies earlier, or on the U.S.S. Cole) alive again. But this is just a death day. So that's why I was irritated and (completely uncharacteristically) sarcastic.

What I don't understand is why all of the doubts I had about whether bin Laden knew of the plans for Sept. 11th, or took them seriously if he did, have suddenly vanished. The idea of CIA plots was in my view absurd though in the realm of possibility; what I rather thought is that it might have been a "grassroots initiative" and to make Osama bin Laden immediately responsible for that is like arguing that any crime a Mafia drug dealer commits is directly ordered by the padrone (if that's the correct term).

In any case it is comforting to read Gawker and Jezebel, because there is a good deal of New Yorkish levelheadedness, skepticism and thoughtfulness in the comments. I was looking for an editorial or article in the newspapers to make a useful point for me, but it didn't happen. There was an immensely sad quote from a woman whose son had died on Sept. 11th who basically had no reaction, and said that bin Laden's death didn't change anything. Nonetheless I felt as if it did, and though it may be wishful thinking I hoped that we could cork the islamophobia back up in the bottle, not carry out secret operations in Pakistan, etc., and begin again with a clean canvas.

Anyway, these things happen slowly. The newspapers are much better again, even before 2008 I was thankful at the thought that Donald Rumsfeld was no longer Defense Secretary (though when he appeared on the Daily Show this year it was definitely too soon), when Obama won the election I realized that the Bush administration had stolen eight years of my life which I will never get back but at least those eight years were over, and pretty much every time I watch a session in British Parliament I am happy that Antonius Blair has departed and the clean fresh air of David Cameron has entered. But Fox News and its brainless brethren are still with us, and CNN for instance has I think not a fifth of its former succinctness, informativeness, and class, and since I watched the Headline News almost daily as an eighth- or ninth-grader I should know.

Other than that, my holidays were I think well spent. I've read dozens of romance novels, relaxed into a veritable sea anemone, scribbled a little on stories, returned to long Hermitologies blog posts though they are most likely a nuisance, and finally spent more time on the piano, where I had marathon sessions with Bach, Beethoven, Satie, Haydn, Scarlatti, Chopin, Schumann, Mendelssohn, etc., etc., and eventually stopped overthinking the music. The idea of composing probably won't amount to much, though.

Here in the bookshop I turned to a philosophical book on Aristotle again but couldn't concentrate. But hopefully I will, because it spreads on the troubled waters of my soul like a calming oil, and I could really use some of that.

P.S.: Never mind the Latin in the post title. Half of ancient Rome is probably rolling in its graves.