Skinny Dipping

[22.xii.24 : dimanche] For the last two mornings, I’ve been lying on the couch in front of a blazing fire, reading. It was 14°F this a.m. when I awoke. The temperature steadily rose and by 7 a.m. snow was falling. I’m reading the Prose Edda & the Kalevala which is electric, I love it, the cadence, the rhythm, the humor. I’m keeping up with my 2 pages a day in my fatbook & I’m working (like all my Christmas holidays for the past 20 years it seems) on Mallworld or I’m working around it. A little progress each day. I read that some writers write for 8 hours a day, like writing is a real job … and look at what they write in all those hours. V.W. says, if I were always writing, or merely recouping from writing, I should be like an inbreeding rabbit,—my progeny becoming weakly albinos. (Interesting that here albino is associated with being weak when Melville chose it as the color of his powerful, destructive whale.) V.W. says this after she confesses that she enjoys her work at the printing press. There’s something satisfying about manual labor that refreshes the writer’s soul. After I shovel snow, I feel invigorated, cleansed, ready to … if not, at least what I’m recouping from is a fatigue other than what is brought on by hours of sitting at the writing desk.