When I saw the house, I knew I could live there. Instantly, or almost. It started with the prospect of four small dwellings, neat and orderly in the main, nestled side-by-side at the end of a close. It grew when I saw the house to be sold had a gated (barely) side passage.
I liked the handsome dark wood flooring (actually plastic) in the living room. I liked the large kitchen opening onto the garden. The garden looked lovely, very quiet and enticing. And at the end of it there was a shed, side-on with respect to the house, and partly concealed (mercifully, as it turned out) by bushes.
So now that I am living here, thanks to the diligence of my father in his hard work and very careful use of his money, and thanks also to the generosity of my sister.
Thanks, above all, of course, to the mercy and forbearance of His Majesty on High, Who has shown grace by sparing His servant until his sixty-fifth year and offering him a comfortable home, notwithstanding his unworthiness and often hard-heartedness.
Now that I am living here, as I was saying, I know that my first sensations were correct, and I am living in a very comfortable way indeed.
Cosseted and caressed in most every manner. Warm and secure, in the utmost tranquillity.
And it comes to me to understand, having had the opportunity to see, as a bystander, the emptying of the houses of those who have no further need of an earthly tabernacle, that in later life a house is something of a sepulchre also. A premonition of what the Bible calls, with its customary grace, our "long home".
Given my penchant for gloom, I think it's a good thing to have some projects to do around the house and in the garden... and I am quite spoiled for choice in this regard, which is a blessing indeed because getting out and about in the fresh air helps to dispel my sober contemplation of my death and remind me that sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.
I have been watching several videos in which David Foster Wallace is interviewed, reads from his works, or in one case his works are read by another gentleman. I mean read well. I first heard of him through the famous "What is Water" address, but I have since become quite interested in the man. He was indeed a good writer and a sometime thinker following, I presume, in the footsteps of his father, an "American philosopher".
My curiosity inevitably drew me to research his claimed suicide. I say "claimed" because DFW was very influential and very successful and, since his death, has become a cult figure in the media 1.
DFW, my home improvement tasks, and my eschatological musings are tangentially conjoined at the matter of verandas.
It is in my mind to build a veranda at the rear of my house to provide some measure of weather protection, and a way of shielding the very bright sunlight that sometimes streams into my south-facing kitchen, swathing my computer screens in bright stripes and preventing my work from proceeding, obliging me to close the heavy drapes on the prettiest days. I went online and visited the author's home in LA - it was sold shortly after his death. It is a beautiful house near the hills outside LA, and it has a handsome veranda with timber rafters (of the kind I wish to employ), one of which, so the story goes, provided the perfect gallows pole to allow a distressed young man to take his own life in 2008.
1
A footnote, in deference to DFW's preferred solution.
He was, we are told, depressed: a state of mind that is often connected to creative brilliance in popular culture and even in some science books. He voluntarily submitted to several sessions of ECT, as though he had never read Ken Kesey's classic work of fiction.
To my mind this seems odd, because his house was lovely, he was greatly admired, he was quite wealthy and lately married. Also, he was clever.
Aha, you say, but he was depressed: it is a medical condition and you mustn't make light of it!
But I do not wish to make light of the matter, and if the story is true, it is most certainly tragic.
His "What is Water" address is perhaps key. As far as I can tell it filtered into the church through the offices of Timothy Keller, who is a great preacher in my humble opinion, though quite elevated in the intellectual sphere with all its problematic ramifications.
I liked the handsome dark wood flooring (actually plastic) in the living room. I liked the large kitchen opening onto the garden. The garden looked lovely, very quiet and enticing. And at the end of it there was a shed, side-on with respect to the house, and partly concealed (mercifully, as it turned out) by bushes.
So now that I am living here, thanks to the diligence of my father in his hard work and very careful use of his money, and thanks also to the generosity of my sister.
Thanks, above all, of course, to the mercy and forbearance of His Majesty on High, Who has shown grace by sparing His servant until his sixty-fifth year and offering him a comfortable home, notwithstanding his unworthiness and often hard-heartedness.
Now that I am living here, as I was saying, I know that my first sensations were correct, and I am living in a very comfortable way indeed.
Cosseted and caressed in most every manner. Warm and secure, in the utmost tranquillity.
And it comes to me to understand, having had the opportunity to see, as a bystander, the emptying of the houses of those who have no further need of an earthly tabernacle, that in later life a house is something of a sepulchre also. A premonition of what the Bible calls, with its customary grace, our "long home".
Given my penchant for gloom, I think it's a good thing to have some projects to do around the house and in the garden... and I am quite spoiled for choice in this regard, which is a blessing indeed because getting out and about in the fresh air helps to dispel my sober contemplation of my death and remind me that sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.
I have been watching several videos in which David Foster Wallace is interviewed, reads from his works, or in one case his works are read by another gentleman. I mean read well. I first heard of him through the famous "What is Water" address, but I have since become quite interested in the man. He was indeed a good writer and a sometime thinker following, I presume, in the footsteps of his father, an "American philosopher".
My curiosity inevitably drew me to research his claimed suicide. I say "claimed" because DFW was very influential and very successful and, since his death, has become a cult figure in the media 1.
DFW, my home improvement tasks, and my eschatological musings are tangentially conjoined at the matter of verandas.
It is in my mind to build a veranda at the rear of my house to provide some measure of weather protection, and a way of shielding the very bright sunlight that sometimes streams into my south-facing kitchen, swathing my computer screens in bright stripes and preventing my work from proceeding, obliging me to close the heavy drapes on the prettiest days. I went online and visited the author's home in LA - it was sold shortly after his death. It is a beautiful house near the hills outside LA, and it has a handsome veranda with timber rafters (of the kind I wish to employ), one of which, so the story goes, provided the perfect gallows pole to allow a distressed young man to take his own life in 2008.
1
A footnote, in deference to DFW's preferred solution.
He was, we are told, depressed: a state of mind that is often connected to creative brilliance in popular culture and even in some science books. He voluntarily submitted to several sessions of ECT, as though he had never read Ken Kesey's classic work of fiction.
To my mind this seems odd, because his house was lovely, he was greatly admired, he was quite wealthy and lately married. Also, he was clever.
Aha, you say, but he was depressed: it is a medical condition and you mustn't make light of it!
But I do not wish to make light of the matter, and if the story is true, it is most certainly tragic.
His "What is Water" address is perhaps key. As far as I can tell it filtered into the church through the offices of Timothy Keller, who is a great preacher in my humble opinion, though quite elevated in the intellectual sphere with all its problematic ramifications.
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