I'm reading 'Hall of Small Mammals', a book that Jacob found me in the library on the day we borrowed so many books I could barely carry them (in fact, Jacob had to carry one home for me and pass it to me the next day). I read it today while walking home from a long day at the museum, and things felt so normal- the commute, the particular tone of evening light at around 7pm - I almost couldn't believe we're still in the middle of a pandemic.
I imagined two and half months (74 days actually) from now: walking from a bus stop not a train, two flights of stairs not three, Jacob there. Time seems to have folded like an accordion.
Something Jacob and I like to do is imagine the future. Yesterday I asked him to imagine us on a train journey to the Cairngorms. We imagined the dining car on the Caledonian Express, our packed dinner of a sweet potato salad, getting into a double bed (do they have double beds on the Caledonian Express?) and reading Psalm 121 together because it's suitably mountain themed. We'd bring books from the library for our journey, perhaps a Robert Macfarlane book or some poetry. I said I'd bring croissants as a surprise breakfast, but because we'd have a long walking day ahead Jacob said it would be safer to have croissants and porridge.
I wonder which library we'd borrow the books from? I think, sometimes, about the Highgate libary, with its soft blue armchairs and snail-paced computer, and floors that would wobble sometimes because of loose bits. Robert Macfarlane books were in the last row of shelves. In the library here they're under 'travel writing', which reminds me again that they're about there not here.
I'm reading 'Underland' by Robert Macfarlane now, and I initially found the going hard. Parts that I'd heard before in conversation with Leonard, like the part about the wood wide web, were absorbing. But the new terrain (literally) of karst and catacomb sometimes felt too foreign. Perhaps, like Izzy said, this is a time for re-reading old books, re-watching old films? When so much is new it's easier to go back to what made you you. I'm now on a part where Macfarlane is in Greenland and everything is icy. It reminds me of the Chronicles of Ancient Darkness series I read as a child, when Torak and Renn go into the ice mountains, find the soul eaters, almost get stuck in a cave-hole.
The books are due on the 4th of April, which is Easter day, which is the memory day for Jesus rising from the dead. I wonder what it was like the actual day he rose from the dead - was it summer, or winter, or spring, or autumn? Did he rise when other things were dead around him or back into the full glory of a lively earth, and were the women who came to grieve for him cold that morning when they found the empty tomb?
