"I'm in love with life."

I. "I'm in love with life"

That's author Ali Smith, not me, in an interview with Jeanette Winterson.

I winced when I read it.
Really? "In love with life"?
I'm more comfortable with the feeling that comes with thinking human life is an evolutionary error.

But, I thought,
1. Both can be true, you can be in love with an evolutionary error (it's not like Ali Smith's a lightweight who doesn't know how awful we can be);
and,
2. Maybe I'll just try that, saying that, and see how it feels.
(Maybe it's true? and that's why it's so hard and heartbreaking and feels foolish/dangerous to admit?)

Then this morning, Michael posted this quote from the dying Charles Swann in Proust's Guermantes Way:

Well, okay then.
This, my birthday week, I'll try it, saying here––with no qualifications or footnotes––"I'm in love with life".
Just here.

Here:

I'm in love with life!
 
I'll just let that sit there.

II. Blogger Views

I can say unequivocally that I love blogging.
Here's a fun thing:
I'm counting down to 950,000 blog views--literally any minute now. Blogger stats says my views are at the very cool number of 949,949.
(Can numbers be palindromes?)

Whatever "views" are (they can be mistaken landings), or since when they've been counted (not the beginning of the blog in 2013, I don't think), there are now almost a million of them, and that amazes me.

When I first started blogging in 2003 (the now deleted Flightless Parrots), I was amazed to have any readers at all.
Remember pre-Internet, when anything you wrote, say a letter, was read by one person, or your journal, none?
I was even freaked out at first when I realized strangers were reading me.

Now it feels normal that strangers drop by and read and sometimes chat, but I'm still super grateful.
I've always loved blogging, but especially during a pandemic.

💖💖💖THANK YOU, blogger friends!

III. Isn't this a nice picnic?

My birthday week launched yesterday with an unexpected Sunday picnic on a busy corner by a bus stop.

Marz and I met halfway between her place and mine--an easy bus ride for each of us––in a busy area near a private college (St. Kate's).

(Speaking of being in love with blogging--I met Marz through blogging! It's been so long (2009), I forget--seems she's always been part of my life--and one of the best things, too.)

Marz bought a pile of classics at Half-Price books:
Middlemarch, Dead Souls (I've never read it), The Jungle, My Antonia,
and 4 in 1 volume: Red Badge of Courage, Billy Budd, Huckleberry Finn, and The Scarlet Letter.

Afterward we sat in the sun on chairs outside the store next door.
FrankColumbo was waving at passersby:

Marz bought me a birthday present too--Devolution, the new (2020) book by Max Brooks (Mel & Ann's kid, you know). His World War Z is one of my favorite books, and I don't otherwise care for zombie or horror stories.
But it's not about the monsters, it's about us.

Photo from the London Times article, "Max Brooks: Dad was too afraid to let me camp":

ABOVE: Max Brooks, second left, with his wife, Michelle Kholos, and parents, Anne Bancroft and Mel Brooks

Yesterday was about 30ºF (warm! ABOVE zero!). 
It was so warm in the sun, I suggested we go around the corner to Cecil's, the Jewish deli there since 1949, and get lunch to go.
We got chicken matzo-ball soup and hamantaschen (it was Purim on Friday (oh, but I see they carry them year-round)) and came back to the chairs.
It was such a nice picnic!

(No masks, but I deemed it an acceptable risk since we were outside and, honestly, since I was desperate for human contact without an octopus clamped to my face (the respirator I wear at work).)

IV. Play, with Your Food

"Jewish holidays share a common pattern:  They tried to kill us. We won. Let’s eat."
(––via Heavy Table, with reflections on and recipe for hamantaschen)

That seems like a good way to tolerate/celebrate being in love with life.

Time article about the history of hamantaschen--from 2017, "when many critics of the Trump administration are “talking about how we’re living through the story of Purim”:

"The idea of naming a pastry after someone “wicked” is to “turn it into something sweet,” as Peretz explains, who notes that such an instinct is particularly important to some this year as, in her circle, many critics of the Trump administration are “talking about how we’re living through the story of Purim.”

. . . The carnival atmosphere of Purim... reflects the best of Jewish humor. The tradition 'forged by life in exile and a vital element in dealing with it,' wrote Gil Marks, 'particularly manifests itself on Purim, a time when joking and frivolity is encouraged.'"

I like that. Frivolity––play!––like eating, is another way to tolerate being in love with life when life is cruel. 

Let's ask Penny Cooper.

Penny Cooper, are you in love with life?

"I'm not technically alive," she says, "and I don't eat food, but, yes, I love being here!"