Salve mundi

[flanerieoconnor]

So, a blog post again for the first time in years and years. I'd been meaning to perhaps write something in here for quite some time, and am now doing so, inspired by JMG's post for people to post links to their personal accounts. I can't imagine anyone else would find much interest in this, but there's a certain freedom in that- it's nice to be divorced from the social media poison of posting for "likes", and this has a nicely nostalgic reminder of my old lamented livejournal of long ago (which nostalgia might, I hope, also help to wean myself off the horrible habit of reading about politics/current events on twitter, which always results in a seemingly endless cycle of hypnotic doomscrolling with slowly rising bloodpressure, followed by regret). In any case, I hope this might be interesting to me at a future date as a record of the passing of time, and a map of the ebb and flow of interests with the seasons. Where, then, to begin? It's been unseasonably warm for early March, but after the last couple of years of snowy Aprils, I'll take it. Currently reading "Little, Big" by John Crowley, a few chapters at a time before bed (which I'm about to retire to in a few minutes), and, very slowly, "The Occult" by Colin Wilson. Going on a bit of a Sun Ra kick at present, and trying to give a couple of his albums a decent hearing in chronological order- earlier in the month, had been listening to a lot of Renaissance music (John Dowland's Lachrimae, and Monteverdi, trying to work my way through L'Orfeo), and a boxed set of the Cocteau Twins' singles/eps, to try and get a playlist of the ones that actually seemed worthwhile. Just about finished with making my first violin, a bit more than four years after starting- the varnish work is largely done, which only leaves cutting it a bridge and actually putting strings on the damn thing, which I hope to do on Sunday. After decades of disdain for the stuff, I'm also slowly drinking my way through a bottle of Windsor Canadian whiskey, bought on a whim after being uncertain what be both cheap and would suit the weather and my mood, and am finding that with lowered expectations, it's not actually that terrible- an odd bonding experience, retroactively, with my grandfather, who apparently drank nothing but. And now, off to bed.