"That thing you showed me last week," he said, a minute later.
"The analytic I put in for the book about the Rule of St. Benedict."
"Yeah. That was great!" His face lit up. Then he remembered the desk he sits at now. "But I'm not sure we should be taking the time to do that."
"I don't, any more," I said.
And I don't.
It was a farewell gesture, a piece of panache, the last piece of real cataloguing I'll be able to admit to.
And though I took a large Motrin for my back and went to bed about 9, I woke about 2 and couldn't sleep. So I read for a couple of hours, The Lantern Bearers, for the sense of being present at the last night the Legions were in Britain, the night the light at Rutupiae officially went out. And as I read on I found myself wondering why these words were joined at all, the pages yellowing, the adjectives close-packed, various and exact for those craggy and flowering landscapes; suddenly wondered what good it was.
But I read the rest of it over the next few days, and though those books don't engulf me the way they did when I first encountered them, TLB did remind me: Sutcliff's subject has always been how to live past the end of the world.
"The analytic I put in for the book about the Rule of St. Benedict."
"Yeah. That was great!" His face lit up. Then he remembered the desk he sits at now. "But I'm not sure we should be taking the time to do that."
"I don't, any more," I said.
And I don't.
It was a farewell gesture, a piece of panache, the last piece of real cataloguing I'll be able to admit to.
And though I took a large Motrin for my back and went to bed about 9, I woke about 2 and couldn't sleep. So I read for a couple of hours, The Lantern Bearers, for the sense of being present at the last night the Legions were in Britain, the night the light at Rutupiae officially went out. And as I read on I found myself wondering why these words were joined at all, the pages yellowing, the adjectives close-packed, various and exact for those craggy and flowering landscapes; suddenly wondered what good it was.
But I read the rest of it over the next few days, and though those books don't engulf me the way they did when I first encountered them, TLB did remind me: Sutcliff's subject has always been how to live past the end of the world.
