night terrors

i'm reading the emperor's children now, my new nighttime book, after the space between us and a piece of imitation jane austen fifties froth called the grand sophie (yes, this blog has become my booklist, like that i kept from kindergarten through fifth, sixth grade, and dutifully handed to the principal at each additional hundred books - a tshirt, a pin, a gift certificate, a mug, eventually she had to start making up special prizes for me as the hundred books club didnt generally go that high)

smart, lovely, well-educated, seemingly well-adjusted thirty year olds, sixty year olds, who cannot hold their lives together. whose small worlds collapse into each other and suffocate. who, each in his or her own bubble, bounces off, occasionally sticks to, but cannot hold onto those of the others. it's become a dominant theme - people living their own lives and unable to really find each other. each on our own track, so closely parallel at times but never truly merging. last night it was "smart people" - very much the same thing, despite the trite, implicitly syrupy ending. am i just noticing this more? the growing anonymity of a society ever more obsessed with purging its guts into shared space (see this blog). obviously, not saying anything new here, it's just become more urgent, somehow.

i feel i'm losing the people i had and not replacing them. isolated. my world shrinks in concordance with my studies - ever smaller circles of people who might be interested. ever smaller circles of things to discuss. ever smaller circles of thoughts.

for now i'm blaming sleet in april and a day spent transcribing. combined with a brilliantly brittle, uncompromising and unromantic novel.