Seriously

I’ve just arrived at Serious Coffee, the oddly named chain of local British Columbia cafés, where I’m settling in to finish reading Edouard Glissant’s most recent novel, Ormerod. That novel, too, is oddly named, after the Caribbean literary critic Beverley Ormerod who now lives in Australia, although Glissant makes clear in his own inimitably recursive way that she’s only the inspiration for the title indirectly, since it was her poet ex-husband (or so it seems, the narrative is convoluted), who introduced Glissant to an elderly character named Hortense who served as inspiration for Glissant’s fictional account of the 1983 US invasion of Grenada. It’s a very long, Serious Story, so almost needless to say I am well situated here in this oxymoronically named café where people come to do all the serious things they do in a café.

Caren and I took a walk earlier today and then had a lunch of last night’s dinner leftovers—baked acorn squash, celeriac gratin, and roasted chicken. It was an absolutely gorgeous fall Sunday, crisp and sunny, dogs playing, crows perched on people’s hats, office colleagues and work clients out blinking in the bright uncertainty of this first day back to Standard Time. Caren and I had some difficulty getting our minds off work and other responsibilities, but finally we both relaxed and enjoyed our few hours together before burrowing in, building our modular redoubts of duty and necessity, as Kafka’s memorable short-story character does.

And now, reluctantly, I have to get to work, much as I’d like to do nothing but blog and fiddle and otherwise procrastinate now.

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