More specifically concerning: idleness
17.04.01
17 April 2001, around 18.32.
Idled in coffee-shops & the library, and read and read and read. Such pleasure. Day started clear, but now overcast. Perfect.
14.06.01
14 June 2001, around 8.16.
More packing. In a haze of irritability, especially when I consider how much pleasanter these last few days would be if I had only begun to send things home sooner. One of the pleasantest sorts of the idleness is that which gives the illusion of business, as all the world well knows. But this is […]
we like sheep
8 June 2004, around 20.33.
a versifying Pet-lamb.
not at home
27 August 2007, around 0.30.
At home in the evening, planning escapades. The books read and unread gathering coffee stains and toast crumbs. The at one time unimaginable, commonplace. Things moving slowly. The sense of progress, though: gears turning, ticking well-oiled shiny. Intangible, unavoidable, inescapable. Backed into imagined corners that flatten and fade and open onto unexpected vantages. Yet continuance […]
Crambe repetita (19)
8 September 2011, around 19.12.
William Hazlitt, ‘On the Pleasure of Painting’.
respite
22 July 2012, around 10.26.
Montaigne 1.8
6 March 2015, around 13.35.
When lately I withdrew to my own home, resolved, as far as in me lay, to think only of spending in rest and retirement the little time I still have to live, it seemed to me that I could do my mind no greater favour than to allow it, in idleness, to entertain itself, to […]
small talk
3 March 2017, around 18.25.
Rousseau casts aspersions on crochet.
the idleness ethic
21 December 2019, around 4.42.
Such virtues and vices as he may have possessed seem to have been of the passive sort, always a matter of omission.
ignes fatui
4 April 2020, around 5.34.
Part of an engraving from 1820. Making the daily circuit around the house, I listen to books on tape (because trying to read while walking on ground uneven from frost heaves is imprudent) and become annoyed at the lengthy chatter of background material provided. These are generalist books and start from first principles. After the […]
3.i.2021
3 January 2021, around 9.09.
‘…it is difficult to draw the line between idleness and dawdling over work. I dawdled from a mixture of mental infirmity, bad habit, and the necessity of thoroughness if I was to understand and not merely remember.’ —Mark Pattison, Memoirs