Author: theseventhsphinx

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weekend distraction: succulents

I don’t have the best track record for keeping plants alive. I wanted to have something green and living my room, though, so I decided to find some hardy succulents able to survive my attentions. They can thrive in dry, low light conditions, and instead of growing weak when they reach the maximum size their pot allows, they simply stop growing. Put them in a larger pot, and they will grow a bit more.

These are the plants for me.

Also I find a lot of the shapes and structures of succulents appealing (read: cute). I’d like to get more.

I picked up an adorably fuzzy panda plant.

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I combined a jade, a zebra, and an elephant or rainbow plant in another pot. Called an elephant plant (portulacaria afra) because native to South Africa and elephants eat them. How cool?

Put a small carved elephant in the pot and immediately it took on the look of an oasis diorama. I quite like that.

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They are cheering up the windowsill considerably, along with some lavender plants (different lavenders, there are so many lavender varietals) I haven’t killed off yet. There is hope for me, still.

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reading: Bulgakov, Thucydides, Didion, Barthes, Cela

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The Master and Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov – I’m still not sure what’s going on with this novel (quite a few pages in) but I’m interested. How did I ever even come to be reading this? I have no idea. The origins are lost.

The Peloponnesian War, Thucydides – Yup.

Slouching Toward Bethlehem, Joan Didion – Reading these essays feels like having a conversation with an admired friend. They are often funny in an understated way I tend to like, often reflective in a way I enjoy and want to emulate, often simply interesting in a way that makes me want to read more of anything the author has written. Other writers who do this for me: Renata Adler, JM Coetzee, WG Sebald, David Foster Wallace, George Saunders, Adrienne Rich…

The Fashion System, Roland Barthes – As dense a piece of fashion theory as you can ever hope to find. A fair amount of convoluted phrasing but not at all without interest.

Pascual Duarte and his Family, José Cela – Rarely have I felt so clearly that I am reading a translation. [Perhaps it is not a very good one, but that is not quite my point.] The types of inclusions and omissions, the reactions to stimuli…so foreign. Cela is writing [well, wrote] what is to me an unfamiliar style of fiction, which is so refreshing and healthy for the mind. Inspiring, too.