Some days, I don't find a theme that speaks to me. It seems especially likely that a Saturday morning will arrive without something written for posting. I do have between 1 and 2 thousand themes noted in eleven files but in general, I don't click with a theme unless I can feel definitely interested. Besides, I don't want to get too technical. The point is also always to work with events in my life or thinking, either one.
I tend to be habitual, repetitive, methodical. When I was 14, my girlfriend said that I was a methodical person and that was the first time I had had that term applied to me. I am quite interested in habits, both in me, others and in animals. I don't know if animals are as habitual as humans or more so or less so.
When I am considering whether a certain theme seems to have a day's future with me, I often gaze out the window. I admire what I know of Sarah Bakewell and her examination of Michel de Montaigne's writings and habits and beliefs and life in the 1500's. Because of that, I have been looking into her most recent book, At the Existentialist Cafe. Bakewell is a librarian who lives in Britain and she writes in a relaxed, informative way that makes it easy for the reader to see where he is and where she is going.
Lynn wrote her dissertation using reader response theory, which derives from and is related to postmodernism. It can be surprising how thought and theory and discussion and rumination during the last 100 years is related to literature and from there to theater, movies and all sorts of art in words. Gazing out of the window is a natural thing for a sentient being to do. We visited a pueblo in Taos, New Mexico that had no windows, supposedly built that way for safety purposes: no windows = less chance that enemies will enter through one.
But even modern garages often have a window in one of the walls and windows in the main door for vehicles. It can be fun and instructive to purposely locate a part of a well windowed room that I don't usually look at. However, normally, the light, the sky, the grass and trees are far more interesting and rather automatically attractive that a spot on the wall or ceiling. The modern, existential, philosophical thing to do is to notice that one is looking through the window and give some thought to the window itself. Who put the glass in? Where was the glass made? How much do what I see match what is actually outside?
I give thanks for our windows, our views through them and the literature, essays and ideas that coming from gazing out of them.
