Emulation

Growing up I used to say that if I could write a book like Ella Enchanted I would be happy. Now I still love the book and audiobook, but I don't write fantasy. The goal is there, to be able to craft language in that way, but the world building isn't me. It's funny when you look at my bookshelves; I read so much fantasy and historical fiction, but I write neither.

Rereading I Capture The Castle, I think my goal has shifted. To write with the elegant grasp on prose that Dodie Smith grasps in a timeless novel that way.... well it would be amazing. I'm not sure I will ever get there, nor be able to create a scene like that magical Midsummer's Eve that Cassandra spends with Simon, but it would be amazing.

I spent this morning lying in bed reading the book; not unlike the first time I read it lying in the hotel room at the Hilton Orly in Paris. Now the book is coupled with a longing for London that every glimpse of the city in media gives me, but also a longing for love. Though Cassandra does not end up in the happily married way of Eliza Bennett, she gets love, and magic, and beauty. This summer, when so much is on the cusp, even the yellow light of my bedroom against the pink of my quilt seemed anticipatory. Funny how that can be in a moment of doing nothing.

Well, time to go get lunch. I think we're getting sushi, last-meal style before tomorrow's surgery. This moment is odd.... Today I can move freely and tomorrow I won't be able to. Still, a month from now a lot will as  be better. Or, hopefully.

I'm fighting pessimism a little, because it is rare that things go just as planned, and my mother's worries seep into my conscious. The hope of youth, though, is everlasting and...

After the surgery on my right foot at a later date there will be boots and Converse hightops calling my name!!!!!