Cheer up, sleepy Jean

 

A book, I'm reading a book. TJCC gave it to Linda for Keep the Xpistos in Xmas, but the title appealed to me, "Before the coffee gets cold" and most especially the subtitle, "What would you change if you could travel back in Time?" because - - well, just because, so I picked it up and started reading.

"What would you change if you could travel back in Time?" - - if that has never occurred to you then you are not a daydreamer like Bubba, or you are too busy with life, or you are lying!!! I put three fools' marks there so as not to offend anyone. What would you change? What I would change is neon of your business. This little book, by a Japanese author and set in a remote, somehow magical little coffee shop in Tokyo, stirs the imagination. There are three or four chapters, each a different short story on its own, I have finished the first one, and - - when I find fiction I especially like, I try to read it very slowly so as to keep on living inside it as long as possible - - I'm maybe halfway through the second short story chapter. 

The conclusion of the first story is that if you go back in Time you cannot change the present, which seems discouraging until you realize that your visit back in Time may be able to influence or even change your future. 

A magical thing about books is that there's no limit to where imagination can take a daydream believer like me. 

Recalling favorite books again. "A Soldier of the Great War" might be my all Time topmost favorite, or "All the Light We Cannot See". "Midnight's Children" "Life Itself, A Memoir" "Where Rivers Change Direction" "Laurus"

The eight or ten books I read at the beginning of 2023 as my Lenten discipline were for discovery and personal conclusion, they are not a category of "favorite reads" - - making up my own mind and conscience about our WW2 firebombings of Hamburg, Dresden, Tokyo. If that's not a topic for you, so much the better. War is a terrible thing that we do to ourselves, and war stirred by religious certainties is the greatest evil under heaven; penitential Lent with its call to examen was my right Time for those books, but not "favorites" and I've put them in the bookshelf in my office at the church for anyone who may have the same interests.

See, I digress, wandering again, a character flaw with me and a reason I cannot preach without notes or the script that was required of us in homiletics class back at seminary. The mind floats off, lets go, and never has the presence to return to topic.

Breakfast: might as well stop for breakfast, Bradley's pork sausage from Tallahassee. Heated in the microwave for 60 seconds, then transferred to the toaster oven for ten minutes at 300°F. A hotdog bun, mayonnaise and Löwensenf a favorite mustard.

Not saying what brand of mayonnaise, because I don't want to rekindle the mayonnaise wars this lovely final Saturday morning in 2023.

RSF&PTL

T88&c

  

. focus