Happy 4th

It is a happy day. I have successfully reorganized now-Chapter 3 and made the last edits to Chapter 2, so the whole introductory portion of my dissertation is now satisfactorily drafted. The arc of my argument gets clearer and clearer, too, which is very satisfying.

I also finished Paul Auster's Book of Illusions, which I liked very much. Much better than the other books of his that I have read. The ending was sad, but satisfying and skillfully crafted, which I don't think was the case with the others.

Funnily, there was a portion at the end that articulated perfectly my feelings about my time with TF, though, thank god, TF is still alive (I hope):

I had known Alma for only eight days. For five of those days we had been apart, and when I calculated how much time we had spent together during the other three, it came to a grand total of fifty-four hours. Eighteen of those hours had been lost in sleep. Another seven had been squandered in separations of one kind or another: the six hours I spent alone in the cottage, the five or ten minutes I spent with Hector, the forty-one minutes I spent watching the film. That left a mere twenty-nine hours when I was actually able to see her and touch her, to enclose myself in the circle of her presence. We made love five times. We ate six meals together. I gave her one bath. Alma had walked in and out of my life so quickly, I sometimes felt that I had only imagined her.

That accounting is a very familiar feeling, as is the sense that it was so little it must be imagined. And yet so important.