Since we are talking about visual art, here’s a piece by Silvia Georgieva:

I will buy paper copies of all books by Elizabeth von Arnim and strew them around the house strategically in hopes that Klara will pick them up and fall in love with this brilliant author.

There are many great writers I discovered because my father and great-grandfather snuck them among my belongings.

Elizabeth von Arnim’s writing brings to mind this image by Dániel Taylor:

It seems simple and homey but it’s really creepy in an inexplicable way.

It turns out there’s a city ordinance prohibiting the positioning of trash cans on the curb before 6 pm on the night before collection.

I love this country with an uncommon passion.

The Pastor’s Wife is a much more serious an accomplished novel than von Arnim’s Vera. By serious I don’t mean it lacks anything in the humor department. The novel is exceptionally funny, and I ploughed through its 500+ pages in three days. I highly, highly recommend. It’s extraordinary.

Unlike Vera, this novel lacks anything resembling a positive character. Instead, it offers a cast of harmless sociopaths whose moderately antisocial behavior creates comical situations. Ingeborg, the female protagonist, is a clinical moron. She’s so stupid and incapable of noticing social cues that it’s both funny and exasperating to read about her utter idiocy. Ingeborg’s husband, the German pastor, is a high-functioning autistic. Her admirer is a narcissist but a harmless one.

What’s captivating about Elizabeth’s writing isn’t the comedy itself but her skill at putting disturbing undertones behind all the laughter. Yes, Ingeborg is a moron but her life is heartbreaking. It’s all so hopeless and dark. Von Arnim’s humor is that of people who speak from a place of tragedy and devastation. Real suffering doesn’t weep in the squares. It laughs because what else is there?

This is the second novel by von Arnim that I’m reading, and both show a relationship between a stupid woman and a narcissistic man. The conclusion from both is that an idiot can defeat a narcissist if her idiocy allows for not a glimmer of intelligence.

I’ll now read a third book by this author to see if the trend continues.

This isn’t a newly developed attitude in Russia. People are completely indifferent. They’ll drive their water bikes right next to a drowning fellow, and it will never occur to them to help. If there’s no direct order to do something, they won’t do it.

Pleasantly surprised by Spain and unpleasantly not surprised by India.

So according to Russia, NATO attacked an Australian girl in Mariupol, upsetting an Italian artist. How very diverse.

There’s a special place in hell reserved for grandparents who don’t recognize their grandchildren.

As a grandparent, you get all the benefits of a child with zero drawbacks. Nobody expects anything from you. You don’t have to wake up at 3 am with a gasp because there’s a child standing very close to your face and breathing on you noisily. You don’t have to pack endless lunch boxes or pick up small objects for an hour each day. And you don’t have to be brought to the brink of a heart attack once a week by performing the terrible feat of nail-trimming.

No, as a grandparent you are long past all that. All you have to do is smile beatifically and be adored. And still some perverse individuals weasel out of it.

And no, I’m not talking about Biden. I’m talking about the much more egregious case of my own child’s grandmother. And it’s much more egregious because A) I’m not a drug-addled prostitute and B) she has no other grandchildren.

We are supposed to be a town of 26,000 but it’s always the same people at every event. It’s like a small traveling circus of around 150 people moving from one venue to another. We could be a village of 150, for all intents and purposes.