which way is up?

I have been running in circles because it's the beginning of the semester and my map / plan tends to blow away. No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy.

It's okay. I'm mostly staying calm, catching my flyaway thoughts in nets made of lists...tasks on gmail, postit notes on igoogle...trying to get my schedule blocked out.

I finished Proust was a Neuroscientist and plan to write a review later this weekend, with notes and lists of what I want to spin off from that. I'm reading A Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin. I was reading it anyway, because a friend suggested it (her favorite book). Helprin's use of language to describe a place that is fantastic rather than fantasy and a love that is improbable paints the scenes with sharp-edged lushness.

One of the things Lehrer talks about in Proust Was a Neuroscientist is language as an art and how it affects and changes the brain, discussing different authors from Whitman to Woolf. As someone who has experience damage to the brain with interuption of my ability to communicate and someone who is actively trying to change my brain now, the chance to read beautiful use of language is an opportunity not to be missed.