Is the infraordinary not extraordinary? I wanted to write something about windows, their bigness, smallness, presence and total neglect in our lives. But as soon as I set my thoughts to this idea, the malady of everything being utterly futile and hence pointless beset me. I thought instead of writing about windows, extolling the extraordinary virtues of their infraordinary existence in our lives, I could probably benefit from reading either of the four, okay really two, books I’m currently dividing my time between.

There’s Teju Cole’s Open City and Fernando Pessoa’s Book of Disquiet, both vying passionately for more of my attention. There’s no thread so to speak that runs through them both, but they are collections of intellectual ruminations of two men in two different times in history. I spent a lot of time and with with Pessoa yesterday. Some of his work feels opaque, reluctant to let me in. I pull my hair, text with my psychiatrist friend, exchange notes on how metaphysics sometimes doesn’t really translate into words.