{"id":2903,"date":"2008-11-13T08:36:24","date_gmt":"2008-11-13T12:36:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/?p=2903"},"modified":"2008-11-13T08:36:24","modified_gmt":"2008-11-13T12:36:24","slug":"too-unnerving-an-idleness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/too-unnerving-an-idleness","title":{"rendered":"Too unnerving an idleness"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I feel guilty when I don&#8217;t manage to write for a day or so. It&#8217;s not like there&#8217;s a massive audience hanging on my every post, but I get mad at myself when I fall out of the habit of offering up at least a daily snippet of my psyche.<\/p>\n<p>Yesterday, I was pretty swamped with work and bad work-vibes. This morning, I decided to read some Montaigne rather than engage in my usual routine of scanning through the 400 or so items in my RSS reader. I&#8217;m pretty close to finishing Book Two of the essays and, while I don&#8217;t feel as though I&#8217;m in a race, I did find the final three essays pretty compelling and complementary: <em>Of three good women<\/em> (pp. 683-690), <em>Of the most outstanding men<\/em> (pp. 690-696), and <em>Of the resemblance of children to fathers<\/em> (pp. 696-725).<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ll try to write about them this weekend (I&#8217;m still working on the last one), but I&#8217;m traveling to Atlanta on\u00c2\u00a0 Sunday for a conference, so I may have to pare back. Regardless, M. managed to help me get over my guilt with his intro to <em>Of the resemblance<\/em> . . .:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>This bundle of so many disparate pieces is being composed in this manner: I set my hand to it only when pressed by too unnerving an idleness, and nowhere but at home. Thus it has built itself up with diverse interruptions and intervals, as occasions sometimes detain me elsewhere for several months.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I feel guilty when I don&#8217;t manage to write for a day or so. It&#8217;s not like there&#8217;s a massive audience hanging on my every post, but I get mad at myself when I fall out of the habit of offering up at least a daily snippet of my psyche. Yesterday, I was pretty swamped &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/too-unnerving-an-idleness\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Too unnerving an idleness&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[118],"class_list":["post-2903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-montaigne"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4C7K-KP","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2953,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/monday-morning-montaigne-women-and-men","url_meta":{"origin":2903,"position":0},"title":"Monday Morning Montaigne: Women and Men","author":"Gil","date":"November 24, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"I finished reading Book Two of the essays last weekend, but didn't have time to write. I'm going to hold off on the final essay for now, because I'm still thinking about the beginning of it (the last 20 pages are a sorta by-the-book rant about doctors, but the first\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Monday Morning Montaigne&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Monday Morning Montaigne","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/monday-morning-montaigne"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2987,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/monday-morning-montaigne-of-the-resemblance-of-children-to-fathers","url_meta":{"origin":2903,"position":1},"title":"Monday Morning Montaigne: Of the resemblance of children to fathers","author":"Gil","date":"December 1, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"With Of the resemblance of children to fathers (pp. 696-725), Montaigne closes out Book Two of the essays by ranting against medicine and the doctors who practice it. M. uses his standard practice of springboarding from his own experience into the wisdom and anecdotes of the ages. That portion of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Monday Morning Montaigne&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Monday Morning Montaigne","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/monday-morning-montaigne"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=virtualmemories-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0060593083","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3402,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/monday-morning-montaigne-of-the-art-of-discussion","url_meta":{"origin":2903,"position":2},"title":"Monday Morning Montaigne: Of the art of discussion","author":"Gil","date":"February 9, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"With only six of the Essays remaining, I feel as though there should be some sort of growing imperative, a sense of completion in the final 200 pages. So I was a bit disappointed when I read (and re-read) Montaigne's Of the art of discussion (pp. 854-876), but I didn't\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Monday Morning Montaigne&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Monday Morning Montaigne","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/monday-morning-montaigne"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2730,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/monday-morning-montaigne-of-evil-means-employed-to-a-good-end","url_meta":{"origin":2903,"position":3},"title":"Monday Morning Montaigne: Of evil means employed to a good end","author":"Gil","date":"October 20, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm going to skip some of the short ones in this segment, such as Of riding post (pp. 626-7) and Of thumbs (pp. 634-5), on the grounds that I couldn't come up with anything funny to write about them. If anything, they bolster the Montaigne-as-blogger argument, because we all have\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Monday Morning Montaigne&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Monday Morning Montaigne","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/monday-morning-montaigne"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3226,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/monday-morning-montaigne-on-okay-i-didnt-finish-this-one","url_meta":{"origin":2903,"position":4},"title":"Monday Morning Montaigne: On okay I didn&#8217;t finish this one","author":"Gil","date":"January 12, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"This week's Montaigne essay, On some verses of Virgil (pp. 774-831), turned out to be really good. However, I didn't have time to write about it, so I'm going to reread it this week and try to put something together for you by next Monday. Suffice to say, my worries\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Monday Morning Montaigne&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Monday Morning Montaigne","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/monday-morning-montaigne"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3640,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/monday-morning-montaigne-the-grand-finale","url_meta":{"origin":2903,"position":5},"title":"Monday Morning Montaigne: The Grand Finale!","author":"Gil","date":"March 16, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Aesop, that great man, saw his master pissing as he walked. \"What next?\" he said. \"Shall we have to shit as we run?\" Let us manage our time; we shall still have a lot left idle and ill spent. Sorry, dear readers, but I'll write my last MMM post next\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Monday Morning Montaigne&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Monday Morning Montaigne","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/monday-morning-montaigne"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2903","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2903"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2903\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2904,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2903\/revisions\/2904"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}