Fragments/Concentration

Like lots of people, I'm having trouble concentrating on any one thing for a long period of time. A fellow bloggee (I know "blogger" is the right term, but meh) here mentioned she deleted social media; I promptly did the same and feel, of course, far better, less anxious in an ongoing way, more able to concentrate. No new revelation here, but it's helped during the last few days not to relentlessly check Twitter or see the blood-curdling "you're all up to date" message on Instagram when there's nothing new to discover from friends near and far.

I am reading a lot right now. It feels amazing to sit in the sun in a chair and enjoy this basic pleasure, and I'm flitting between books -- here's the list:

The Bill from My Father, Bernard Cooper (so fun)
The Gastronomical Me, MFK Fisher (so pleasurable)
Outline, Rachel Cusk
Black is a Country, Nikhil Pal Singh
The Topeka School, Ben Lerner
Selected Poems, Patrick Kavanagh
The Book of Jewish Food, Claudia Roden

In the absence of social media, I feel still like I'm still gathering fragments. Together they mean nothing, but the patchwork of intellectual nourishment ripples and changes. Feels good. Here are a few, from a few of the books above, that have stopped me and made me read them again, for pleasure:

"I...was beginning to feel quite sure that one of the best things I could do for nine tenths of the people I knew was to give them something that would make them forget Home and all it stood for, for a few blessed moments at least. I still believe this, and have found that it makes cooking for people exciting and amusing for me, and often astonishingly stimulating for them. My meals shake them from their routines, not only of meat-potatoes-gravy, but of thought, of behavior. Occasionally I am for enough of a person to realize that any such spiritual upset brought about by my serving an exotic or eccentric dish would do more harm than good, and I bow." -MFK Fisher

"Radish Salad: This Russian salad is usually made with the large, strong-tasting black or violet winter radishes, but other radishes will do very well. It is an easy and unusual way of serving them. *12 oz radishes/1 small mild onion, grated/3 tablespoons light extra-virgin olive oil/a little salt and pepper* Trim and grate or slice the radishes thinly. Mix with the onion and dress with oil, salt, and pepper." -Claudia Roden

"The brief history of my brothers' apprenticeship at [their father's dubious law firm] is best summed up in the changes that took place on the frosted glass door, the gold letters stenciled on and then scraped away by the Continental Building's maintenance man:
Cooper
Cooper & Cooper
Cooper, Cooper & Cooper
Cooper, Cooper, Cooper & Cooper
Cooper, Cooper & Cooper
Cooper & Cooper
Cooper
I came to consider this a poem of sorts, an elegy entitled 'Cooper & Sons.'" -Bernard Cooper

"O unworn world enrapture me, encapture me in a web
Of fabulous grass and eternal voices by a beech,
Feed the gaping need of my senses, give me ad lib
To pray unselfconsciously with overflowing speech
For this soul needs to be honored with a new dress woven
From green and blue things and arguments that cannot be proven." -Patrick Kavanagh (excerpted from longer poem, "Canal Bank Walk")