Archives for December 8, 2008

I’m up in Connecticut with Mrs. T, doing as little as possible in between spells of overwork. We watched old movies all weekend, the best of which were Payment Deferred (not on video, alas), Trouble in Paradise, and Twentieth Century, and I unwound by reading five Elmore Leonard novels. Yesterday morning we drove through a snow shower to have brunch at Still River Café, a wonderful restaurant located more or less in the middle of nowhere. Along the way we passed a white-frosted creek that reminded me of John Twachtman’s “Winter Harmony,” one of my favorite American paintings, and I marveled at my happiness and good fortune.
The fun, alas, ends tomorrow–I’ll be returning to New York to see two shows, write two pieces, get a tooth pulled, buy Christmas presents, and do whatever else needs to be done–but I’m not complaining. Except for the tooth, I have no right or reason to complain. It hardly seems possible that I was dying three years ago this week. Those terrible days now seem far, far away.

“A hobby is not a holiday. It is not merely a momentary relaxation necessary to the renewal of work; and in this respect it must be sharply distinguished from much that is called sport. A good game is a good thing, but it is not the same thing as a hobby; and many go golfing or shooting grouse because this is a concentrated form of recreation; just as what our contemporaries find in whisky is a concentrated form of what our fathers found diffused in beer. If half a day is to take a man out of himself, or make a new man of him, it is better done by some sharp competitive excitement like sport. But a hobby is not half a day but half a life-time. It would be truer to accuse the hobbyist of living a double life. And hobbies, especially such hobbies as the toy theatre, have a character that runs parallel to practical professional effort, and is not merely a reaction from it. It is not merely taking exercise; it is doing work. It is not merely exercising the body instead of the mind, an excellent but now largely a recognised thing. It is exercising the rest of the mind; now an almost neglected thing.”
G.K. Chesterton, Autobiography