Some days I feel really successful. After a slow start today, I ended up making it to some of the things I wanted to get done. I left home just after 11 this morning (Michelle, angel that she is, picked me up) and we drove over to the Library of Congress. As I still hadn’t had a coffee yet (obviously a necessity, as anyone who’s met me realizes) we walked over to the Eastern Market and I got a coffee and bagel to snack on while walking around. We looked at the market and stopped in at Capitol Hill books, the most densely book-ed secondhand bookshop I have ever been in. Last time I was there I bought (accidentally?) eleven books, but today managed to adhere to my budget with much greater discipline. From there we went on part of a tour of the Jefferson building of the Library of Congress, and after we saw how beautiful the main reading room is, we immediately left the tour and went to the Madison building across the road to get Reader Cards, so we would be allowed to use all the public reading rooms in the Library of Congress. I thought this process might be tedious, but in actual fact it was painless, and took about twenty minutes in total. Then we headed back over to the Jefferson building, and took up spots in the main reading room where we proceeded to do a few hours of study. (Am getting near the end of Edgeworth’s Belinda… I’ll be reading a little more tonight.)

After that we wandered over to the National Gallery of Art (the West building) and I got to look at some of my favourite paintings from my previous visit. As I said to Michelle, I feel that Rubens’s “Daniel in the Lion’s Den” is the first painting I made “friends” with when I arrived, and it still amazes me, mainly because the eight lions are so beautiful. We looked at the Da Vinci, some Rembrandts and El Grecos, and I was happy to see a Bronzino—I almost feel that Bronzino, along with Whistler, is a “private” painter, just for me. I love his portraits, even in their slightly odd starchiness.

After all this, we were both starving. Being grad students (ie. cheapskates) we decided to go to the supermarket and buy dinner there instead of heading out to a restaurant. Now I’m home for the evening, and planning another night of blissfully little to do. More Belinda, and maybe some Australian poetry—I’ve been reading Lucy Dougan’s new book, White Clay, with admiration. She has a beautiful touch—there are a handful of poems in the book that I feel really work, and her poetic language and form come together with just the right subjects. I don’t always feel when I read a book of poetry that there are poems I want to spend more time with—so I’m glad there are pieces here that I want to revisit. It makes me feel I’m carrying a piece of “home” with me, that I have a handful of new Australian books to carry with me here.