in which I compare myself to OG Milton without mentioning the fall of man

I was talking to Ming about Milton, because I was talking about writers who go blind.  "You know what Milton did?"

"Who?"

"Milton.  You know, the one with the collar," I said.  "John Milton?"

"John Stewart Milton?" Ming asked.

"I don't think so..." I said.  "John Stewart, like the daily show?  No, different white guy.  Here, I'll find you a picture of the collar."

I started telling him the story of Paradise Lost, but I got confused for a second--I said this guy was walking in the wilderness and met Virgil and they went to hell...

Then I realized that was Dante.  Oops, not the same.  I was looking on my phone and found the cute picture of Milton with his collar, where he looks so young and freshfaced.

I told Ming that Milton was born on Bread Street in 1608, great name for a street, and died on Bunhill, which seemed to make sense.  From bread to bun.

"The people who have bad teeth, they always want a bun, thinking buns are soft," I said to Ming, still reading the wikipedia article, drawing on my knowledge of serving bread to hungry and homeless people, which is a thing of the past for now.

Then I found the text itself and read Ming the first page.  It had a "in normal English" side by side, but Paradise Lost seems to be prettymuch in normal English already...

It was fun, and I remembered why I love that stuff.  "Do you see the ironic part here?" I asked.

"What?" Ming asked.  He was half asleep in bed, face down, fully clothed.  He was wearing that supersoft black warmness that's so nice to pet.

"He's talking about God, trying to justify the ways of God to man, totally Christian.  But he's talking to this muse, and what's a muse?  A god, basically.   He's doing Christianity, but then he's totally pagan also.  He's got this whole pagan worldview."

Ming was very sleepy, and I continued.  "So all those people who dis me for having more than one religion at once--it's a really common thing!  Even Milton did it.  So you know what I say to those people?  Boo yaa!"

I guess that's an ordinary morning for a pagan-Hindu former literature major and her caring narcoleptic spouse during a pandemic.  Then I came to the living room to write this down and listen to late 1980s Samoan-Californian hiphop on youtube, dancing.