Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Blue
Hey, guys.
I am seriously wiped out from my trip to Jacksonville yesterday. We didn't get back till late and, for me, it was a stressful trip. Kate needed to see her daughter who just had a miscarriage, so I took her, but I was stressed out most of the time, as we went to a restaurant, and shops, and all sorts of places where we could easily have been exposing ourselves to the virus.
A lady in Joanne's Fabrics laughed at me for carrying Lysol wet wipes under my arm. I had it to wipe off public toilets. She clearly thought it was absurd and I was a little nuts.
Now we are bunkered in. There's still no evidence of community spread in my county. Everything has been shut down: the university, the college (two different things), the Spring Arts Festival, and every event I can think of. My mom has also cancelled everything except taking care of my aunt who's in her eighties, and I think we can figure out a way to deliver food and books there so my 72-year-old mom isn't visiting an assisted living facility. I'd do it, but that would expose Kate.
OK, so I still have an essay cooking in my head, and I will probably write it tomorrow (or, when you read this, today). I just don't have the juice today.
Something/Someone Old
One of my favorite poems. By Yeats, and worth memorizing:
When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.
Something New
This is a truly great song from 2016. Stevie Wonder is like one of those old wrestlers who works an incredible match, spurring an entire arena to chant "YOU STILL GOT IT!" This is 4 years old. Freaking awesome. I challenge you to listen to it and not get it on your mind.
Something Borrowed
This is Steve 'N Seagulls, a Finnish band, doing a 2014 cover of ACDC's song "Thunderstruck." It's awesome.
Something Blue
I've been listening to a LOT of Jim Kweskin, Jeff Muldaur, Maria Muldaur, and their friends lately.
(Also a lot of Michael Jackson, but that's another story. More on that later.)
This is a beautiful rendition of a lovely blues tune by Julius Daniels, done by Jim Kweskin and Jeff Muldaur. It's called "99 Year Blues." There's also another blues tune later in the video, after some talking, if you guys care to listen more, but definitely listen to the first one. It's a treasure.
Comments
You are a treasure for us and the poem is just
hitting it directly into the heart. Get rest. We have all the time waiting for you. Meanwhile there is lots and lots to read.
Thank You for all you do.
Thank you so much, mimi
for those kind words. I get annoyed with myself when I don't do the writing I planned to. It helps that you all are so understanding.
It's a beautiful day here. My grandma's old plant, which is apparently not a croton like I thought, so I don't know what it is, has produced the most beautiful minute white blooms.
Ah. Just discovered it's an oyster plant, also known as Moses-in-a-basket or Moses-in-the-cradle. Technically it's an invasive, as it's native to Guatemala and Belize and some parts of Mexico.
It looks like this:
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
Good morning...
Always liked Yeats. Missed an opportunity to visit his home when in Ireland.
We should be getting plenty of opportunity for writing with the stay at home movement. I suspect they will cancel the fla folk fest this May. One year they had it over Armistice day weekend when they canceled due to fires
Take care of yourself and get plenty of rest!
“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
I went to the Yeats School in 1995.
Met Seamus Heaney. What a privilege. Wonderful man.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
Good morning CSTMS. Sounds like you are recovering from
the condition described in the initial few paras, which is very good to read.
Nobody ever writes all the stuff they plan on, I'm lucky to knock off a few percent and even the product is never what I envisioned. Life, it seems, always intervenes in our affairs and endeavors. Besides that, often there is other fun stuff that simply must be enjoyed and deferred tasks that simply must finally get done. Don't ever grief yourself over that, it is unnecessary, unpleasant, and a mental time suck.
It rained all day yesterday, also the start of this morning, so that limits my options today, heh, but I still find myself, as I type, looking out my window at all the goings on out there, and, heh, this window only displays the world from the roof lines up when I'm sitting here, but that's where a lot of the action is, a lot, a lot of trees, moving erratically with the sporadic winds, and sudden flashes of bird life going about their business. It is now also raining again.
I believe that it is time to go construct a breakfast and lay plans for the rest of the day that I am virtually certain not to fulfill or carry out except fir a few highlight items like making cookies and dinner. Everything else will or will not occur with a probability of p where p=some random fucking decimal expansion of some random rational number. In mid sentence it occurred to me that if p were to be irrational that would imply something, possibly something deep, which I am not in the mood to try to sort out before breakfast.
Have a good one.
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
Well, a third coffee and a bowl of last-night's risotto make it
clear that while an irrational probability cannot be precisely computed, the corresponding event is not rendered impossible by that fact. Furthermore, the probability will have both an upper (U) and lower (L) bound and the event is likely to occur at least L% of the time and at most U% of the time. Unfortunately, sorting that out meant that I didn't even get started on my list yet and is certain to have pushed at least one thing off of the list. Such is life.
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
(No subject)
99 more years
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
Taking precautions for infection control is not absurd
People like the woman at JoAnnes clearly lack the ability to think beyond their own experience. Before this pandemic, when I saw people with gloves and masks, rather than jump to the conclusion they were "germaphobes", I conjectured that maybe they were going through chemotherapy. Thus, I treated them with kindness and respect. Pity we all can't do that for our fellow human beings.
I look forward to your essay whenever you get it done. I have my own collection of essays still in draft form I have yet to complete. Understand the feeling, but concur with EL's take on it.
There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier