Welcome back, insomnia. Well, not really welcome. I missed that time window of falling asleep somehow and was up until about 3:30. Fortunately, I wasn't riding a cobra of a bummer so my thoughts weren't particularly dark, I just couldn't give it up to Morpheus.
That made today start late and not be very productive. I started digging a bit more of the flower bed I am putting in little by litte, but soon realized I would be getting blisters if not splinters and I had better stop and buy some gardening gloves. (My crummy fingernails don't need to be battered.) I spent too much money on plants, dirt, and gloves. Perhaps I have already said this, but I haven't ever had this much potential gardening space and haven't really been able to do any gardening since I lived on Gower Street in Beachwood Canyon from 1989 until 1993. Brad had put in quite a cactus garden. My apartment was the basement of an old house. I would open the front door in the morning and it would be open all day. It was kind of like an outdoor living room.
J found a great collection of blues, played by all the greats in Europe in the 1960s. Beautiful recording. I can hear him playing them in the other room. It's already after 11:00 and I have to take some sleeping medication (which is finally how I feel asleep last night.) My circadians were discombobulated to the extent that I really couldn't even take a good nap today. I did get a bit of afternoon shut-eye and then arose to make a frittata for dinner that was quite good.
Enough banality.
Okay, we are getting to the end of The Left Hand of Darkness quotes:
"How does one hate a country, or love one? ... I lack the trick of it. I know people, I know towns, farms, hills, and rivers and rocks, I know how the sun at sunset in autumn flas on the side of a certain plowland in the hills; but what is the sense of giving a boundary to all of that, of giving it a name and ceasing to love where the name ceases to apply? What is love of one's country; is it hate of one's uncountry? Then it's not a good thing. It is simply self-love? That's a good thing, but one mustn't make a virture of it, or a profession . . . Insofar as I love life, I love the hills of the Domain ... but that sort of love does not have a boundary-line of hate. And beyond that, I am ignorant, I hope.
Ignorant in the Handdara sense: to ignore the abstract, to hold fast to the thing. There was in this attitude something feminine, a refusal of the abstract, the ideal, a submissiveness to the given ..."
and
"And I wondered, not for the first time, what patriotism is, what the love of country truly consists of, how that yearning loyalty that had shaken my friend's voice arises: and how so real a love can become, too often, so foolish and vile a bigotry. Where does it go wrong?"
 |
| Hard to see, but here are the horses that live behind the house. |
And here is Emmylou sitting in the sun.
No comments:
Post a Comment