WON'T BE BACK 'TIL LATER ON, IF I DO COME BACK AT ALL

Down the street on the snow day.

1) I wonder if there has been any research on post-nap crankiness. Evidently, it is an affliction well-known to parents with napping children. I took a really nice afternoon nap, but am feeling deflated if not depressed, and not particularly social. Or motivated.

2) I am fairly certain that somewhere back there, I have quoted this Louvin Brothers song, You're Learning. (I highly suggest and encourage you to avoid watching the bad visuals that have been posted along with this song.) But that song came to mind again today when I was at the Farmer's Market as I was tempted by apple cider doughnuts AND almond croissants. I was able to control my consumption impulse and merely consume a defensible-but-not-really-great croissant because I could remember having been unhappy and ill at eating those items recently. I call that progress.

And, when I half-consciously stumbled downstairs feeling that a glass of red wine would be good, I remembered to get a very small glass and only consume a small amount slowly, sips, before I recalled that that, too, could make me feel less than well. I need to go downstairs and get the tea I brewed when the glass of wine was finished.

THEE NEXT MORNING

View from the kitchen window.

Yes, important to note to self that red wine wakes me up. And then the current neural trail leads to that dark side. And if not to Despondency City or La Ville de désespoir, then at least to a few rounds of self-deprecation and litanies of failure.

Family friends came over for an evening hang out. They brought red wine and there was some from the other night, so that was the consumable of the evening. I didn't drink much, but I did have a few wake-ups that are, thankfully, a bit unusual lately. I had to talk myself into staying, well, somewhat positive, to remember why I was waking up in the middle of the night (Not the apocalypse, even the disco apocalypse at this exact moment.)

As usual, there are a lot of things on my mind. You know, what am I going to do and where and how am I going to do it. I got up early and am the only human being active, but all three of the pets are being ... well, not fair to call them needy, but I cannot figure out what they want. Cooder keeps coming down the the kitchen, pacing the perimeter, and flipping her tail in that imperious, impatient cat way. Albert is stuck in the dining room, staring at me through the glass. I'm listening to early Buffalo Springfield. The naiveté is so touching and vulnerable and hopeful. Maybe I need some of that.

And the biggest thing, kind of rendering in the background, is that Jeff Davis is lying in the ICU at UCSF dying. Jeff and I drove a drive-away yellow Honda Civic across country (my first time!) in 1984. We were on our way to Boston where he was to visit friends and I went to crash with Erika for the summer. We stopped here, in Brewser, to visit M and J who had moved back here a year earlier. It seems as if Jeff developed? contracted? ALS while in China (he was living in Shanghai).

Jeff and my own brother Carl had some things in common and I suppose there is a triangulated resonance. They were both exceedingly talented musicians, affable, great cooks, extremely smart (though neither was assiduous in their formal education), challenged by health and weight problems. And although each was loved, they each remained somehow out of reach of some intimate flexibility.

Jeffrey J. Davis. (Photo stolen from one of his friends off of FB.)