STRANDED IN THE HISTORY

Winter sleep.

Well, I changed my library venue today. North Salem is open until 7:00, although I don’t plan to be here that long. I had a few errands to run, like replenishing Greenies and kitty litter. Plus, another night with crappy sleep. I duly went to bed at 11:00 and was still awake at 2:00.

Now it is Friday afternoon, and warm enough to sit on the deck. I just fetched Emmylou who was deep in the backyard, happily exploring. She didn’t exactly come when I called, but she did make herself seen and is now contentedly whapping her tail as she and Albert lounge in the family room.

Lounge is a good word and fun to say.

As it was quite clement this afternoon, I took Albert on the long loop walk. He and I don’t get to walk together much these days, so it was plain lovely. I wasn’t in any particular hurry, so we could stop and sniff as often as he liked. We both enjoyed it quite a bit.

I resumed listening to Greil Marcus’ The Doors: A Lifetime of Listening to Five Mean Years. Once the bombast of the first chapter is over, he actually has some pretty danged astute and interesting things to say about culture and aging. And I would quote some here, but you’ll just have to wait a couple of days until I pick up a hardcopy at the library. I did like what he said about Gimme Shelter, that is is the ultimate Doors’ song. When you think about it, they would have torn up that song.

To say the last couple of days have been tough would have been an understatement. I have managed to keep it together, make babysteps in progress, but that wilderdarkness is full of dementors howling that I come for a visit, and maybe stay a long while. I get that salbug feeling that I want to roll up and roll under the bed. To thwart the dementors’ seductive nightsong, I took a whole dose of sleeping medication and went to bed at 9:00, hoping that I would fall asleep and still get up at a reasonable hour, which I did.

Well well well. Now it is Monday in the wee small hours, so clearly I am not sleeping. I'm not sure I will have another night of tossing and misery when I turn out the lights. I've been working for the last few hours after a fun and filling Mexican (party) meal with la bonne famille. 

Yesterday, or rather Saturday, after a couple hours' work at the North Salem location, I checked out the trail behind the library. Although I am brimming with thoughts and quotes, I do really need to try to sleep, so I will just leave you with these pictures from the walk.

And here's a bit of the Marcus book:

"What does it mean to make cultural history? It means to make images and sounds, to launch ideas and sensations that feel absolutely new even if they are not. Cultural history is a matter of old forms dressed in new clothes that turn history in a new direction. Cultural history may mean to triumph—to achieve worldwide and enduring fame, even to affect the lives of countless people long after you are gone, as the Doors did; more likely it means to find yourself stranded in the history that goes on without you, incapable of killing, in yourself, the motion that things could be better, or merely different, more alive, than they are ..."