Hollowed-Out Night

I crash when I retire for the night, after about one page of whichever book from the pile came to hand.    And that's great.  And like most of the rest of the human race, I do not spring out of bed in the morning, I crawl out, and do not really wake up until I'm outside with the dog.

But sandwiched in between, every night, somewhere, for some minutes or hours, I'm awake.  And I used to say, "I do my best thinking" when I wake up in the middle of the night.  Until a few years ago, when a very wise partner of mine said, "Strange.  Most of the thinking I do in then is dumb, way off base, and useless in the morning."

I think she was half right.  I now think of the litany of to-dos, fantasies, and mild obsessions as a list:  things that are bothering me, and need to be addressed.  It's not the list, it's the solutions that come to me in the darkness, that are usually useless.

The name of this entry, "Hollowed-Out Night", came to me last night in that middle period.  I don't think it fits what I'm saying here, by day, but I'm keeping it.  Maybe there was more, and I can't remember.  And maybe it was dumb.

Ennobled by U-Tube

There are probably thousands of ways that the modern computer world is a richer one than before, but for me there is nothing like the ability to see great musicians performing great music.  Ten years ago I could have heard about Lorraine Hunt Lieberson and hoped to catch her on the radio.  Today (and presumably forever) she is right there in front of us.  Alive.

If you have not seen this before, be prepared to be astonished.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQlt1UxjvWU

Driving Home

Back in St. Louis, but why?  When you drive from the temperate stone walls and beaches of Rhode Island to a place that's right about 100F with 50 percent humidity and lots of sun, well, it seems downright nuts.

And as you drive, you cross over 1000 miles of America that look pretty good and not so insanely hot.

Nonetheless, I'm glad to be back.

Hard to figure, and I'm sure it's all just the way things worked out, and could have been different, and if I'd wound up in a different place I'm sure I would have an explanation.  But the explanation here is pretty good:  St. Louis is the capital of Cardinal Nation, a giant footprint in the Midwest, people from at least nine states who love the baseball team with the birds on the bat.  As I run west I could pick them up from a radio station in Jasper and would be able to carry on at least until Ponca City.

Baseball and St. Louis, each at the heart of America.

The team is making another pennant run, as it almost always does.  The population curses the heat, gets past it, and cheers them on towards October.

Walking La Jolla Blues

Not that I had time to kill, but I needed a long walk.  So I walked from the village back up to Torrey Pines (OK, with a short shot on the bus in the middle) and it was mostly about close-up views of how California is really a creature of the automobile.  But in the last leg I got to the Salk Institute, took a left toward the Pacific, and found myself in a huge dirt parking lot with a truly spectacular view.

I was hoping to find the golf course, and navigate back to my room from there, but it seemed impenetrable until I spotted a gate across the moonscape of the lot.

But when I got there, the gate was chained and locked, so I wound my way to the left, towards the ocean, and wondered when they would run out of chain link fence.

Eventually they did, and the views in most directions made it pretty clear why lots and lots of people want to live here.

I walked through the brush (I'm in a suit, but no tie, and tennis shoes) and found myself on a deep back nine hole, greeted by five rabbits.  Three stuck around for a photo.

They seem to live a good life, these guys.  I saw about a hundred as I made my way back to the hotel.  Not tame, exactly, but they didn't seem to regard me as a predator.  Which I'm not.  Unlike some of the golfers... there was one who had hit way too close to another group, said the sun was in his eyes, he was sorry, but the targets were unforgiving.  So he yells, "If you can't accept my apology then kiss my ass!"

I'll take the rabbits.

Waiting for Insight

OK in the last ten days I've motored 1500 miles, checked out the Atlantic, walked New York City when it's over 100, and flown West and checked out the Pacific.  Confronted stacks of paper, dealt with a few, ignored many, and embarked on the usual resolutions.  Done the right things, done some things I'm not sure are right, opened doors, closed none.   In other words, vacation, of a kind, with a bunch of work mixed in, and a few moments, a few new hopes.

Great barreling insight doesn't come with this, whether asked peacefully or frantically... do we ever really change?  Only when we pull ourselves by the scruff of the neck, and is that a change, or did it always take scruff-pulling, and that's no change.

Life just opens up, day by day, and closes down, day by day.  A guy I liked, a banker, my age, fought cancer as I did, but yesterday he lost.  Or, the last day and threshold came to him sooner than to me, which you can treat as a loss or not.  Goodbye Bob.  Hello San Diego, today, and hello to the rest of my days.

Ring Finger, Left Hand

Maybe I read the wrong stuff, but I don't see much about this principal custom of our tribe: the "I'm Married" sign that people wear, all the time.

Mostly women, I notice.  Men, not so much, and those who do have a faint aroma of Ashley Wilkes.

But women really do do it, not just a band but almost always a big-ass engagement ring along side.  And I am probably delusional, but even now, and for my whole adult life, I've think I've had it waved at me.  Usually subtly,  a re-crossing of hands.  See there, buddy boy.  I'm married, and back off.

I get it with flight attendants, who must spend their lives being hit on.  But what is it with all the rest of the babes out there?

C'mon.  I'm married too, and I'm not on the prowl.  Am I staring?  Maybe, if you are gorgeous; it's a genetic thing.  But most of you, my dear ladies, are not gorgeous.  You are, however, women.  Which to me makes you presumptively interesting to talk to.  At this age and body mass that's about all my eye contact means.

I really don't get it.  Why do women - so many of whom are so fiercely independent in all other respects - want to parade their marital status at all times?  Is it really just to fend off the creeps?

Why isn't there a movement of cool women who don't want to be Melanie Wilkes?

Patriotic

I think of myself as a pretty steady Eddy, but when it comes to

Lump In Throat At National Anthem vs.
Patriotism Is The Last Refuge of a Scoundrel,

I swing back and forth.

Or maybe I'm a scoundrel, so I'm patriotic, so it all fits.

Hooray the Fourth.  Time to go light a fuse.