Edward Gorey and others make their way through the Panama Canal

Happy 88th Birthday, Edward Gorey.  Issuer of licenses to be odd to children who may think they are doing it wrong.

One form my oddness takes is forgetting to do things that make me happy.  I forget, sometimes for what seems months but may only be weeks, that I love to read.  Then, with shrinking thoughts of having ever been away, I find myself shoehorned back into gobbling books, not wanting to do anything but read, planning - or wondering - what will be next.

And if my thoughts are filled with other matters, I can forget the necessity of music.  I do not have much knowledge of classical or opera, so I return over and over to folk and some of what was popular from the 50s until the 80s, after which I lost my way, somewhat.  Broadway shows, Cole Porter, New Orleans jazz, other styles are shuffled in.  Most times when I am awake in the middle of the night, there is someone singing in my head.  Since Sherry O'Keefe mentioned it several days ago, it has been Bob Dylan's "Girl from the North Country."  My version includes Johnny Cash.

I have no wish to put my forgetfulness or neglect under the microscope, peering at cells that may indicate a disregard for self, or not.  Having given it as generous a ponder as it's going to get, I've decided that I, and likely most of us, have been nearly eclipsed by overwhelm, the world is too much with us no matter how we wish or labor to have it not be so.  If I keep track of somewhere between four and a dozen things that matter to me in any given day and spend some time with each of them, I feel I'm doing well.  Sleeping, breathing, writing and seeing that the household is fed and watered. That would be a minimum day.  Each added favored activity is another step up my personal evolutionary ladder, if only for that day.  I survive through a combination of compartments and the water that lifts and lowers essentials; my life is the Panama Canal.