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.

Two Bobs and a bit of fringe

A little holiday fringe to distract you from all the other things on your list.  If you are not familiar with what is called lucid dreaming, here is an introduction.  I am not the least offended if you find this unlikely at best and deranged, delusional at worst.  As a friend once said, "Time is long and space is big."  There is room for more than we can ever imagine in the multiple universes of the cosmos.

In what I will call a lucid dream night before last, I found my ideal self:  young enough to be entirely mobile, without depression or depletion, possessing a certain appeal and knowing everything that I know now.  She exists somewhere as the continuum flexes, hidden in a sharp crease of the cosmic fabric.  I marvel at the way in which our minds can bring along misery and its twin handmaidens, cortisol and adrenalin, or allow us to appear in fully realized fantasies, knowing we are dreaming, yet gamely playing along to see how it all turns out.  I picture my mind cooking up a treat on its little hotplate, using its one well-seasoned, cast iron skillet and holding it out for approval, like Ratso Rizzo saying, "G'head.  I want you to have it."



Dylan says it, "The human mind can only stand so much."  For escape, even illumination.  We dream.

Keep moving, even just to shift your shadow.  Keep singing along.  Stay out of places that steal your spirit and know there are rooms where you dance and laugh and know it will all, somehow, be all right.

My Back Pages

The growing sense of a life lived upside-down, escaping the gravity and dense mass of my own history to become lighter...do others experience this?

And at what point do we declare, though it is not an end, that we have our wish, the happy ending we tried for so long to cobble together - through writing, wishing, tap dancing, perfect phrases, praying, beseeching and other even more destructive and less attractive efforts.  What are the elements of a very personal happy ending:  I'm still here.  I am able to spend my time doing things which have meaning for me and make me content.  I gradually become better (by my definition) at what I do.  I have family and friends whom I love and who love me back and we speak the same language.  I am in the company of people who all keep rowing pretty much in the same direction.  The universe continues to send messages of encouragement, saying press on, its love notes, surprises and serendipity like clues on a treasure hunt.

The Byrds' unique sound carries me, pleasantly, away.



Lyrics for MY BACK PAGES by Bob Dylan

Crimson flames tied through my ears
Rollin’ high and mighty traps
Pounced with fire on flaming roads
Using ideas as my maps
“We’ll meet on edges, soon,” said I
Proud ’neath heated brow
Ah, but I was so much older then
I’m younger than that now

Half-wracked prejudice leaped forth
“Rip down all hate,” I screamed
Lies that life is black and white
Spoke from my skull. I dreamed
Romantic facts of musketeers
Foundationed deep, somehow
Ah, but I was so much older then
I’m younger than that now

Girls’ faces formed the forward path
From phony jealousy
To memorizing politics
Of ancient history
Flung down by corpse evangelists
Unthought of, though, somehow
Ah, but I was so much older then
I’m younger than that now

A self-ordained professor’s tongue
Too serious to fool
Spouted out that liberty
Is just equality in school
“Equality,” I spoke the word
As if a wedding vow
Ah, but I was so much older then
I’m younger than that now

In a soldier’s stance, I aimed my hand
At the mongrel dogs who teach
Fearing not that I’d become my enemy
In the instant that I preach
My pathway led by confusion boats
Mutiny from stern to bow
Ah, but I was so much older then
I’m younger than that now

Yes, my guard stood hard when abstract threats
Too noble to neglect
Deceived me into thinking
I had something to protect
Good and bad, I define these terms
Quite clear, no doubt, somehow
Ah, but I was so much older then
I’m younger than that now
Copyright © 1964 by Warner Bros. Inc.; renewed 1992 by Special Rider Music