Notes

          Up at seven, police the kitchen, the Sunday paper and breakfast. You were about to go for a walk in the woods when the rain began. Carol is cutting out food coupons and Jadah, your two year old shelter-saved black and white, domestic short hair, is hunched over looking out the front window for something interesting to catch her eye. Her favorite stick and string sets on the chair beside her. Yesterday the heat index was 111 with a temperature of 98. Very much like St. Pete a month ago. Your last words to Carol were “Christmas is in five months,” which it is.

         Last night you went to bed early, listened to Ambient and Celtic music on the AOL radio app and read into the hundredth page of Mark Twain’s Autobiography. At least every other page produced a smile. The incident with his swearing in the bathroom and his wife reproducing it when he came to bed, and their laughing over it, reminded you of a scene out of your life as a married man. It was a very funny scene and you had forgotten how much you admire Sam Clemens’ style, honesty, charm and forthright humor.

         I can’t believe I can get all these classical eBooks for free. I am set for life as far as reading goes. And, reading in bed with my iPad I don’t need to have a light on. It was very relaxing, and again, another night without sleeping in the chair downstairs. Given a couple days notice the Celebrex do work.

         You are discouraged and envious of Clemens’ ability to write and wish you had such an ability to be witty and clever with humor. You don’t, of course, and the discouragement is a meager attempt to feel sorry for yourself. Actually, you don’t care one way or another, that’s the point. Time for a morning nap, then we can work on the set up for chapter six. – Amorella.

         Subway picnic at Keener Park’s Cabin on the Clearing, West Chester, now over at Kroger’s on Tylersville for groceries. The day is pleasanter than both of you thought it would be this mid-afternoon. You have been reading a former Mason High student of yours (Luke W.) blog titled “To Canterbury I Wende.” Luke is presently studying Chaucer at the University of London and teaches English at Mariemont, one of the suburb schools on Cincinnati’s east side, just down the hill from the Village of Indian Hill where you taught at one time. You always thought he was gifted in literature and music and it turns out he is, so, you feel vindicated.

         You told him you have a talk with Chaucer when you visit Westminster, and you downloaded a photo of his embedded remains from Flickr as you didn’t have the wherewithal to take one when you visited. Post it here in remembrance of the old fellow, one of your favorites in English literature.

General Prologue

Here bygynneth the Book of the Tales of Caunterbury

                  Whan that Aprill, with his shoures soote

                  The droghte of March hath perced to the roote

                  And bathed every veyne in swich licour,

                  Of which vertu engendred is the flour;

                  Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth

                  Inspired hath in every holt and heeth

                  The tender croppes, and the yonge sonne

                  Hath in the Ram his halfe cours yronne,

                  And smale foweles maken melodye,

                  That slepen al the nyght with open eye-

                  (So priketh hem Nature in hir corages);

                  Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages

                  And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes

                  To ferne halwes, knowthe in sundry londes;

                  And specially from every shires ende

                  Of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende,        

                  The holly blissful martir for to seke

                  That hem hath holpen, whan that they were seeke.

         Wonderful lines. What a delight it was to read them aloud in Middle English. It gave me great joy and my students did not think I had it in me to do so. And earlier a few Biblical lines of Old English too, that I would scatter in a lecture or two on the development of the English language and the Anglo-Saxons. People in the world thought such history and language were irrelevant to modern days, but I think many did and do not have the imagination and human spirit to make it relevant. How can anything about humankind not be made relevant to human kind? People need an education in their humanity, some do. They do not know where they came from and those cultures of their many, many grand-grandparents today unknown except for DNA.