Late morning. You returned from getting a haircut at Great Clips – Mary Ann, your favorite beard-trimmer, did the honors. Seven weeks, she said, since your last visit. You told her to count today as September as you told Carol you would get your hair cut at least once a month – a long thirty days between early July and late August, but wordage wins the day, once in July and once in August. Next month, alas might be a ‘skip a month’ time of year if Carol is the least bit forgetful.
Almost noon, Carol is talking on the phone to Alta about what clothes to take on the trip and you are sitting in the living room chair wondering about why people have second thoughts.
One would think, with free will, one could make up herorhis mind and be done with it, but no, many times it leads to second-guessing. I remember this most on supposedly well-constructed multiple-choice questions. Many times there was a close second choice to what was deemed the correct response. I remember taking such state or regional tests once in a while as students were also taking the test. Later, the department chair and I would discuss our responses, particularly in the field of grammar. Usually there were between five and ten percent of the ‘correct’ responses that could be argued, that the close second choice was also ‘correct’. Once in a while, anyway there can be a second choice that is actually as good as and sometimes even better than the first choice depending on the conditionals within the structure of the multiple-choice question. . . . I don’t know exactly where I was going with this other than it is bothersome presently.
You have second thoughts, even third thoughts about me, orndorff; it used to bother you but you let it go and really don’t give much of a damn who I am other than I appear useful as a counter-point for the sake of a somewhat intellectual exercise in blogging.
I am thinking it might be good to stop writing, to stop the blog. Here is why. One can stop writing but when writing thoughts one cannot stop thinking or guessing, whatever. The thoughts go on and on and on. Being as asleep when dead sounds the best as long as there is no dreaming. No nothing. Just quiet and stone-minded. Peace, even if I am not conscious of it.
Sorry, old man, you made a promise to yourself that you will attempt to finish three books. Notes cannot stop until they are complete and published.
My mind goes on and on. I cannot shut it down.
You are not alone, boy. It is a matter of survival that you stay alert, built in on switch, so to speak. Post, and get packing. – Amorella.
On the last night in this August your thought are to your friend Bob and you wonder how he is. Is he alive? Is he conscious? You have wanted to call Patti but have not as you feel it is a private time for the family. You are reflecting on what Patti said as you left when you told her your Dedication was on sailing. She was surprised and said, Bob, just gave me the [line, or] lines he wants on his urn; words from Yeats’ “Sailing to Byzantium”. You want to include the poem here as a further remembrance of your friend. You have not lost a friend of this caliber before. Your heart is as the somber country church bell striking; the one that (in your unconscious imagination) touched the ears of John Donne and tweaked his cause to write “Meditation 17”.
I did not realize the unconscious mind might have a sense of imagination.
Raises the ante, doesn’t it. – Amorella.
It is a speculation that would answer a lot of personal questions. What an idea, an unconscious imagination.
What about the unconscious mind ‘toying’ with the conscious imagination, does that sound more realistic? - Amorella.
Speculation only, Amorella. I don’t think it is probable.
What am I doing here but toying your imagination? – Amorella.
Point taken, Amorella. Such a sense of wit. Amazing. And, Yeats, the crafty animal he was shows wit also. Wit open to interpretation. Time for me to shut my mind and reflect.
“Sailing to the Byzantium”
By William Butler Yeats
THAT is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees
- Those dying generations - at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.
An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.
O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.
Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.
***
The poem gives you a sudden jolt, young lad. Didn’t expect that did you? Post. We are done for the day. – Amorella.