Did I mention that the General is a lady with discriminating taste? In case you're wondering, at times she makes me a little crazy. I know what you're thinking. Of course, you are right. She makes me more than a little crazy! Sometimes I want to "scream bloody murder." I think I picked up that term from Shakespeare.
The General has it down to a fine art. She is good at drawing a line in the sand and saying, "Thanks, but no thanks!" At some level, her refusal to watch the second part of "In Restless Dreams" (the Paul Simon docuseries) with me last night caught me totally off guard.
The General and I are on dog-duty this week and staying at our daughter and son-in-law's home with their two Labs. The last time we were on dog duty, we arrived at their home just as the hail began to fall and in short order left my truck, "beaten to smithereens."
If you question that, come and take a look. Car repair body shops and insurance companies are overwhelmed with folks making claims. I'm stuck somewhere in the middle. Until the body shop and the insurance company communicates, everything is left to chance and nothing is taking place.
As we neared my daughter's home after driving 20 miles through heavy rain late yesterday afternoon, we sat in the church parking lot for at least 30 minutes while it continued to rain heavily. My daughter and her husband live very near the church. The rain let up enough that I drove and parked in front of their gate for another ten-to-fifteen minutes before the rain subsided enough that I could open and drive through the gate without getting totally soaked.
At some point, following dinner, the General asked me to pick out something for us to watch on television. Fat Chance! Any of the channels available for viewing, proved to not be working. It was a Déjà vu kind of experience. We had the same experience the last time we kept the dogs for several days.
I took my Apple Notebook out of my backpack and in seconds was logged in to watch the second half of the "In Restless Dreams." The General declined. She wasn't going to view the documentary on a computer screen! She was polite in her refusal. She suggested that I watch whatever I wanted. She would read a book.
Instead of watching the second half of the docuseries without her, I opted to view some of the other suggestions related to musical documentaries. How I opted to select "Gordon Lightfoot," I don't know. I was not familiar with the name, but I did subsequently recognize his music. He, too, had a knack for writing incredible songs.
Lightfoot's gift of writing poetry and turning his poems into music is an incredible accomplishment. I was mesmerized by his story and fascinated by his abilities. His manager said of him: "His name is synonymous with timeless songs about trains and shipwrecks, rivers and highways, lovers and loneliness."
His song, "If You Could Read My Mind," tugged at my heartstrings. He credited his first divorce for inspiring the lyrics. They came to him as he was sitting in a vacant Toronto house one summer.
The lyrics include: "I don't know where we went wrong. But the feeling's gone and I just can't get it back." As his life subsequently seemed out of control, he was encouraged by family, friends and associates to give up alcohol. Initially, he resisted the notion, but in a very slow process, he eventually connected the dots and saw his drinking as self-destructive. He quit "cold turkey" and never looked back.
He was a very talented individual. His story is filled with incredible accomplishments. Yet, at some level his story saddens me.
Truth be told, we are all in the midst of a story. The only time we have is now and the only place we have is here. Thanatopsis, written by William Cullen Bryant, is a long poem. To my knowledge, it was never put to music. I remember the last Stanza from English class in high school. Mrs. Young, our senior English teacher, required that we all memorize it:
"So live, that when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan, which moves
To that mysterious realm, where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,
Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave,
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams."
All My Best!
Don
No comments:
Post a Comment