The Buried Giant

27 February 2021

 

Early Saturday morning has come.  We are almost at a year of life in quarantine.  The past year was much akin to the year between my ninth and tenth birthdays.  Back then time stretched easily and seemed to go on forever, it had an aching elasticity that frustrated constantly.  Ms. Joni Mitchell kind of captured that feeling in The Circle Game talking about promises of someday filling a young child’s dreams.  From the start of the lockdowns the hope of some future day has been a key part of every conscious thought and of most every dream.

 

Snowed last night, t'was to be expected really. But the bridge of these next few days between February and March is supposed to be warmer, four days in the forties. Like most people in norther climes, I will use this mild weather to venture out and see what damages the harsh weather has wrought to date.  Went out yesterday and the ice dams at my main roofs edges hard melted without damage to the interior of my house. The deck in my side yard is still under ten inches of hard crunchy snow, I will just let nature dissolve that. My guess is that I will find some branches to pick up here and there and without question I will find some damage under the snow somewhere because no winter passes without leaving a mark, not here at least.

 

Finished Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant the night before last.  Such a lyrical book about hatred and deception.  Like his other work that I loved so well, The Remains of the Day, Ishiguro’s used the last forty pages of this relatively slim volume to beautifully bring the narrative to a wrenching conclusion. Beautiful, lyrical and yet heart-breaking, this book is well worth digging out and reading. Got Book?  Books are the antidote to isolation induced antsyness. 

While I was writing this I thought I should have a song about knights and kings and the like wrap up the piece.  But if you exclude the Moody Blue's Nights in White Satin there isn't much out there.  And Nights really isn't a good match with my commentary on The Buried Giant.  I then thought I would go for something that touched on mystical things.  The first song to come to mind was Into the Mystic.  But Van Morrison is being such a twit about the lockdowns I could not use his version.  I have loved Van's music for so many years but I cannot listen to him right now for all his selfish prickness about not being able to tour and rake in the cash.  Thus I found somebody else who does a really nice cover of the song. Enjoy.