The Guilt of Not Posting Frequently Enough

 

 

Time has long passed when I should have posted to this blog.  But, as Neil Young has said, “You know how time fades away.” ‘Tis a cold January morning here in Michigan as I type.  Earlier I warmed the car up so my wife and youngest son could head off to breakfast at a diner somewhere out.  When I started the car up the ice on the windshield was particularly beautiful. Me, I stayed home and ate porridge. 

 

Today as I type this, I have not even begun my morning purge of emails.  Every single day I get 150 or so emails from news services, retailers, scammers and others.  Sometimes it is hard to sort the wheat from the chaff.  But occasionally something good comes through.  A letter from a friend, an invitation to buy tickets to a touring Broadway show at a discount, or maybe a bit of Buddhist wisdom that seems relevant to my situation.

 

Okay I stopped for a minute and found I had received an email today that set me thinking about poetry today.  A friend sent me a note with a link to a course about W.S. Merwin’s poetry.  A mere $300 will engage me for better than a month with weekly lectures and discussions on the poet’s work. I should pay the money because Merwin’s poetry is quite important to me.  Still, here on the ground in the real world I can find better things to spend those coins on.  I will reread some of his works over the next few days and I will continue to get joy, if not understanding from them without taking a course.

 

Here is a sample of the poetry I love so much from W.S. Merwin,

 

THE OTHER HOUSE

 

I come back again to the old house

that I thought I knew for most of a lifetime

the house I reclaimed from abandon and ruin

and that I called my home at times when I was here

and at times when I was somewhere far from here

this time I have not come to reclaim anything

but to move nothing and to touch nothing

as though I were a ghost or here in a dream

and I know it is a dream that has no age

in this dream the same river is still here

the house is the old house and I am here in the morning

in the sunlight and the same bird is singing

 

The soundtrack as I write is from a playlist, I have called the playlist "Days Ago".  The list is populated with music I have grabbed from a weekly mix Apple sends me of songs they think I would like called New Music.  Usually, I find one or two of the new songs interesting and listenable enough to become repeated plays. Also thrown in with this mix are B sides, alternate recordings and other off-center things from favorite artists.  Right now, an  acoustic version of “Under the Milky Way Tonight” by the Church is playing. Nice to be listening to the Church on a Sunday morning. If I am feeling up to it, I may attend an church tonight.  For me it may be the last time in a long while to go and sit with my home congregation.  If all goes well, I will be on my way back to Portugal next week.

 

What needs to go well?  Certainly, there are lots of things that must go well.  My clogged sewer must be cleared.  The sewer thing is a mess literally and figuratively.  Had a backup and called a company out to augur my drain.  The sanitation tech did that and used a camera on the line.  At 100 feet my line is still blocked.  The weird thing is my house at its front wall to the main sewer in the center of our street is at most 60 feet.  Turns out that when my house was built in the 1920s, they ran the sewer line left at a 90-degree angle under the roadway and connected it to my neighbors’ line.  After joining together our lines join the main drain. Their line is working fine.  On Monday I am paying to have my sewer jetted out and the sewer cleaning company has to make sure the next-door neighbor’s line is closed so waste doesn’t blow into their basement.  If I wanted to separate the lines it would cost me $5,000 to $10,000. Hoping the jetting works.

 

Also needing to go well are medical tests.  There are tests that need to be taken.  There are tests that need to be interpreted.  There are medications need to be adjusted. Ah, the realization that I am growing old finally came when the doctor said, “The stuff that used to work, it don’t work no more”.

 

If the creek don’t rise too much photos and narration from Portugal will resume in about ten days.  Hope this is good enough for an interim post, a transitional post if you would have it so.