How silly it is for me to say I miss this little blog? I don't really understand why I stopped pouring out my life on these pages. After all it was a white washed version of my life. Not the nitty gritty. It was the kind of life how I wanted to live, not exactly how I really am.
I have stopped examining my life and the situations and experiences that define me. It is as if I have laid myself out on a swift moving river and am allowing it to take me where ever it pleases. At times I am astounded at where I have landed. But that is what happens with the unexamined existence.
I have bounced around from Clarksville, TN to Memphis - the largest city in Mississippi - back to Kentucky and now have landed (softly) in Indiana and, hang on to your hat, am getting ready to become a Trailer Trash Snow Bird in Florida for the winter.
My mother has passed away several months ago and I feel like an orphan, a motherless child. I think of her still as if she were still with us. I suppose in time I will stop this. It is disconcerting and slightly sad to follow up a thought about her with the reality of her death.
My husband has retired and life is very different! I will say no more but this ..... I never thought too much about what this would be like. Day after day of vacation. Endless vacation. I am not certain it is a good thing. But it has been interesting.
And so ......I guess I am back.
It happened several years ago. A memory stirred by a song on the radio.
"What is that?" I asked myself and turned my entire attention to the music.
"Why that is Bob Dylan!"
I closed my eyes and struggled to remember when. I labored to remember where. And then the memory slowly washed over me.
College. Summer at the Ghetto. A smoky room, a toothy grin, legs stretched out taking up the entire room, beers in hand, joints passed around, cigarettes smoldering in overflowing ashtrays, record player blasting, hanging out with a gang known as the "Bolio's", trying to be cool among the cool.
The music overwhelming me with its beauty. Realizing I liked it. I, who had never bought a Dylan album in the past, was baptized into the fold.
Recently, on a television program, the power of music on the brain was reveled....again. How Alzheimer patients will become engaged when presented with music from their past. Memories stirred. The soundtracks of their lives.
Recalling the experience of hearing Mozambique, the way it was like a time machine, taking me back to a place, a time, a memory of a young 20 year old in among a crowd that probably had a line on corrupting her.
I loved it then and cherishes the memory now.
When I am too old to remember anymore I would like a map of songs to take me back, if not to the memories, then to the feeling of being young and swinging the world by the tail .
I was a dreaming beast last night. The images in my head transformed into incredibly interesting scenarios were brought on by several instigators. The best dream was meeting Ringo...again. That was the telephone call I made to Joe as Ringo sat in a lawn chair in a semi-circle with a group of people I was hanging out with at a party of some sort. "Guess what? I am with Ringo...again!"
I was also trying to solve a mystery murder while hobnobbing with the ex-Beatle. That was the contribution from the television show Justified and the book I am reading, The Dean in Their Vaulted Arches. All in all it was nice to meet Ringo again. He is charming.
My life and situation is so totally different than a year ago that it bears reflection. My husband is retired and I quit my job at Cracker Barrel last July. My husband is home all the time! I have altered and adjusted.
My Mother is very ill and dying. I am helping to care for her at home and make her final months as comfortable as possible. I am apparently not a very good nurse. I have an highly refined gag reflex and I am angry with her for getting sick. I wanted her to live forever, or at least until I could wring all her wisdom into a spray jar that I could take out and spray at the appropriate times.
I am writing like crazy in my journal and it is lame. I feel that if I challenge myself to once again take up the keyboard maybe I can force myself to make sense out of this new stage in my life and not just rant and rave with an occasional whine.
I am off to spend the night at Mom's after coming off a week of a semi-flu attack. I have been cooking up a feast to take with me wearing surgical gloves and face mask.
