Talk about feel-good news. Taylor Swift is engaged. Judging by my social media feeds, the entire world is happy for her. Heck, I’m happy for her. And I think she’s happy for herself. Of course, I have no idea how she manages the life of a public figure. There are just so many instances when I’d rather not have people looking at me that I can’t imagine having people looking at me all of the time, and we look at Taylor all the time.

I have a kitchen trash bin given to the family by my mother-in-law. It’s made of wood and at one point was a handsome piece of furniture, which is an odd thing to say about a trash bin. Most people have their kitchen trash bin hidden behind a door in a cabinet. Not us. Ours sits right out in public in all its wooden splendor. Unfortunately, waste, including food, generates moisture so the inside of the lid looks the worse for wear as does the top where it’s been touched by a generation of hands.

A year, any year, has always felt like it runs on a bell curve. Cool, short days start the year, long hot days fill the high middle, cool, short days end it. September was always the tipping point, the beginning of the downhill slide into December. It was time for football, hunting, and the holidays–Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. The four months of fall were action packed and sped by unbelievably fast.

It’s a cool, still morning here at my little homestead. Fall is just around the corner, although it’s not that big a deal in Texas. In fact, it could stay hot well into October. But the plants know, and they’re getting ready.  Leaves are turning. Blooms are falling. It’s the light. It comes later. Leaves sooner. The perennials are thinking about their roots. The annuals are saying good-bye.

I think I’m going to allow that the world might have passed me by. Not real sure I’ll miss it. I’m pretty sure it doesn’t miss me. But it’s not uncomfortable being in a backwater, or being a backwater. I can float around and sample the goods as I see fit. But as a demographic, the only folks who care about me are doctors. Basically, I think I’ve seen, read, and heard too much, and understand that most of what’s supposedly “new” is only new to people who don’t know anything.

I love to see mothers and children in a bookstore, gathered, laughing, talking. My favorite store favors them. On almost any day I chose to visit there will be children, with mothers, mostly, but sometimes fathers. There are toys and games. The children play at the feet of mothers who stand, talking with one another. It makes the store feel like a living space, and sometimes I stay to drink a bit of coffee and eat a roll, and maybe to start a book I just bought.

Well, I slept all night, except for one tiny wake up. But it only means I was really tired from not sleeping the night before. And the experts are in agreement that you can’t catch up on sleep. So, I’m not really sure what to do except plod on. And that seems to be a recurring theme in my life, and life in general. Plod on. But since I’m now a slow-moving, sloth-like creature it means I get to look around, and that’s a good thing. It plays straight into my natural tendencies.

The inevitability of life. Not sure what that means, but it popped into my head last night while I lay in bed. It seems like a good idea, too. An idea I should spend some time parsing. I think it has something to do with things I want compared to the things I actually get. And it’s not about shopping. In a small way, it also has something to do with acceptance, an acknowledgement of what’s real, and right now. Somewhere in there, of course, is striving, of working towards something.

I went to see Butch Hancock last night, and I almost hate to admit it, but it was my first time. Of course, there are lots of artists I haven’t seen in person. So, I’m not singling him out. I just wish I’d seen him when the songs were new. It was the same with Jimmie Dale Gilmore. I got to his music late, and I’ve never seen him in person, but when we still bought CDs, I bought a few. I mention Jimmie because I realized last night that Butch wrote one of the songs Jimmie performs that I really like, Just a Wave, Not the Water.

I lost a day yesterday. When I got up in the morning, I thought it was Monday. I was surprised my doctor’s office was closed. I wondered why a music festival friends were attending had its closing day on a Sunday. I even texted another friend to ask if we were still on to meet and listen to music that night. He said, yes, but, and this is when I snapped back, he said today is Sunday, the show is Monday. It was a disconcerting moment, because I was truly in Monday mode.

We fried things last night. Fish and potatoes. Lovely. The fish was cod, cut into bits, dredged in mustard then cornmeal and panko. The potatoes were Idaho, sliced on a mandolin to paper thin sheets, soaked in ice and water, then dried and fried. My host had two fryers with clean oil for each. We started the meal with a heaping helping of cold shrimp dipped in an array of sauces. Lovely, again.

This is a short sleep story. I have figured out how, after waking at three or two, or one, to get back to sleep.  I lay down, roll over, say, begone to my ruminating thoughts, think of sleep, and there it comes. Hardly a great self-help manual, but that’s what I’ve got. Somehow, I have managed to find the stopcock that will open and dump everything from my brain except the need for sleep. Maybe it’s my years of training coming into play.

The removal of the dead has commenced. All throughout the garden stand the remains of the seasonal plants, almost all natives, who have succumbed to the heat and lack of rain. This includes grasses of course, because we are at the edge of the country and windblown seeds find my yard a convenient way-point. The digging or pulling is sometimes difficult because the ground has hardened, but that is normal.

I’ll admit it. I’m happy for all the enthusiasm for Taylor Swift’s new album, The Life of a Showgirl. I’ll also admit that I’ve tried to dive into her music but came up short. I like Shake It Off and Electric Touch, but they’re really the only two songs I can name off the top of my head. I suppose it just makes me happy to see so many other people happy, especially when some of them are friends of mine. Maybe happiness is infectious.

My trips to Big Bend are always humbling and rewarding. First, it’s a big, relatively empty place, with lots of space between its mountains, and there are mountains galore. Humanity, despite its best efforts, has managed only the tiniest of footprints, and even those feel slightly tenuous, and are nothing compared to the memory of the dinosaurs that once roamed the landscape.

So far, I’ve mostly enjoyed living in the information age. One big upside is the ability to find out information on obscure parts I need when repairing things. At the moment, I’m putting a new pull rope on my line trimmer and the mechanism needs a little clip to hold it all together. Turns out it’s called a circlip 9X1, and a local power tool company just down the road has not one but four of them in stock. I even have the part number.

Another road trip is in the books, and I’m back at home. There’s a twist this time. The son who was living with me has found his own place. By the river. Nice. But… The emptiness was palpable when I walked into the yard and then the house. That will take some getting used to. Fortunately, he’s just down the road and lots of his gear is still here, and this may or may not be a long-term venture.

I disappeared yesterday. I was with a group of people. They were talking about plans. And poof I was gone. Of course, although I might have felt invisible, I was probably still there in body, but nevertheless, I felt gone, disconnected. It’s not a new feeling for me, and I’m pretty sure, unlike Billy Pilgrim in Slaughterhouse Five, I’m not actually traveling in time or anything. But the feeling of profound solitude and aloneness is real, even in a crowd.

I’m in Marathon. Texas. For a songwriting festival. This is my fifth year. Five years since my wife passed away in the same month in 2020. I came in the first year because friends put the wind of kind words in my sails and recommended it. The drive of five hours felt like I was going to the ends of the earth, but my faith was repaid with the inestimable gifts of music and friendship. We listened to music, we played music, we talked.

Yesterday was the anniversary of the United States dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Tomorrow will be the anniversary of the second bomb falling on Nagasaki. Nearly a month later, September 2, Japan surrendered. It took close to a month for that decision to be made. In retrospect, given the ferocity of the violence of those two bombs, the surrender seems a long time coming.