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. 

Yesterday I was driving 70 down a road north of Fredericksburg, and I wondered why I was driving 70 down a road north of Fredericksburg. It’s a road with pretty scenery, courtesy of the Llano uplift, and trying to see it while driving 70, even if it is the posted speed limit, is a great way to get yourself killed. I don’t know about other people, but I tend to drift when I start looking at things along the road. So, I slowed down.

I live in a town that’s on the way to everywhere. The Highland Lakes are to the north and the wine country to the west. Two major metros are close at hand: Austin to the east, and San Antonio to the south. Those metros are growing. Highway 290 on the west side of Austin is expanding, widening, and lengthening, as is Highway 281 on the north side of San Antone. They’re daggers pointed right at the heart of the Hill Country.

I’m playing with AI. It’s fun, and useful. For the last several weeks, I’ve used AI to check this blog for “grammar, spelling, and usage.” It’s great at catching spelling errors, and is liberal with the use of commas. It has an odd affinity for the em dash, however, the sort of pause that I let a comma handle. After review, I’m presented with edited copy and a list of changes. I accept or reject the proposed changes, and we’re off. It’s a nice backup.

I love the internet in so many ways, but hate it at the same time for so many others. Chiefly, I moan the loss of human contact in the area of giving and receiving instructions. At the moment, I am wrestling with a website trying to fulfill their requirements for them to stop charging me sales tax on goods I’m buying from them to resell. It seems obvious. They’re a print on demand company and the orders are coming from my website.

There was a banging in the fireplace yesterday. It’s too early for Christmas and Santa Claus, so I thought it might be an animal of some sort. Once upon a time, we had a fireplace where chimney swifts lived, and they made a raucous noise. But this was the heavier knocking of a much larger beast. So, I went outside to look and see what I could see.

Typically, I don’t pay much attention to who’s eating at what plants in my gardens. But I have several stands of mistflowers, and the Queen butterflies (Danaus gilippus) so heavily populated the bunch in the new garden along the north fence that I had to stand and look yesterday. It’s a striking butterfly and compares favorably to the Monarch, and there were a lot of them on the plants. To anyone inclined to further study, the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center has a page dedicated to how to tell the two members of the Danaus subfamily apart.