A most resplendent day! Visited with my family toward mid afternoon and then with a chum for fireworks in the evening. But throughout, all that I could focus on was the color. These are the summer days that truly showcase a grove of trees. The unflinching blue and flood of warmth beckons you to play frisbee with cousins or read a book.
I am picking through East of Eden right now, and today I started on the Aeneid for a change of pace. That's one that will have you begging for a spear's shaft and shield, with salty sea brine stinging cracked lips, hungry for an encounter with kings and with gods. I'm a sucker for epic poetry.
Thus did my literature pallet variously indulge itself. I must confess that I resist the conviction that I am a bookworm, especially lately. I'm sure I've written this before, but I really am slow at it. I seem to process the words with languid, meandering thoughts that try to digest the whole picture with vivid images, but I miss much and I know it.
I haven't the chops for great insight into these writings, but I cannot help but savor the pictures. The mind is remarkable and fills in the deep shades of landscape and countenance with light to catch a glimpse of another world, but always with respect to this one. I don't imagine that I see these things in a profound way. I try to see them as the author paints them, but there is something about the literary mind that blows me away. It can take anything–the vivid narrative, the straightforward cookbook, the dry philosophical work, or the detailed biography–and create light and meaning in different hues. If it does not, there is no understanding the words.
Much like the bombs bursting in air earlier this evening, words themselves can ignite the imagination individually (like in word association games), but it is the explosion of color and light that gives each line of a great work its definition and meaning. In my estimation, a day's well-spent basking in such revelries.
Tonight, some low-life hoodlum launched a firework from the top of a hill onto a cluster of families below. I believe no one was hurt, but it was a dirty trick. Not two minutes passed and the young men from below had charged up the hill to seek revenge. My chum and I forsook the fireworks finale to go after the crook as well just to see what might happen. The rascal escaped, but we had a jolly good time with the chase.
In general, Jove's light colored the day. Praise to the Lord, the giver of all good things.
I was reminded tonight by a friend that I don't keep up with these things often enough. I suppose I've pictured myself as a steadfast, faithful writer for years, either professionally or simply as a pastime. Actually, I notice such a lack of follow-through in my initiatives, that I often second guess my passion for the art. Indeed, it isn't that I haven't anything to say, but rather I simply haven't the discipline to practice saying it.
Permit me a moment of introspection, but I seem to have lost all initiative in the practice of saying things well. I speak, and far too often carelessly or with empty, loquacious tendencies, but it is a rare thing for me to speak with both confidence and clarity on a subject of interest these days.
I've taken a job of menial papers, staples, and phone messages. For a job, in the universal sense, I am very grateful. For this job, in particular, I am far from thrilled. Furthermore, I am realizing that my job search at the outset of the summer could have been better planned and executed so that I might have found work in a field more suited to my talents and tastes. I am learning and these things too shall fade away. For now, doctor's liaison is what I am. Redemption knows no limits for even the faintest glimpses of hope in the eyes of a patient in pain are enough to cause one to consider the health one has too often taken for granted.
Today, I was scheduling an MRI for an elderly patient with a thick, familiar accent. She smiled as I reassured her that the exam would not take long, because our tech is superb and speedy.
I approached her with her appointment card, and she exclaimed, "Ah the French Seven."
I squinted at her, puzzled.
She continued, "Isn't that how the French write their sevens? At least, that's what we were taught in the British schools."
I have always crossed a horizontal line through the middle of my sevens, but never knew the tradition behind it. An opportunity for such a simple exchange was most welcome.
"I never knew," I replied. With smiles on both sides, I asked, "Are you from Scotland?"
"I am originally," she replied, with that lilting brogue which hearkens the highlands, the haven home, the stone hearth, and thick stew all at once. "I moved here when I was about your age," She said. "The accent is about all I have left."
"Have you visited much?" I asked.
"Oh, yes."
"And been to highlands much."
"Of course, quite often." I was ear-to-ear in a grin. "I have always wanted to go."
Practicing simpler conversation might help one become a friend to another, but one cannot help but feel slow when things move into a race of the wits. Battles of the wits seem to disarm me in some way, so that often I feign interest. Patience is the key that I have so often misplaced in the heat of things. It has the potential to unlock charity toward the other, but my mind lapses too easily into judgment. I wonder, if we knew we could only say so many words in a day, how conversations might be different.
I could chew on that for awhile. They are tender subjects, our words, language, and in general communication. Such things go well with broiled potatoes and perhaps cabbage. If we kept it simple like that, maybe meaning would come to the forefront in our speech, rather than remaining aloof.
