Beltane                                                                        Early Growth Moon

A holiday weekend, chilly and gray, some rain.  It has reminded me, all day today, of another Indy race day, sometime around 1957 or 1958 when it was rainy and cold on Monroe Street in Alexandria, Indiana.  Nobody else wanted to listen to the race, so I went outside, crawled in our 1957 Ford, turned the radio on and followed the race.  Nothing in my memory about who won, what the race was like, but I recall feeling perfect in the car, in the rain, alone with the commentary.

(like this except it had white detailing)

I’m beginning to think I may push myself too hard.  Ha, you say.  Finally.  Well, it hasn’t really occurred to me, but when I took that day last week and read poetry, it gave me a feeling of luxury, of relaxation.  When I mentioned this thought to Kate, she said, “Uh-huh.”  We both push ourselves, Kate and me, in different arenas of our life.  Kate wants to get practical tasks done:  laundry, weeding, cooking, paying the bills.  I want to get a book written, Ovid translated, art ingested, faith reimagined.

Here’s the interesting twist on this for me.  I want to get things done, too.  That is, words per day, verses per day, a painting or sculpture analyzed, a specific concept mastered–like the work I did on the numinous over last three weeks.  Or, writing this blog.  In this way, I have a trail of bread crumbs, I guess, a path that can show I’ve been up to something.

(Yue_Minjun-Execution)   [It occurred to me as I wrote this entry that execution has two starkly different meanings but that they might be related.]

Oddly, this does not include reading, except for very focused reading in service of a particular project.  Oh, I read plenty, at night, after the work day is done, but I don’t have time in my schedule for serious reading like the works on Ovid I’ve collected, or poetry, or that biography on Edward Hopper.  Strange, really, since I consider myself a reading partisan, working the trenches to keep the Philistines well away.

Somehow, I imagine, all this will result in a changed schedule for me, what it will look like I don’t know, although I’m going to keep the morning for writing.  That’s my good time.

Notice, however, as I just did, that this does not include the sabbath, a day of rest or a week of rest or a month of rest.  Our trip around South America had as one of its chief merits an enforced laziness, especially during our days at sea.  Watching the ocean go by.  I never sit around and watch the ocean go by.