Sunday, April 6, 2014

What a Day!

Oh what a day! Starting off with the luxury of sleeping in until 8:00 and ending with a good book and a cup of tea! Oh but there were other things in between, like driving along windy and rain covered roads through familiar towns to see people who are literally 'familyiar'. But the best was yet to come. =Standing outside under a small overhang playing everything you can think of on an electric guitar with two fun and invincible guitar players who couldn't care less that the rain is coming down in sheets around us! Less-than-melodic sounds emanate from the amplifiers but no one seems to notice or care about them or the rain. Neither did I.

 I'd be willing to bet that none of you expected that bit about the guitars. I bet you expected me to talk about cups of tea and good books and romantic smells of rain and earth. There is that too. :) But if you know me, you know that standing in the rain playing a second-hand guitar has a bit of a Jukebox Hero feel to it, and that romanticism has never been my forte.

But that was not the end of my day. I gingerly packed up my guitar with the careful attention and serious expression that one would use in handing a baby over to a friend on the other side of a cliff and then made my way home. (I actually got that expression today from someone when I picked up their guitar. :) It is a look of surprise, supressed fear, intense inward stress and more than a hint of if-you-dare-drop-that-I-am-going-to....to...do-something-terrible-to-you!' I give people that look every time they breathe on my guitar. Some people call it obsessive, I call it 'cautionary action caused by lack of replacement funds and imminent possibility of damage caused by user's potentiality for ineptitude and carelessness'.
 But I told you there was a bit of the romantic as well. Sitting with candles, tea and cookies with 'Les Miserables' on my lap and my eyes on the opposite wall going, why, why, why, am I reading this book? Yes, yes, it is a classic, and a very good one, but Mr. Hugo seems to have thought of a million ways of avoiding dialogue and things that actually have a very important bearing on the immediate plot. If you doubt me, consider that when one is one pg. 615, you are just now only halfway through the book and the fact that the font size is 9. When I have finished it and watched the movie I suppose I will not regret having read it so I will stumble forwards to its completion.
What else? Well, then there is right now. Outside the fields are saturated with water, a cold northern wind is blowing and the pond has overflowed its banks. Our basketball hoop was split in two by ferocious winds, narrowly missing our car, and rivers of water are running through the pastures. But I am inside, writing this post, with every soundtrack from Braveheart and Sherlock to The Avengers and Spiderman playing in the background. 'Les Mis' is sitting beside me, judgmentally viewing my neglect of it and I am looking at it with the expression of one who knows his fate is approaching. Ah! well, "If we are marked to die, we are enough to do our country loss..."

P.S. When I am done with Les Mis, I shall come back and write what I thought of it, and if my opinions now were made prematurely, I shall correct them and state my new opinion.

P.P.S Here is a link to the great St. Crispin's Day speech where the above quotation is from.

6 comments:

  1. Quite a day you had. Electric guitars and walking through the woods after a rain sounds apealling. I doubt that I would have the patience to read Les miserables. Maybye I could if it was really good. We need more rain in California. (P.S. May I please decapitate your spelling corrector! :) Every third word is stuck with that ugly red line.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Well, look at it this way, your spelling is being improved. :)

      Delete
  2. Your comments about Les Mis made me chuckle as my daughter didn't really care that much for it either.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Great post! Can't wait till your done with Les Miseralbes.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank-you. Why can't you wait till I finish it?

      Delete
  4. Because you'll post about it, and I like reading your post.

    ReplyDelete