Maintaining Awe

When you get up at four a.m., all you get to read is yesterday's news.  Why get up at four?  That is what I am puzzling over just now.  It is not a choice but a necessity when sleep won't come.  To lie in bed and suffer or get up and make coffee isn't really a choice.  I hate suffering and love coffee.  As I ponder it, though, I think perhaps Global Warming has something to do with it.  It is the coolest part of the day, though temperatures barely drop any longer.  I see that in some parts of the state, the nightly springtime low is 80 degrees or just below.  That is not a good omen.  I read yesterday that rising temperatures are increasing cancer rates, mostly in women.  Since I like women more than men, that is really bad news.  That aside, I have become like the Spanish populace in some way taking an afternoon siesta.  By two o'clock it is too miserable outside to move much, but now that I am career-free, it is one of my great pleasures to have a glass of wine with lunch, take off all my clothes, and lie down on top of the covers and fall asleep until I chill.  Then I pull a light blanket over me and continue to nap.  I will need those naps now more than ever.  Still. . . what are the factors playing hell with my nighttime slumber?

To be continued.  But yea. . . yesterday's news.  I'm finding that not having cable is not so bad but for missing some sporting events which I don't really watch but miss now that I can't dial them up.  But the cable news is shit, and I can get some of that without cable.  Reading the news, though, is far more efficient than listening to the blather of t.v. "news" people.  Yesterday as I was driving around town, I was listening to NPR.  Now, I have to admit, I love Science Fridays.  What I hear there isn't making the papers most of the time.  But yesterday was not Friday, and listening to the news reports was like reading them only worse, for there was a vocal attitude that was irritating me, and I couldn't skip over paragraphs that I knew were mere filler.  If I think I might have interest in a story, I read the first and last paragraphs and then decide on the rest.  I read several papers which, by and large, report on the same things.  CNN online is always a little different than WaPo or the NYT, usually including more quirky stuff.  The BBC is pretty good on world news, and of course there is everybody's favorite, The Guardian.  

Don't hate on me for my "notes" approach.  I keep up.  

I think my surgical wound is healing nicely.  I go back to have the forty or so stitches removed next Thursday.  Will it hurt?  I can't imagine that it won't.  I'm not looking forward to that, but I AM looking forward to exposing my new Frankencalf to the world.  

"What happened?"

"Just another day at the beach.  I was surfing and fell of my board.  I was just about to pull myself back on when a shark grabbed my leg.  I went under, of course, and did what they say to do.  I put my thumbs in its eyes and it let go.  It was a bloody, painful mess, but I wrapped it in a towel and drove straight to the hospital.  I'd lost a lot of blood, but they were able to put me back together again."

"My god, how awful!"

Something like that.  But it really will be nice to be able to go to the beach or to the springs or anywhere, really.  I've become antsy.  

Time marches on.  It is five now, and maybe I am ready to go back to bed.  Whatever demons were haunting me. . . but it wasn't demons, I don't think.  Well, maybe.  I was thinking about my young friend in Miami.  She sent me a note last night saying she was at an event in South Beach hotel that was "lavish and beautiful."  

"Life should always be that way.  Good for you, my friend."

Oh, when the world is new and young, such things strike deep into the soul of you.  The world can be so romantic through those eyes.  But, you know what happens.  Careers and love gone wrong, or maybe the connubial bliss of marriage and children and other things that slow you down.  BUT, if you are Young At Heart. . . perhaps you can continue to see the world through youthful eyes.  

I got a package out of the blue yesterday from my friend in the midwest.  Since leaving the factory, she has been a non-stop traveller--a safari in Africa, weeks in Japan, trips to tropical islands. . . anything, really.  Even a jaunt over to Belgium for a beer festival.  But here, domestically, she goes to see everything too.  She delights in the oddest and simplest of things.  I saw this yesterday on an IG post and sent it to her.

"I'll bet dollars to donuts you've been here," I said. 

"No.  Not yet!"

She is one who has maintained a youthful eye and a keen wonder about the world.  It is important to maintain one's awe, I believe, for once that is gone, you are many steps closer to becoming one of the living dead.

I must note, though, that she has volunteered to be my Death Doula.  She has completed her training.

Hmm.  

My buddy CC goes to Scotland next week.  He, too, is an inveterate traveller.  I am going to his house tonight for dinner.  He's been watching the Stanley Tucci in Italy series from National Geographic and says it has him on a roll.  

"I’m trying a new recipe--Chicken Orecchiette with Rosa Sauce."

I'll need to research what wine I need to take to match with that meal.  

I've been trying to get photos to transfer to Arches 88 paper using the alcohol method, but it is not working out.  I've watched a lot of videos.  It looks simple.  But when I do exactly what they do, it doesn't come close to the same results.  There is something they are not telling me, of course.  But I feel good working on an art project again.  The pic at the top of the post is the closest I've come, but it is not solely a transfer.  I used color pencils to bring out the color, but it still looked like shit, so I took it to the scanner and put it into Photoshop and did some blending, but it still is not "the thing."  It does not please me.  BUT--I have gotten some ideas, so. . . we'll see.  

While working on the piece, I was playing something my YouTube algorithm sent me.  It was just the right background music and didn't distract.  Pretty.  Old.  Mellow.

I think I'll share.  You DO pay for the non-commercial YouTube, right?  I hope so.  This is long.  And there are more.  Many.  You'll see.