Later On

Nothing is ever the same. B came over with some books. Coffee and conversation. He's headed off to a memorial service for our mutual friend Aralee Strange, late of Peach Mountain, then to the Athens of the South for her final years. We discussed the written word and performance. I haven't read in public very often recently, but I've noticed that when I read off the screen, as I do constantly when I'm writing, with only the occasional word audible, that my spoken voice has become quite flat. I don't inflect as much, or punch words for emphasis. I leave it up to the reader (or the listener) to decide what they will. The antics of three crows completely diverts my attention. I was reading about the history of making paper, in Europe, this would be the fourteenth century, concurrent with the life of Petrarch, the first of the Humanists, which led to the Renaissance, because of the printing press, the actual agent of change; and I was deep into an internal dialog, when this gaggle of crows discovered the mice I'd thrown on top of the outhouse. Talk about a 360. I love the crows, and they love me, though they can be impertinent, we manage a working relationship: I give them mice and they give me a raft of shit. I thought a colon there was exactly correct. I think the misunderstanding here is that the crows think they need to thank me, and their way of doing that is this raucous crap that even TR wouldn't consider music. Oh, wait, yes he would. The sound-scape is a very real thing, right there, just stop and listen. Not that it would change your life, listening to bugs, or the rain-drops on your roof. Just that we could reach a kind of peace if we just took time to listen.