college, years & life itself

Me, I'm pretty much a loner. Always have been, always will be. I try not to make trouble, I don't bother anybody, and I want nobody bothering me! It's a glory of living way up here in this remote far end of the line corner condo that is 7H in this chapter of life. Which, knock knock, so far is realtime and not an epilogue. 

Had a nice walk yesterday, which was good, especially because instead of a walk after church Sunday I had a martini, a small tenderloin steak with asparagus, and a two hour nap. Deliciously tender steak, rare, 3/4 to an inch thick. Cut them myself from a whole tenderloin I bought early when all this covid19 started, and froze until recently. 

But the walk. At the east side Harbour Village fence, the gate into Oaks by the Bay Park is down, hasn't yet been replaced, so I walked out the open gateway into the park and around the park for a while. At the east side where the park borders Chestnut Avenue, the sidewalk heads on down south toward the Bay. As I walked down there, a snowy egret flew out of an oak tree (pic above), leaving another, maybe its mate, still in the tree. Walked closer and tried to get a picture of the large white wading bird up in the tree, but the bird flew away when I paused and looked in another direction. No matter, the walk down there was for the lamppost. 

I love lampposts. The lamppost out in the middle of nowhere in the snowy winter forest is a beginning feature of Narnia, the first story The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and again as the story closes. And is a delightfully subtle but clear feature that explains everything, in the later but retrospectively first Narnia story The Magician's Nephew. My love for lampposts is sort of just between me and Kristen, because, even though I'd first read The Chronicles of Narnia years earlier, she's the one who was in the Narnia adventure phase of my life, at Holy Nativity Episcopal School and later as the Narnia films were released. Across the room from the chair I'm sitting in here in my 7H study/office/den hangs a photo that Kristen took, and framed for me as a gift, of a lamppost in a garden she knew when she was at Emory University. 

Lampposts stir all sorts of the great memories that I was talking about in an earlier blogpost. Wait till you get here, you'll see. With oysters, and a steak about once a month, fish of various kinds for noon dinner as often as we please, a finger or two of good Islay single-malt Scotch from time to time, a martini once a week, glass of red wine whenever it pleases me, and the same woman I got to know when we were teenagers together snuggled warmly and assuringly against me back-to-back in bed, it's a really good chapter of life. Would you believe looking at 85 may be the best part of all?

Caroline is at college now, in her dorm at FSU, checked in over the weekend.

We thought she was going to have at least one class in a classroom, but turns out that all her classes are online only. This school year, life is different from anything ever before, but maybe it'll last only one semester before moving on to something less remote? Caroline going to college, being left and waving goodby, inevitably reminds me of my parents leaving me at North Hall, UFlorida, Gainesville, September 1953, my father writing me later that Mama cried all the way home, while I was so happy at breaking free. Karma paying me back, my extreme anguish leaving Caroline's mother Tass at her college in Virginia thirty years ago, August 1990 (see, this is "Where Did The Years Go?"). Leaving Kristen at Emory years later and now years ago was a bit easier because I knew that, having lived through the experience once, I could do it again. Now Caroline. Lots of love, all the best, enjoy college, your classes and your roommates, Love! Papa will keep his worries to himself this time. 

What else this morning? Snapped several pics of patterns on yesterday morning's walk. Here's one that proves parallel lines do converge at a point after all if you draw them out far enough, and if perspective and the morning sun have anything to do with it. Patterns.

Patterns are good, though likely none ever again so good as the geometrics that came as a benefit of the scaffolding we enjoyed here at 7H for the better part of a year after Cat5HAndrew blew through. Triangles, rectangles, trapezoids, parallelograms, squares, right angles, acute angles, obtuse angles. I don't do straight angles or reflex angles, like most of my dreams, they're not real. The year of scaffolding provided a pleasant ongoing renewal of plane geometry my sophomore year at Bay High 1950-51. Math was my only good subject in high school. Math and band. Well, history with Mr. Weeks. Band was good, especially when I took Mama's

car to school. I parked it right outside the back outside door of my band practice room, the only car there except Mr. Whitley's Olds 88. I was a nearly free boy who came and went at will.

Anything else? Sailboat between us and Redfish Point as we ate supper last evening out on 7H porch. Salad, a few shrimp left over from dinner, lots of lettuce, tomato bits, olive oil and delicious dark, thick Italian vinegar. Ice water.

Life is good. Short. Way too short, but good. I hope your life is as good as mine, better if possible, and maybe even longer. When you get here you'll still be wondering Where The Time Went, so hold on to the memories, you'll be wanting them.

RSF&PTL

T+

Our 1949 Plymouth station wagon was exactly like that picture except ours did not have white sidewall tires.