Dream

This week I dreamt I was in Concours oratoire (a public-speaking contest at school). My chosen subject was how great it was to be a parent. I realized my audience was a little young. I thought to myself afterward that I should have framed the subject as: “doing hard things is worthwhile.”

I remembered the dream the next morning when I was blow-drying my hair.

Quote

Dan Winters in the National Geographic documentary series “Photographer” quoted Henri Cartier-Bresson’s expression: “Life is once forever”. It’s so poetic in that way that poetry is a small container for deep meanings.

Confused

I thought bemused was a variation on amused… I thought it meant a lower key amusement, like the affect of a person observing a thing happening, in which they’re involved, but not too much, so that everything is just mild… In fact, bemused means confused. There is no amusement.

Country music

This week I checked off the last on the list of country albums from Tom Moon’s 1000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die. Having listened through folk music before this, I think I might prefer it. Some of the albums are Celtic, one was Acadian, and those sounds from my cultural background are immediately familiar. But country music makes me laugh… From “Don’t Think it Ain’t Been Fun” Lefty Frizzell sings about his heart: “it’s in so many pieces I’ve run out of glue”. Or when Hank Williams sings in “I’ll never get out of this world alive” that he’s so poor,

These shabby shoes I'm wearin' all the time
Are full of holes and nails
And brother, if I stepped on a worn out dime
I bet a nickel I could tell you
if it was heads or tails.

Others, like Tammy Wynette’s “I Don’t Want to Play House” make me sad.