Because it was so hot and muggy yesterday, I left all the windows open, even when I went to bed last night and it was cooling down. The comforter keeps me warm enough.
But now it is pre-dawn, I guess, and the sound of the fog horns from the bridge are filling my bedroom through the open windows. Darkness, solitude, and the slow slow bass boom of the horns. One sort of high sound, then after several seconds, the answering lower one. Over and over. I tried to go back to sleep, but then memories began flowing into me, the way the fog does, enveloping what it meets. Like memories, even distant in time, the horns, though miles away, echo full voiced in my ears. Beautiful, but melancholy. If you are feeling alone in the dark, they will not lighten that feeling.
Veni Carthaginem, et circumstrepebat me undique sartago flagitiosorum amorum. When Augustine remembered his life it took the form of Confessions. (When he lay dying, at 75, Rome had fallen and the Vandals were besieging and burning his city.) Malcolm Muggeridge, another later life convert, called his Chronicles of Wasted Time. When I was down at Bill's on the weekend, I read a faded framed wisdom saying his mother had hung on the kitchen wall, God gives us memories so that we can have roses in December. She was, by Bill's account, a resolute optimist.
Memories can be sweet or searing, memories of the same moments, depending on the state of the rememberer. How I would title my own life story at this point, I have no idea. Richly varied? Or a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing? A lot of the time I really have little sense of who I am. A lot of who I was, but not much of who I am. When I have to, I go around and act like me --as far as I can tell-- but there's not much conviction in it. Maybe someday I'll be someone again.
There go the horns. It'll be light soon. Time, perhaps, to double-brew.
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