Highway 61 and a Blue Toyota Yaris

Whether it is reading or listening to music, I often get into a phase, "my Hemingway phase," "my Virginia Woolf phase," etc.

Right now it's Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited.


Highway 61 Revisited, Million Dollar BasherCritics have written that Dylan's ability to combine driving, complex, blues-based rock music with the power of poetry made Highway 61 Revisited one of the most influential albums ever recorded. -- Wiki

If I've listened to this song once in the past 72 hours, I've listened to it one hundred times. The louder the better.

If I could I would take a drive from Minnesota to New Orleans on Highway 61. If I could plan it, I would start walking and then have a beautiful woman in a blue Toyota Yaris pick me up. Smile and all.

Postcards from the Yorkshire Dales

Yorkshire Dales

Buttertubs Pass, Yorkshire

Viens, Viens, Marie Leforte

I can't recall the language requirements any more, but suffice it to say I took one or two years (I forget) of Latin in middle school and two years of German in high school. In college I took two years of German. I signed up for and started first year French after the second year of German. Both Latin and German "made sense." Latin was a "dead language" so we didn't have to learn to speak it; that knocked off about half the challenge, for me. German was easy in that one pronounced words pretty much like they appeared. But, wow, French. It seemed like half the letters weren't pronounced. I never got it. On top of that my instructor was a mousy little Frenchman with a speech impediment. French was his native language but teaching was not his forte. I dropped out before three weeks was up to prevent from getting an incomplete (or worse) if I dropped out later.

And that is what led me to post this little note and embed this video. Had Marie Laforet been my French instructor I might be fluent in French today. Or not. Her enthusiasm would have been contagious. And no speech impediment.

Viens, Viens, Marie Laforet

Was It All A Dream?

You Only Live Twice, Nancy Sinatra

You only live twice or so it seems,
One life for yourself and one for your dreams.
You drift through the years and life seems tame,
Till one dream appears and love is its name.

And love is a stranger who'll beckon you on,
Don't think of the danger or the stranger is gone.

This dream is for you, so pay the price.
Make one dream come true, you only live twice.

And love is a stranger who'll beckon you on,
Don't think of the danger or the stranger is gone.

This dream is of you. And I am paying the price.

Fly Me To The Moon

It's been, or will be, eight years, and not a day goes by that I don't think of you. I'm lying here this evening, going through my list of love songs, and I come to this one:

Fly Me to The Moon, Doris DayYou once answered a question I asked you with: "Yes, but not active. I would just like to fall asleep and never wake up."

I thought the same today. I think that a lot.

Not a day goes by that I'm not thinking of you. Nay, not a conscious moment.

Sappy, sentimental, and who cares? 

I bought two more books today: one, the diary of H. L. Mencken, and the other, another biography of Hemingway. Only by reading do I keep me mind off you. Only by reading am I able to keep on. I enjoyed reading to you.