Saturday 4/27/24
I like that we don't know why birds make the sounds they do in the morning. I was listening to them today. What are they saying? "I made it through, oh, yes, I hear you, you made it through, too, here's another day." It's only for the birds to know.
I also like pumpkin patches. I get excited seeing one. There's a pumpkin patch I know of in Ipswich tucked just inside the start of a forest that I love, and one in Concord, too, which I go by when I walk out to Walden's pond.
Other things I like: railway cuttings, fog, trails, harvests, plainsong, wassails, wood ducks.
The woods I explored as a child constituted a place of total magic to me, as Rockport does now, for some of the same reasons. I felt with them then, and with this place now, that I was in a wondrous space that had to have some of the aspects of paradise, if there is one. Paradise isn't just about that place; it's about the place inside of you which in turn may have its own special way of belonging in the place where you are at.
There are many songs I sing a lot. One of them that I sing the most is the Grateful Dead's "And We Bid You Goodnight." I do the background parts, too.
On one of my walks last week, I heard Sam Cooke's "Bring It on Home to Me" playing outside on the sound system of a restaurant near South Station. I had to stop and listen until the song was done. A sizable assist from Lou Rawls, and the strings, but you still don't feel incorrect in remarking that it's all Sam. It may be the ultimate rhythm and blues song, which isn't something you'd expect to have strings on it. But you also wouldn't expect that we wouldn't know why birds make the sounds they do in the morning, so it's all good.