When I returned home this evening from the store, I was going to write something down. And I was not going to write it on a notepad, like I usually mean to do, or on the refrigerator, like Sarah always does. I was going to write it here. I wanted to write it here. But I got sidetracked. The babey[sic] has been more than usually fussy today, so Sar and I teamed up on her and tricked her into falling asleep. I played with her until she got sleepy, which is when she really starts whining. Then Sar filled her up fast with good ol’ mother’s milk. After that, we tucked her into bed and turned on the sleeping tape – you know, the one with the heart beating over classical lullabies. The kid didn’t stand a chance.
With the kid in bed, it was time for us to put on some Monk. I watched four episodes while Sar fell asleep on my lap. Television addiction notwithstanding, I don’t think I would have watched quite that many if she hadn’t looked so peaceful there. She’s been happier lately now that the weather is turning. The Valparaiso heat had her under house arrest all summer, but she can get out on walks now. It does her good.
Back to Monk. After an entire disc from season one, I figured it was time for bed. So, I shut down the DVD program, woke the wife to her bedtime rituals, and logged onto the web to surf blogs. I can’t see Junkmail for Blankets at the weapons factory – somehow the filter marks Jeremy’s blog as personal, but lets me surf all over Blogspot and a hundred thousand other personal sites – so, I checked it out. He says to write a five hundred word essay on a letter in the word autumn (without using acronyms, like a is for the smoky air we breathe, u is for the umber, burnt umber of the leaves, because those are just goofy). I don’t know why, but I immediately thought that m is clearly the pivotal letter in autumn. It softens the blow that winter is next. Then I foresaw thirty-five essays on the letter m, and my mind jerked to n. Without n, there is no autumnal equinox. N goes from being silent, to leading its own syllable. I’m sure there’s something significant there. The u’s and the t. Do they evoke anything to you? They don’t to me. I just don’t feel it. But the a… there’s something about the a. It creates the aura, the atmosphere that we associate with the season. ERH says something about like this in Language and Reality. I’m not good at remembering what I read (even book titles), but I think one of his points was that the symbolism of words is deeply interrelated with the physicality of reality. (You only need the title to Betty Smathers something like that.) The a really makes autumn what it is.
P.S. I remembered what I was going to write here. Has anyone had a Californian Lodi Chardonnay? I’ve never heard of Lodi grapes before. What are they like?