This Time has Gone

Without knowing much beyond the broadest strokes I was glad to see Macron trounce Le Pen.  The European Union is the world’s most successful experiment in supra-national governance.  If humanity is to ever to evolve beyond nations, the EU would presumably be the pathway forward, compromises and all.  But England didn’t agree.  And if France were to go . . .

We have extended family over in Dordogne and I wrote them to see what they had to say, from there in the French countryside.  I knew they loathed Le Pen but wasn’t exactly sure if this new investment banker on the scene had properly captured much of their imagination.  I suspect it was a conditional victory for them.  But a victory, nonetheless.  I think everyone had the feeling that this nationalist contagion was going to drop another domino there in Gaul this week, after the it-can’t-happen moment in the U.K. with Brexit and our own election with DJT.  The Chinese press was consumed, as my wife pointed out to me tonight, that Macron’s wife is so much older than he. 

Naps are stronger than coffee.  Imagine that.  Tired after dinner.  Took a nap.  Now I’m up at 1:30AM with energy to burn.  Can’t say if this feeling will hold when I arise again in a few hours.  I went all out in the last day or two to catch up on my posting here at Dustybrine.  Nearly all of the days had been captured when they were supposed to have been captured.  But one thing and then another meant that nearly three weeks of postings were never uploaded.  It should be easy but it never is and the time involved reviewing the writing, choosing the photos and the title and getting them up on the site means that posting a backlog of twenty entries takes two full days.  It’s time I don’t have but its’ time I make, for no other reason than that I said I would.

If nothing else it is a powerful vehicle for memory.  None of these glimpses are so precious or pressing that they’d be accessible more than a day or two on from the occurrence. I’m not sure what the value the mnemonic aid will mean for me other than the potential for rich ah-ha’s.  My kids however might find it interesting, long after this time has gone.

The literary rendering of a moment is one way to stimulate memory.  The photos are of course, a complementary but totally different means by which to jog the mind.  In some ways they are more complete but they are also less connected to other ideas then words can convey.  Today, over at the supermarket I was caught off guard by hearing a song some friends and I had recorded a few years back.  It was a good collective effort with everyone soaring and I would have totally forgot the snarling bit I did at the end, even till the second before it arrived, if I hadn’t heard it.  Sound seems to stimulate a completely different part of the mind’s garden. 

Monday, 05/08/17