Abraham Cowley, In Search of Health

Seeking cleaner country air to restore his failing health, the poet Abraham Cowley retired from London to an old manor house on the Thames. On his first tour of the property, he noticed deep, gouged scrapes in the plaster and woodwork right at the sharp turn at the head of the main staircase. When he asked the housekeeper what had caused the damage, she matter-of-factly replied that the landing was too narrow, so the coffins of the previous occupants always scraped the wall on their way down. 

 

Amber Shade

 In amber shade 

The feast is laid.

The turkey is turning brown .

Out in the yard 

The grass is starred 

With dun leaves falling down .

The russet rolls, 

The gravy bowls ,

The pumpkin pies and tea ,

Are each and all 

As brown as Fall 

And lovely are to see !

The stuffing, perhaps 

May fall in our laps 

And cranberries stain some teeth .

But we’ll offer Heaven 

Sincere thanks giving 

And revel in the feast!

A slight rewrite of "Thanksgiving 1991" with a new AI generated illustration. I am now moved to PAM (Post Acute Medical) in New Braunfels. Been here since Friday night, about 30 miles away from Seguin and close family, so I imagine visits will be a little thin. I did see a buck deer running across the hill outside my window. I really need a sniff of fresh air, which I imagine I'll get when they take me to see Dr. Q again tomorrow.

I Go Walking After Midnight

There are a few places and situations I regularly revisit in my nightmares, and this is one: the library and administrator offices at South West Texas State University (now entirely given over to offices). The situation is this: it's the end of semester, I do not belong there, but I have to retrieve personal material I've stashed there. I have no reliable method to leave campus, and it is closing down and everyone's leaving. The library is a difficult labyrinth to navigate, and I'm a little lost. Sometimes my 'stuff' is in a locker I can't remember the location of, sometimes it is precariously 'stashed', liable to be thrown away or carried off. Last night it was behind a shelf, a stack of folders a foot and a half feet high, slippery and hard to carry. While I tried to navigate my exit and call for extraction, the elevators continued to befuddle and shift. When I finally made my way out the place was almost empty and night was coming on, and I was none too sure of the rondezvous point. I have this dream with some regularity, with the variation that is sometimes in a big shopping mall complex and I'm trying to get out with the great stuff I've found.

I am still in hospice care, but I'm getting slowly better. My anxieties are now what shall become of me and my stuff? No doubt reflected in this nightmare.

 

I Could Use Some True Grit Right About Now

This album came out in 1970, fifty-six years ago, and I'm almost sure my mother bought it. We never listened to it a lot, except for maybe Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and for some  reason They Call the Wind Mariah. You'd have thought Pop might have liked the True Grit theme, but I don't remember him ever listening to it.

I don't know why it entered my mind tonight, except that I seem to have suddenly experienced a sort of mind-emptying existential dread that's scraping out the bottom of my brain, the result of being involuntarily away from home and family for seventy days and suddenly twigging to the reality of the fact at midnight and feeling every inch of the distance, both physical and psychological.

 

Hospice, Not Hotel

 

Into the Archive: Three More Books

 

The Tower and the Ruin: J. R. R. Tolkien's Creation, by Michael D. C. Drout (hardcover, 384 pages, W. W. Norton, Dec. 2 2025)

Ka: Dar Oakley in the Ruins of Ymir, by John Crowley (softcover, 464 pages, S&S/Saga Press, July 24 2018)

The Magic Shop, by Maurice Dolbier, Fritz Eichenberg (illustrator), (hardcover, 75 pages, Random House, Jan 1 1946)

These books came in last week, and I'd like to say a few short words about each. Usually I'd have abstracts about  each from Amazon, but circumstances are making that difficult for me right now.

Of course I love a good scholarly take on any aspect of Tolkien, and that's what Drout's volume promises to be. It came just in time for September 22, and any Tolkien fan knows what that means.

I'vebeen dancing around Ka for some time now, and Crowley's recent passing has made me finally drop the hammer. It promises to be a return to magical realism saga secret history, but I'll have to read it before I'm sure.

But what really intrigued me was The Magic Shop. The Eichenberg illustrations have been teasing me for a while, and when I was ordering the other books and saw a copy going for only $50 (it's usually $100) I felt I had to jump on it. And it's a good thing I did. When I looked again, the only copy available was again $100. It's a surprisingly thin volume, rebound in Library binding at some point, with that inexplicable process that replicates the book cover illustration right into the cover. It was a short read, of that peculiar era that romanticized New York City ... for kids. It's a nostalgic hoot.

So there we are, for now.

Not About Medical Matters

I'm hoping my increasing boredom and subsequent activity is a sign of returning health. Having watched multiple seasons of television shows and obsessive viewings of movies both favorite and new, I at least turn my eyes to my new laptop and more creative endeavors.

Ironically that involves first an act of destruction, as I purge my Grok files of a few months of generated pictures. I suddenly realize I have no need of them there as I published most of them here, or have them stored on my old computer at home. On the site they simply make it hard to find anything. So I delete dozens at a time, and as I can't figure out how to delete multiples all at once, I do it one picture at a time. Even so, it wounds part of my packrat soul.

I also have several books on order, including one of yet another analysis of Tolkien and his works, the last (so far) of John Crowley's books, and one rare children's book with illustrations by Fritz Eichenberg. All should be in this week.  I know it's counterintuitive getting more books when I face the task of reducing my library, but there it is.

And that is what's going on with me.