Hearing words to a song brings them back to mind. In other words, the words carry the tunes for me. I don’t think it’s this way for Pete. He has a very well-developed ear for music – me, not so. I can pick out various instruments, but generally I go for very simple tunes.

If the tunes are incongruous so much the better. I like incongruity. I also like solo instrumentals, particularly violin and piano. If I hear a tune several times, I like it even better.

When it comes to music, I am a meat and potatoes kind of gal.

Lately, I’ve been okay with country western music. It’s not the lyrics, which most of the time are really stupid; rather, the upbeat tunes. Bluegrass is equally good if not better.

I do wonder if a person is born with heightened musical senses, as is Pete, or they develop this. Pete listens to 60s and 70s boy bands, and at the same time has developed an arcane knowledge of blues and rock and roll music.

Alys and Raudi go over jumps

Me, no. I’m also a one trick pony when it comes to poetry, just able to write narratives with line breaks. This is because I lack the musical base required to write verse. A real shortcoming, and one I regret. I did figure out that I could not make it as a poet, with my having this limitation. So I began writing creative nonfiction.

I liked then, and still like now (there, parallelism), being able to tell a story in numerous and differing ways. I have more room to move around. And this is a genre where I can reinvent the wheel.

Poets are also very strange people. They are like dogs who are relegated to guarding a small but inconsequential piece of turf. Well, its consequential to them. I think of this when I now come across books of poetry by these writers. There are no contemporary standout poets.

I’ve been thinking these things as I’ve been sorting, categorizing, and cleaning books. I think that this is something that every writer should do, at some point in their career, preferably after age 30. Maturity is a prerequisite for appreciation. Also, a broad-based reading related background.

Could it be that my job doesn’t pay because it’s so much fun? It recently occurred to me that I’m not getting a salary because I don’t deserve it. Maybe, I don’t feel that I’m entitled to it. Now, say, if I was writing grants (yeech), I would be getting paid because I’d equate this rather mind-numbing and tedious activity with financial gains. And maybe others think the same. Yes, others must think the same because no one on the board has gone out of their way to seek any kind of monetary compensation for what it is that I do.

Am I bothered about this? Not really, because I am having a good time and therefore have no reason to complain. But I am going to do something about this, and begin, on my own, to find a salary source.

Everything is up to me; this is just a given.

Next: 53. 2/24/24: Foresight