try to remember
people you have ever known
back to earliest

But some nights I could not fish, and on those nights I was cold-awake and said my prayers over and over and tried to pray for all the people I had ever known. That took up a great amount of time, for if you try to remember all the people you have ever known, going back to the earliest thing you remember — which was, with me, the attic of the house where I was born and my mother and father’s wedding cake in a tin box hanging from one of the rafters, and, in the attic, jars of snakes and other specimens that my father had collected as a boy and preserved in alcohol, the alcohol sunken in the jars so the backs of some of the snakes and specimens were exposed and had turned white — if you thought back that far, you remembered a great many people. If you prayed for all of them, saying a Hail Mary and an Our Father for each one, it took a long time and finally it would be light, and then you could go to sleep, if you were in a place where you could sleep in the daylight.

From the short story, Now I lay Me in The Nick Adams Stories by Ernest Hemingway (New York, Scribner: New York, 1972).

I get up in the morning and see what happened over night.

Hemingway have seen what happened overnight as well.

In his short story, A Clean Well Lighted Place, Mr. Hemingway write, “Now, without thinking further, he would go home to his room. He would lie in the bed and finally, with daylight, he would go to sleep. After all, he said to himself, it is probably only insomnia. Many must have it.”

Going to bed, knowing everything that could happen overnight, who could sleep.

I lie in the bed and finally, with daylight, I can go to sleep.

After all, I say to myself, it is probably only insomnia. Many must have it.

life not segmented
months, years, dawns, noons, evenings, night
rather moods, traumas

Life is not segmented artificially by what we call days,

months,

years,

dawns,

noons,

evenings,

night;

rather, life is segmented by our moods,

impressions,

traumas,

odd transferences of power from inanimate objects—

the aesthetic principle—

dreams,

linked by time spans of loves

and hates

and indifference,

unexpected changes in the prism of our understanding,

areas of passion or lust that disappear in a moment,

lapsing into a kind of sloth,

dread

and slowness …

From Sundog: a novel : the story of an American foreman, Robert Corvus Strang, as told to Jim Harrison by Jim Harrison (Washington Square Press: New York, 1989).

1,000s of titles on my devices and nothing is catching my interest.

Can’t get into any of the novels I had such high hopes for when I got them with the idea that I could lose myself for a day or two.

So I end up back in Jim Harrison’s Sundog which again I realize is needlessly profane, off color and inappropriate in so many ways and yet with such a powerful use of language that I come back to again and again.

This passage I found particularly appropriate for the day when we review the the top 25 of everything because of it being the end of the year.

Hard to think that the passage of time, the revolutions of the earth and the orbit of the planets are artificial segments used to divide up life but I find that I cannot argue with the thought that life is not segmented artificially by what we call days, months, years, dawns, noons, evenings, night; rather, life is segmented by our moods, impressions, traumas, odd transferences of power from inanimate objects—the aesthetic principle—dreams, linked by time spans of loves and hates and indifference, unexpected changes in the prism of our understanding, areas of passion or lust that disappear in a moment, lapsing into a kind of sloth, dread and slowness….

I took the one less
traveled by and that has made
all the difference

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost as published in Complete Poems of Robert Frost by Robert Frost (Holt, Rinehart and Winston: New York, 1949).

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.