Early A.M. Thoughts

It's six thirty, my usual rising time. In the summer, light comes into my bedroom at four thirty. Right now, it's pitch black outside. But I'm up and making coffee and thinking about Bill Holm.

Bill, who was slightly younger than me, died a few months after retiring from a job that was wearing him down, a job he had come to dislike intensely. He was beginning the life he had dreamed about for years, when he would be free to spend his life doing what he wanted, especially free to write.

I am not being depressed when I mention Bill, though heaven knows I wish he were still with us.

I am thinking -- I am free to write. I have the time; I have enough money to get by; and I am still alive.

So why not be grateful for the time and the freedom from a job that was sucking my life? Why not do what Bill can't do and write?

*

Patrick and I went out last week and bought a new radio/CD player, a Bose. I am listening to it right now. The DJ just told us that Dvorak was a passionate train spotter, something I didn't know, and then went on to play "Funiculi, Funicula" which is -- I just learned --a song about the new funicular railway up Mount Vesuvius that opened in 1880.

The train theme is in honor of the North Star, the new commuter train into Minneapolis from the northern suburbs, which is making its first run today.

I love trains.

I love finding out that "Funiculi, Funicula" is about a railway.

I have been looking at Bose radios for something like 20 years, but I could never nerve myself to spend the money. It sounds a lot better than the FM radio my father gave me 40 years ago or Patrick's boombox radio and tape player.

*

Finally, I am making toast from the bread I bought at the St. Paul Farmers Market yesterday. It's good bread and makes good toast.

So, good bread, good music on a radio that sounds just fine, and time to write.

*

I still want a part-time job. But my life right now is okay. I should stop brooding about things in the world that could be better and write.