31 December 2010
The Dying of the Light
(The Dying of the light. Photo copyright 2010 Eric Boutilier-Brown. Model Romina.)
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
-Dylan Thomas
I am here, against all odds, raging against the infirmities of my body, and that of those I love and now must care for. Sometimes the living of life gets in the way of accounting for it. In response to some solicitous inquiries, I wish you all the very Happiest of New Years!
I drove 500 miles from Michigan to Big Pink on Wednesday...which followed the 300 mile drive the afternoon before. Average speed of advance was 67.3 miles, by elapsed time, including the single fuel stop in Somerset, PA, and the bizarre traffic jam in the only service plaza on the highlands of the Keystone State.
The Great American Traveling Public: the two teenage kids in pajamas by the gas pumps, the immensely large people in their immensely large vehicles, trucker caps, denim and the whiff of fried fast food
The trip to the little Village by the Bay is a freaking killer, and may in fact kill me one of these days. I realize the curse of connectivity denied, and without broadband on the road, I was falling further and further behind, even as I flogged my physical body, three clicks of the blinker left and right, passing the timid on the turnpike.
I have to note, parenthetically, that there is little in life that beats flogging a big car at an average speed of 67.3 miles an hour across Rust Belt America in an afternoon and a day that ran into the dying of the winter daylight.
Across the bow of the Bluesmobile passed the sprawling Saginaw Steering Gear Plant in Michigan, the ruins of Detroit, the Lordstown Assembly Unit in Eastern Ohio, and what is left of Big Coal Pennsylvania, now morphing into something else.
Coal is back, by the way, since the Chinese want it in bulk. The billboards protest the Warmists, and insist that “clean coal” in the answer, not the problem. The employment ads broadcast on the low-power local channels want specialists who can fracture the seams of shale far below the rolling hills and extract gas.
There is something stirring out there in the slough of despair in the Rust Belt, and if it is good or bad I do not know. But for those who are unemployed in Penn’s Woods, it is a paycheck.
The combination of the Bluesmobile's V8 engine and 94-octane fuel makes for a blur of power and wonder, a kaleidoscope view of America as it is was and is.
Yesterday was supposed to be a billable day, and I need to husband vacation against the emerging crisis up in Michigan. I rose shaky and dizzy. Really dizzy, enough to stagger once on the way to the coffee pot in the kitchen.
I had to stop to take stock. Something wrong with the inner ear? Some strain of influenza? Damn, why do I feel so weak? I am almost convinced I am not invincible, but damn it. I had a list of things to accomplish once I was back at the computer, and that, plus the 120 notes in the queue, took the morning.
I checked some important stuff off the list. I had secured durable Power of Attorney over Mom's affairs in a lucid moment, a signal event that will permit a whole bunch of bad decisions without a court fight, but that is what had driven me to the edge of despair up there, and then beyond it.
The present day flew by. The new book was ready for pick up out in distant Chantilly, fresh from the printer. If I didn't get my box of the thin volumes immediately, my Mac might not be able to give the account of his now-distant war years to his family on the last/first holiday of the new year.
I ticked stuff off the list by the keyboard: a last lunch of the working year with an old shipmate; consultation with physicians, stock-brokers and nursing homes. The imperative of the dying year drove most of it, a trip to the bank and then the bottle and dinner with my younger son, who is treading new footsteps on the sands where I once walked.
I may catch up this weekend, and I may not. The light is coming on the last day, and when it dies tonight, that will be just about it for this decade.
Consequently, I was up way too early on the last day, trying to stow away all the memories from the little village by the Bay. The light is dying on some things even as it rises on others.
Standing where I do, I incline toward the sentiment of Mr. Thomas in his magnificent poem, and the beauty of Romina, captured by Mr. Boutiler-Brown. There are some things that in the dying of the light become only more precious.
I prefer to remember Raven, my father, like this:
Rage, rage, against the dying of the light.
Happy New Year!
Rant Copyright 2010 Vic Socotra
Poem copyright Dylan Thomas
Photos copyright Eric Boutilier-Brown and US Navy, respectively
Copyright 2010 Vic Socotra
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