On Saturday, we teamed up with friends and drove out to the local Scottish Festival / Highland Games, which were held in a local park. Our discussions on the way home took an interesting turn.

Do we, as a society, find our current lives so drab and boring that we find a need in ourselves to dress up and play make-believe with the past? Have our modern conveniences cheapened and sanitized our lives to the point that we have to turn to the simplicity and rusticity of the past to find meaning and enjoyment?I walked around the Scottish Festival and felt myself somehow out of place in my t-shirt, worn sneakers, and denim shorts. Around me were people decked out in clothing that we now perceive as regalia: kilts, swords, hip purses (for men as well as women), knee-length stockings, highly polished shoes.

When in doubt, take the jeep.

I've been going on a sonic binge of David Gray lately. I'm finding that the more I listen to his album White Ladder, the more I'm impressed with what I'm hearing. What I'm hearing—how to describe? It's rare to encounter an album that that wears its soul as a badge. All albums, novels, songs, and poetry are about creativity and expression, but it is much rarer to come across a piece of work that proclaims, as deeply and as intrinsically as warp and weft, that this particular creation is the result of an artist putting the totality of their creativity into a piece of work.

It's a particular sound and smell, that totality, that is a hair's-breadth away from desperation. It's a completeness, a frustration, a lack of holding back, which shows in everything from words to instrumentation.

Sorry about vanishing abruptly on everyone. Our cable line (including our cable TV and cable modem) line was cut without our permission, thus leaving us out of the loop for about a day or two.

Other news: today marks a year of domesticat. Who knows, maybe I've learned something. Now I just have to figure out what that something is. Cheers!

It was the cherry-time of the summer season,
and you were gone—and back—in the breath of a year.
The posters on the walls warned of spies, and treason,
and the sins of idleness. You spoke not of fear,

of loss, but instead: dancing, drinks, shore leave -
of when we could be like other couples again,
sedately married, with no need for Navy reprieve.
I bobbed my hair in eager anticipation

of reunion, and opened your letters with knives
kept sharp to protect the flimsy paper inside.
In May, the letters stopped coming. Were you alive

Sushi leads to somnambulatory domesticats.

A day of chores and errands shifted course at four p.m., when the phone rang. "We are craving sushi. You should come with us." I hung up, made quick arrangements, and met up with the crew for a 5:30 dinner date.

I only know of two places in Huntsville that serve decent seafood. Both are, in essence, equal quality. However, in the past, Edo's has taken over 45 minutes to bring me a simple order of nigiri sushi. On the other hand, Miyako is less glacial and has dollar sushi nights on Mondays.

To Miyako we went, where I downed variously small and tasty tidbits of barely-deceased tuna, salmon, shrimp, and other fish I shan't name in the name of decency. Plus rice, and miso, and plenty of ice water.

My current writing output seems determined to increase, no matter what I think about the subject. Currently on tap: a short rhymed piece I've had in mind for some time, installment #3 of the 'scribbled travelogue' series, and a short story.Writing here, via keyboard, is a bit of a relief for my writing hand, which cramps after long sessions of scrawling. I had forgotten about this particular plague of my collegiate years, until I realized recently that my best writing was still best drafted with pen and paper before being transferred to digital form. Slower, more methodical, and a more precise finished product resulted.

Thus my big spiral notebook has been seeing a lot of eye-time lately.

The rhymed piece is more painful going than the prose; the effort to concatenate meaning and image into the smallest number of words—without losing meaning, intonation, or allusion—is time-consuming to say the least.