Here, at the dark end of the year, the corner is turned. The solstice is passed and, imperceptibly, hours of daylight begin to extend. Snow has come and gone, the wind has blown hard, and it feels like I've experienced a good dose of winter. Not just physically, but emotionally too.
The time to explore will come. I'm looking forward to taking Brena away on some trips as soon as the climate is more accommodating. There are plenty of trails to check out around her new home. That's the easy bit. There are maps, Brena knows what to do, and so do I.
Harder will be exploring the terrain of a world where my thought processes fall apart from the neurotypical norm. It's not as if I haven't been there before. However I'm returning differently clad, a diverse person rather than a 'difficult' one. As an individual now permitted to make a few rules to modify my environment, no longer a round peg to be forced into a square hole. I'll be remaking myself, and modifying the local terrain.
Actually it will be exciting, indeed liberating, to be able to use my visually-focused mind to solve problems. There are plenty of interesting questions within my profession. (At this point I sense deja vu. I've written much the same thing somewhere else, and I cannot quite place the event.) That's the thing, I am hungering to be freed to use my talents to best effect.
And, to some extent, I have.
Not that music is a particular talent of mine, however I have been doing a bit of song writing. Over the past few weeks I've recorded a CD with a mix of my songs and covers, some accompanied by guitar, a few with more instruments including piano, banjo and twelve-string guitar.
I've had a lot of fun, and some catharsis, writing five of the ten songs. They cover a mix of themes. All on a summer's day is about two lovers riding out to a romantic cottage in the hills, and was written with someone in mind. Now to try and make reality match! Broken Road is about travelling to meet a lady who turns out to be unavailable, and there might just be a strand of autobiography. It's a poignant song to perform. The darkest, Long service award, concerns an office worker pushed by abuse to buy a gun and shoot his boss. Freud would have something to say about that! A boy dreams about a fantasy world where all is well and happy in The land beyond the wood. Don't most of us imagine such a haven? Finally, and my favourite, Out along the Rio Grande Western is the tale of a mail order bride travelling the narrow gauge rails across Colorado to meet a man she knows only from his letters. It was requested by a good friend with a lively imagination, and ends hopefully as we wish all such journeys would.
Here's a list of what I recorded:
- Jack-knife (Jon Byrd, though I first heard Wild Ponies play it.)
- All on a summer’s day
- Broken road
- Long service award
- Is my team ploughing? (My setting of an A E Houseman poem from A Shropshire Lad.)
- Sophia (The Lonely Heartstrings.)
- Highway patrolman (Bruce Springsteen.)
- Midnight on Raton (Eliza Gilkyson.)
- The land beyond the wood
- Out along the Rio Grande Western
I took the photo printed on the CD in Colorado's San Luis valley, looking east to the range of fourteen thousand-foot peaks. It was a hot, still day. The fence I leant over was made from narrow gauge ties presumably left over from dismantling the nearby D&RGW "valley line" closed almost seventy years previously.
As an aside, Brena will need a good clean when spring comes. The winter pasture is rather muddy in places. Of course the horses will roll in the muddiest. here she is, dozing after a ride (hence bridle removed). With a thick winter coat, she is staying warm, and clearly isn't getting thin.
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