Sidetracked Charley

  After realizing how big a mess my house had fallen into I developed a schedule which totally deleted my days of in favor of furiously establishing order. Then I looked at Thicke dozing in the sun in the studio. He had the right idea. I am sure he was meditating. And given some of his poses obviously practicing cat yoga. I tossed my todo list away. Yesterday afternoon, after having to cut my shopping in Taos short due to power outage, I pulled out my copy of Last Second in Dallas,  on my reading list since Christmas, a paper book. And I settled into the other Santa Fe vintage chair and began reading. I even pulled over one of the chairs purchased to paint, put a pillow on the seat, and raised my feet. I spent three hours reading. Like really reading. Not speed reading which grad school trained me to do, but reading as in exploration of the subject and enjoyment of style and syntax.  When I would take a stretch break to get another cup of tea I would straighten something ...

The only reason I entered college was because I was suppose to. It is what my senior class did. Or at least my special class of the senior class: the college bound. I took the obligatory tests for college entry, received higher than adequate scores, even got a scholarship offer or two, but it was my mother who filled out my college application to the University of New Mexico, told me of my acceptance, and made sure I got up and out the door at the appropriate time to register. She did that, I now believe, because she knew how dangerously close I was to losing it. Losing me. Mother and I were not close. And maybe at that time when she pushed me out the door further apart than we had ever been. But she made the right decision for me. I had always been a bookworm, and college was full of books, and people who loved books, people who debated books and authors and meanings. And on November 22, 1963 I was going to the SUB, student union building, to meet some of those bookish friends...