rejectomorph | Reset Forty-Nine, Day Two Hundred Nineteen

Is it really the last day of 2023? It's a last day I never expected to see, but I should be used to having my expectations unfulfilled. Sometimes that's a good thing. I never expected to see the penultimate day of 2023 either, but it was Saturday and I made a pretty good large dinner, and then went back to bed and slept most of the time from around eight o'clock in the evening until half past two this morning. I wanted to go back to sleep almost immediately, but I want to do it even more now. No more rain is scheduled here until Wednesday, but today is supposed to be mostly cloudy. That will be nice for sleeping. And Monday there will be video of the parade to watch. Flower-bedecked nostalgia. If I remember, I'll watch it. Right now I'm just going to try to indulge that urge to sleep.

Sunday Verse

The Fairy Reel

by Neil Gaiman

If I were young as once I was, and dreams
   and death more distant then,
I wouldn't split my soul in two,a nd keep 
   half in the world of men,
So half of me would stay at home, and
   strive for Faerie in vain,
While all the while my soul would stroll up
   narrow path, down crooked lane,
And there would meet a fairy lass and
   smile and bow with kisses three,
She'd pluck wild eagles from the air and
   nail me to a lightning tree
And if my heart would run from her or 
   flee from her, be gone from her,
She'd wrap it in a nest of stars and then
   she'd take it on with her
Until one day she'd tire of it, all bored
   with it and done with it
She'd leave it by a burning brook, and off
   brown boys would run with it. 
They'd take it and have fun with it and
   stretch it long and cruel and thin,
They'd slice it into four and then they'd
   string with it a violin.
And every day and every night they'd
   play upon my heart a song
So plaintive and wild and strange that
   all who heard it danced along
And sang and whirled and sank and trod and
   skipped and slipped and reeled and rolled
Until, with eyes as bright as coals, they'd
   crumble into wheels of gold...

But I am young no longer now; for sixty 
   years my heart's been gone
To play its dreadful music there, beyond
   the valley of the sun.
I watch with envious eyes and mind, the
   single-souled, who dare not feel
The wind that blows beyond the moon,
   who do not hear the Fairy Reel.
If you don't hear the Fairy Reel, they will
   not pause to steal your breath.
When I was young I was a fool. So wrap
   me up in dreams and death.