Man, I've had a swell close of the night, and now it's time to go to bed. I started reading Eugene D. Genovese's 1994 book The Southern Tradition, which has made me anxious to unpack (I can wait for a while, though) my unread copy of Poetry Reviews of Allen Tate, Allen Tate being a Southern Agrarian type. Reading books that make me want to put them down so I can go look other things up is satisfying. Genovese made me feel I had to reread T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land. The end of "The Fire Sermon" section sent my scurrying/googling to look up this passage from Augustine's Confessions, Book Ten.
That's good stuff. I feel sated. And I had a hearty chicken noodle soup for dinner. So now I bid you good night, and peace.What innumerable toys, made by divers arts and manufactures, in our apparel, shoes, utensils and all sorts of works, in pictures also and divers images, and these far exceeding all necessary and moderate use and all pious meaning, have men added to tempt their own eyes withal; outwardly following what themselves make, inwardly forsaking Him by whom themselves were made, and destroying that which themselves have been made! But I, my God and my Glory, do hence also sing a hymn to Thee, and do consecrate praise to Him who consecrateth me, because those beautiful patterns which through men's souls are conveyed into their cunning hands, come from that Beauty, which is above our souls, which my soul day and night sigheth after. But the framers and followers of the outward beauties derive thence the rule of judging of them, but not of using them. And He is there, though they perceive Him not, that so they might not wander, but keep their strength for Thee, and not scatter it abroad upon pleasurable weariness. And I, though I speak and see this, entangle my steps with these outward beauties; but Thou pluckest me out, O Lord, Thou pluckest me out; because Thy loving-kindness is before my eyes. For I am taken miserably, and Thou pluckest me out mercifully; sometimes not perceiving it, when I had but lightly lighted upon them; otherwhiles with pain, because I had stuck fast in them.
P.S. I used to sleep on the top bunk, and sometimes my brother would sneak up and I'd let him stay. One of the cool things about the top bunk was the ladder. You had to climb up the bed to sleep, and that's part of what made the bed so safe.
I also dreamt, nearly every night for many months, that I fell off a catwalk near the top of the multi-story lobby of a luxury hotel, and fell and fell and fell toward a water fountain at the bottom, but I never hit. I began to look forward to night so that I could freefall in my sleep.
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