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Two Dreamers

    Hey, everyone. It was a windy day yesterday, here on the mountain. The sky was blue and the temperature got up to about 60 degrees. I took a long walk in the woods. I think I heard that crazy mockingbird again. Maybe it's my imagination but I think this bird is trying to imitate the siren on an ambulance. He then changes over to a chicken clucking over it's eggs. I can't see the bird from the ground but I walk by it's nest when I go down the trail.
    This morning a whole lot of leaves are falling, which is a little sad. The hickories are about the last to turn. They are a nice yellow, despite the dry year, and in general seem to handle hard times a bit better than other trees in this area. It is my wish that I could be as resilient as these trees. Ever notice all the life lessons to be learned from nature?
    The other day I was thinking about the animals that hang around here. The squirrels think they own the place. I think I own it. I watched a bobcat laying at the edge of the woods one day and he acted like he thought that he owned it. The day the mountain lion came running up to my wife and I, it was quite obvious that he thought he owned not only this place, but anywhere he set his foot. Sometimes I think ego warps our perception of things.
    I'm thinking about going to see the movie about the guy who started Facebook. I understand that the movie did not get any collaboration from him and that he and his staff watched it together the other day. Wouldn't that be a hoot? You wake up one morning and someone you don't know has made a movie about your life. The price of fame, I suppose.
    Yesterday I was learning to play some songs on the keyboard by a super-talented songwriter named Carole King. She has some nuances to songwriting that are fairly distinctive as does a lot of people. Her songs or Paul McCartney's I can just about know its their song without looking at the name. Carole King wrote for a while before a friend talked her into singing the songs she wrote. If you are, perhaps, a younger person unfamiliar with her work, head over to I-Tunes and listen to a few. Hey, I played an old song by Bill Withers yesterday. Lean On Me is the title. It's a nice easy song to learn. I also like his song Ain't No Sunshine When She's Gone but I don't have the music for it.
    Music is funny. It is a language, of sorts. I don't know a single person who doesn't like it. Can you think of anything else that can make such a claim? A lot of times if I'm a little down, I can sit down at the keyboard and start playing a few tunes and it will cheer me up. Even if it's sad songs. There are songs I don't play when I'm alone, like Moon River. I find it melancholy, especially the part where he says "Two drifters, off to see the world". I change it to "Two dreamers off to see the world" and it makes me think of my wife and I many years ago, starting out in life with nothing but each other. How the decades have swept by! Most assuredly, we should be about living because life is a fleeting thing. I remember when a week felt like forever; until I got out of school or out of the military or a state that I was working in at the time.
    Sorry for the rambling, less than happy blog. I bid you a nice day from the author's green retreat. CE Wills

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