In Which Reggae May Be Found.

I finally finished Blue Highways. I have to quit reading big books at the beginning of the year, because I bog down easily in the winter months. Last year I started Dorothy Dunnett's Game of Kings early on, and I ended up reading it twice in a row because there was so much I didn't understand the first time through, and that took ages. I keep a yearly list of all the books I've read, and so far 2006's list is embarrassingly short. Meanwhile, I noted with some chagrin that pagefever had read 18 books by the end of January. She must take public transportation, I reassured myself, and then, less charitably, Maybe they were really short books!

But back to Blue Highways. The author, William Least Heat Moon (no relation), went on a road trip in the early '80s that roughly followed the perimeter of the continental U.S. He took notes and photos, and thought about everything a lot, and then went home and kneaded it all into a book. It's a nice snapshot of America, focusing on small towns, backroads, and people who've lived long enough to have more than a few stories to tell. Heat Moon is an insightful narrator, but I inevitably found my attention wandering after a chapter or two (and the chapters were generally 1-6 pages). I think this may have been because, when I am in the passenger's seat of a car, even when I resolve to pay attention to where we're going, my mind inevitably wanders and I stop seeing what's rolling past the window. You definitely get that feeling from this book, that you are sitting in the passenger's seat of Heat Moon's van (which he named Ghost Dancing), seeing America with him.

I told Truck this, last night, and he wholeheartedly agreed with that last comment. Truck is the fellow who loaned me the book. He is a connoisseur of the American Road Trip narrative, and this one is his favorite. I think his first book published will also be a Road Trip story. I think it will be a good one. I'll let you know when he does a reading at Powell's. Truck and I went to see a documentary (you knew there would be D's in here somewhere, didn't you?) called The Real Dirt on Farmer John. I really enjoyed it. I wanted less biography and more about the organic farm, but still: it was a worthwhile and entertaining film.

I haven't done an awful lot of D things this week. I haven't done an awful lot of anything this week, to be honest. I did get the roof patched, and I did do my taxes, in the hope of acquiring funding for more comprehensive repairs. On Monday I had dinner with Aaron, who has been my friend since before I knew that "friend" meant something other than "giant stuffed camel." (No, Aaron doesn't get an alias; he has an eponymous domain.) We reminisced about 1980, when St. Helens blew and we played "Jaws" with an end table standing in for the shark and a bunk bed for the boat. He was on his way to Mississippi, and after some months there, will be heading to Afghanistan for a year. I am happy to say that he fully intends to blog this Excellent Adventure.

So today I'm trying to fit in a few last-minute D activities. I went to the Daily Grind and bought some dates and dried figs, and to Movie Madness, where I rented Dear Frankie. And later in the evening, I will dust off my cardboard harp and play some songs in the key of D dorian.

This song is not in the key of D dorian:
Desmond Dekker - Israelites