Anyway. It's hot again, and even though it's not as hot as the last few days it's still enough to make me stupid, my intelligence being inversely proportional to the temperature. But the stupid has not prevented me from remembering that this is a very special day: My 14th Journalversary. I just looked back at my first entry and it is private, which I don't remember it being, and it is also just a couple of dead links to a web site that no longer exists, so I guess June 29th should count as my public Journalversary. Still, I don't think I hit my stride until July 1, when I wrote three brief entries, among which are references to both weather and nostalgia, plus an Internets-related complaint. All my most persistent themes in one day! Ah, how soon I grew up! And how pointless it was!
Reading further on in 2001, I find that a tremendous amount of linkrot plagues my entries— it's the Internet's digital leprosy, I guess. It's probably a good thing I didn't get too linky in those days, or all my old entires would be missing their points. As it is, most of my entries had no point to begin with, so no big loss. I tried finding my first Sunday Verse, but I think it was a couple of years in that I started doing that and I haven't time to read that far tonight. But I did find the first poem I ever posted on a Sunday, though I didn't call it Sunday Verse. It was on September 2, 2001. I'll repost it and call it Sunday Verse today. It is one with a mood that that is highly suitable for the weather.
Speaking of weather, this not-so-terribly-hot day is giving way to a fairly cool evening. I didn't have to have the air conditioner on today, and I can probably open the windows and turn on the fan right now. I'm hoping for a night so cool that I'll be able to sleep under a blanket, which I haven't done for a couple of weeks now. I miss having my binky!
Sunday Verse
The Empty Hills
by Yvor Winters
Flintridge, Pasadena
The grandeur of deep afternoons,
The pomp of haze on marble hills,
Where every white-walled villa swoons
Through violence that heat fulfills,
Pass tirelessly and more alone
Than kings that time has laid aside.
Safe on their massive sea of stone
The empty tufted gardens ride.
Here is no music, where the air
Drives slowly through the airy leaves.
Meaning is aimless motion where
The sinking hummingbird conceives.
No book nor picture has inlaid
This life with darkened gold, but here
Men passionless and dumb invade
A quiet that entrances fear.