1. After a day off on Thursday, I was was up walking this morning around six o'clock and enjoyed being in deep shade and cool air as I went up to the high school and back home via Jacobs Gulch Road. My hope at this point is to walk at least a mile on my walking days and my Fitbit told me at the end of the day that I walked just over a mile and half today. I'm happy with that.
2. Have I written about why I try to avoid being in places where people smoke cigarettes? And why it is that I wear a mask if I go to a casino with smoking areas?
The concern is that if a smoker happens to be carrying something contagious, exhaling cigarette smoke broadcasts the contagion out widely.
This afternoon, Ed called me and wondered if I'd like to go up to the Lounge with him for a beer.
(For me, "for a beer" means drinking a non-alcoholic one so as not to compromise my anti-rejection medications.)
I did and I had a great time yakkin' with Ed, Cas, Fitz, and Brett F.
I was a little bit anxious because about four or five people were smoking, but I decided to take my chances, hoping none of them were sick -- or, if they were, that I have enough horsepower in my immune system to fight it off.
I hope I'll be all right physically, because it was uplifting for my spirits to be with the guys I yakked with today and to be back in the Lounge again.
3. So far, Lonesome Dove features one black character/cowboy. His name is Deets.
I loved a passage featuring Deets that I read today. He and another character/cowboy, Dish, are guarding a pen full of horses. It's an all night job. After a while, Dish leaves his post, leaves Deets, having grown so restless with sexual desire that he has to go to the Dry Bean, the local saloon, hoping to satisfy himself with his favorite prostitute, Lorena. How that works out is another story altogether.
So Deets is alone with the horses.
And the moon.
As Deets admires the moon, Larry McMurtry gives us a listen to Deets' inner voice. We've learned earlier that Deets doesn't read or write, but in this passage of the novel, within himself, Deets expresses himself poetically and romantically as he muses upon his lifelong love of the moon, its mystical qualities, its eternal state of inconstancy and flux.
If we were, as we read this novel, to experience Deets only in terms of his external appearance and by the words he speaks out loud, we'd hardly know that his is the soul of a poet.
Along with being a superb story teller, it's this kind of deep and often surprising exploration of his characters that is helping me see what makes McMurtry such a highly respected novelist.
I didn't expect to be moved by a tiny part of this huge novel dealing with one cowboy's horniness and another cowboy's willingness to guard horses alone through the night under the light of the moon.
No comments:
Post a Comment