I just fell asleep on the sofa while idly browsing through a dry and uninspiring critical feminist re-reading of Robert Browning’s character, Pompilia. While napping, I had a dream about my uncle. He was looking at me and shaking his head, with his big, mischievous snaggle-toothed grin and holding out a large rum and coke to me. We were at the back of his old house in the Bahamas, looking out at the water, with the sun shining through the palms and the pool rippling, and he laughed at me and said, in his gruff commanding accent:
“What in the bloody hell are you doing? Sitting about, getting a lot of nothing done? You should be outside. Island living. Come on, finish up whatever that nonsense is, put on some shoes and come outside. You need to lose some weight, lovely young thing like yourself. Get a rum and coke, and either come help me mitre some cabinets, or take yourself to the beach for some fresh conch salad. Take your cousins, too, they’ve been glued to their bloody monitors all day. Go get some sun.”
Then I woke up, in my breezeless sunless condo, to a massive pile of books on changing legal statutes in the Victorian era. Sigh.
Island living. What a great idea. Now I really want to go to Nassau. Current weather conditions, mix of clouds and sun, twenty-seven degrees celcius. High near 80F. Winds WNW at 10 to 20 mph.
Instead, I’ve just mixed myself an R&C. That should help this essay move faster! Onward!
Reminds me of a Wordsworth poem that
Here it is again, for your edification and mine:
The Tables Turned
William Wordsworth
UP! up! my Friend, and quit your books;
Or surely you’ll grow double:
Up! up! my Friend, and clear your looks;
Why all this toil and trouble?
The sun, above the mountain’s head,
A freshening lustre mellow
Through all the long green fields has spread,
His first sweet evening yellow.
Books! ’tis a dull and endless strife:
Come, hear the woodland linnet,
How sweet his music! on my life,
There’s more of wisdom in it.
And hark! how blithe the throstle sings!
He, too, is no mean preacher:
Come forth into the light of things,
Let Nature be your teacher.
She has a world of ready wealth,
Our minds and hearts to bless—
Spontaneous wisdom breathed by health,
Truth breathed by cheerfulness.
One impulse from a vernal wood
May teach you more of man,
Of moral evil and of good,
Than all the sages can.
Sweet is the lore which Nature brings;
Our meddling intellect
Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things:—
We murder to dissect.
Enough of Science and of Art;
Close up those barren leaves;
Come forth, and bring with you a heart
That watches and receives.
Island living. What a great idea. Now I really want to go to Nassau. Current weather conditions, mix of clouds and sun, twenty-seven degrees celcius. High near 80F. Winds WNW at 10 to 20 mph.
Not to rub it in, but Nassau really is lovely right now. And I saw Caius and Cait twice in the last two weeks for lunch and Fort looking-at and flamingos-at-a-zoo/conservation centre admiring. It was fun!
“snaggle-toothed grin”?
“gruff” accent?
Which Uncle would this be?
Listen, in my dreams, sometimes things just ARE, without being an accurate representation of what they look like in reality.
Like once, I think I had a dream about you where you had Bo Derek cornrows and an overabundance of blue eyeshadow on, a la Liz Taylor in Cleopatra: not because I’ve ever seen you looking like that, but just because it suited the setting. Dreams are weird.
And actually, it has been a while since I’ve seen your Dad. Maybe by now his teeth are what could be called “snaggly”. Or his voice has gruffened. Who’s to say?