I just saddled Old Paint and rode out of Facebook. I’d hung around that place for nearly five years and liked it well enough, made some good friends there, told my share of tall tales in the Silver Status Saloon — made a fool of myself there, too, from time to time but no one seemed to care too much.
Can’t say why I took a notion to ride off from the place — just an idea, I guess, that there might be better country further west, and that I might profit from some time on the move with less company around me. I felt good seeing the trail up ahead wind off into the distance, like a weight had been lifted off me, and bad thinking of sleeping out in the rain under a slicker on stormy nights, with none of the old crowd at the Silver Status around to stand me a glass.
If anybody asks about me back in town, someone is sure to say, “Oh, he was last seen heading off in the general direction of Montana.” I might go there, or I might go somewhere else.
I was really glad to read the news the other day that you were signing off Facebook. Thought that was a pretty sensible thing to do, if you need some time to yourself, just you and the weather and the landscape and a horse.
I hope you saw the picture of me without the facial appliance. I’ve gained some weight since the shoulder surgery, which shows in the face, and I took the picture from a low angle, which was foolish. But I too feel a weight has been lifted, in this case from my lip, and it’s a relief.
Same issue, though. A long long trail a-winding to the land of my dreams.
I’m somewhat hampered by the prohibition, still in effect almost eight weeks after the surgery, that I’m not to lift anything heavier than a coffee cup with my right arm, but it turns out the cup could be a glass and the contents don’t have to be coffee.
By the way the Egglestons published a half-way decent version of Wedgwood Blue, using the Yeats poem you suggested and Katy Homans’s design (which they credited to her but probably didn’t pay her for) and most of the same pictures with some extras, but they called it “At Zenith” (which seems a little pretentious) and forgot to mention that there had been a publisher of the precedent volume. Nice!
Cheers,
Cotty
Facebook was useful to me — I could jump onto it in the midst of a writing session and amuse myself without leaving the computer, because once the computer is left it’s so hard to come back to it. Will just have to work on my discipline.
That sucks about “Wedgwood Blue”, but I myself care less and less about credit for anything. I do my work, and God knows who deserves the credit for it, even if nobody else does. That’s good enough for me.
I was more remarking on their manners.
Indeed, good manners would have dictated credit where credit is due. But, as Boris Lermontov said in “The Red Shoes”, it is better to be stolen from than to have to steal. The Egglestons have their reward — a little pile of dust in a safe deposit box. And they alone hold the key!
I’m shocked, shocked I say. I’m bereft! I might have to leave FB myself! And start pestering you on the walls of your blog, for starters…
Delighted to see you here, Maya — pester away!