Horizons; a catch-up post

Late afternoon light over Little Traverse Bay from Room 256 of Northern Michigan Hospital 

in Petoskey. The bay waters meet the cloudy sky at a well-defined horizon. 

I was here to begin a multitude of tests of all my systems for a pain in my chest and delighted to have been put in a room with a view, after hanging out all day on a gurney in the frost-bitten underground emergency room. This was the first night I was in, and I didn't forget to take pictures, but I did completely forget about this blog. Never came into my mind that I know how to post from my phone; being hospitalized I had no other responsibilities. Distractions! I drifted off to sleep on the narrow bed with its scratchy sheets and inadequate pillows, The irritating beep-beep-beep of the nurse summons chime sang me to sleep. A young fellow woke me in the middle of the night to take my blood. I think they choose the most sensible nice persons to do things like this, because you really cannot get mad at them, they say such gentle, apologetic things!

S and I are in a Joan Didion period, since he listened to The White Album on Audible recently, inspiring me to get some of her older things on Kindle. These essays hold up quite well for current reading. This is only partly, I think, because I lived through the Sixties myself. Her observations are consistently interesting, her judgements usually sound and her prose is just so fine! I saved this little piece for myself the day before I went to the hospital. I am sharing it here; it relates to photography as well as to art. I forgot to save the exact source and can tell you only now that Joan Didion wrote this.

She was talking about moving to New York. Think about this. Do you agree??

The other thing I missed was horizons. I missed that on the West Coast, too, if we weren’t living at the beach, but I noticed at some point that practically every painting or lithograph I bought had a horizon in it. Because it’s very soothing.

Joan Didion