Category: Melancholy Thoughts
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Elegy From The North Country
The Curfew tolls the knell of parting day; The lowing herd wind slowly o’er the lea; The ploughman homeward plods his weary way, And leaves the world to darkness and to me. -Thomas Gray Well, if you’re…
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When A Leaf Dances A Snowflake Will Soon Fall
I’m sitting on the front deck of our house which sits on a small rise above Rainbow Lake. It’s late September in the North Country of New York State. The trees are oddly out-of-tune with the season. Some are brown, dead and waiting to drop to the ground. Some are just hinting at the blast…
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Trying To Stay Forever Young
I’m sitting on the deck of our home at Rainbow Lake. A lone chickadee hops from branch to branch and then vanishes into the thicket of trees. I can see the shimmer of the setting sun reflecting from the water below us. Only patches of the lake can be seen, we need to trim a…
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56 Years Along The Blue Trail: Then And Now
Like brave mountaineers, we weren’t bothered much by time. –Gordon Lightfoot It’s late August in the North Country. The green of the leaves and shrubs are looking tired. Some hints of the colors of autumn are emerging from the maples and oaks. Late summer flowers like Black-Eyed Susans and Ragweed are everywhere. The quarter moon…
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Kodak Moment
My son, Brian, just turned 28 on July 14. He is a part of the last generation of people (in America, I suspect) who had their childhood photos of them taken with film. I have boxes stacked in my closet of envelopes containing hundreds if not thousands of pictures of him, my daughter, my family,…
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After The Party
I wasn’t that hungry to begin with. Blame it on the oppressive heat and humidity in the city that evening. Blame it on the seven block walk to our favorite Ramen place on 28th Street. Or, best of all, blame it on the viral bronchial whatever I pick up in late June. I just didn’t…
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My Dreams Are Made Of Iron And Steel
I don’t dream the way I did in past years. I miss that because those nighttime adventures were something to behold. The visions of H. P. Lovecraft, Bram Stoker and Steven Spielberg were mere cartoons when compared to the places I would go in the hours beyond midnight…when REM sleep was most active. Very rarely…
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The Empty Bedroom
This was once my bedroom. There was a time when this room was packed full of the stuff of life… From a crib made in the mid-1940’s, I would look out at the flowered wallpaper. Maybe a mobile hung just out of my reach, and moved about when a breeze caught it from a partly…
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Unexpected Memories
Seventeen years ago today, my older brother Denny, passed away. It was not a sudden unexpected death but a slow decline with cancer. His family misses him terribly. My brother, Dan and I miss him. I think about him a great deal. We were a family of four boys. Denny was the second oldest, born…
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Crossing The Liffey: Our First And Last Full Day In Dublin’s Fair City
I was sitting opposite my wife in the restaurant of the Arlington Hotel where we are staying. It’s just steps away from the O’Connell Street Bridge. I was making strange, odd and contorted…some would say ugly faces in her direction. She simply stared back at me. My eyes watered and I continued to wiggle my…
patrickjegan 