hello

A song comes to my head with the word with lower case head–hello. Initially I attribute it to David Bowie. But is it? I think it is. I think it is the one about Major Tom. No. It isn’t. Is it, how’s this for a musical oddity, in the same breath as David Bowie, Adele? But I don’t think so, either. I can hear her Hello, in my mind’s ear and it is more, while breathy, aloud, than the hello that sotto voce repeats itself in my head.

If someone can identify the song. Oh, maybe it’s the BeeGees.

This is the kind of morning I am sitting in today. It is a low light morning, fully cloud covered, yet every item I see, every dangling leaf, trampled shrinking snow pack, squabbling sparrow, scolding blue jay, grey birch catkin is in sharp detail. It is interesting, although the day is not bright, dim does not suffice as a descriptor for me, because dim explains unclear. It is clear, clarion clear, but not bright.

This is February. This short month is a day longer this year. Why the name Leap Year? So I looked it up. In 45 BC, Julius Caesar first accommodated the apparently already known fact that the earth revolved around the sun in 365 1/4 days. Well it was not 1/4 but .242, so less than a quarter, which is .25. He added a day every fourth year to his Julian calendar. But his calendar had issues and eventually lost about 10 days. Pope Gregory in 1582AD established the Gregorian calendar and the date February 29th, named the year with February 29th Leap Year, and somehow fixed the Julian calendar 10 day deficit; i.e., there are certain years that, while ending in an even number, do not divide by 400 and so there is no February 29th in those years. Blah blah blah. But why did he choose the name Leap Year???

I don’t know. Do you? Some things are so immediately clear. So many things are not.

Why is there such clarity of relief on a dank day? What has made the air so very see through?

By Pablo Neruda
Poetry
And it was at that age….poetry arrived
in search of me. I don’t know, I don’t know where
it came from, from winter or a river.
I don’t know how or when
no, they were not voices, they were not
words, not silence,
but from a street it called me,
from the branches of night,
abruptly from the others,
among raging fires
or returning alone,
there it was, without a face,
and it touched me.
I didn’t know what to say, my mouth
had no way
with names,
my eyes were blind
Something knocked me in my soul,
fever or forgotten wings,
and I made my own way,
deciphering
that fire,
and I wrote the fire, faint line,
faint, without substance, pure
nonsense,
pure wisdom
of someone who knows nothing;
and suddenly I saw
the heavens
unfastened
and open,
planets,
palpitating plantations,
and darkness perforated,
riddled
with arrows, fire, and flowers,
and overpowering night, the universe.

And I, tiny being,
drunk with the great starry
void,
likeness, image of
mystery,
felt myself a pure part
of the abyss.
I wheeled with the stars.
My heart broke loose with the wind.