Sandman's Journal

Yesterday, my 75-yr-old neighbor, Emogene, stopped by to see how the place was coming along. She noticed that my mattress was in need of sheets. I had a pile of Nick's old ones I'd been planning to use, and so I hauled them out. They looked clean to me, but she insisted on taking them over to her house to wash. She returned a few hours later with clean, warm sheets, a pillow, and a bedspread she'd acquired from a Killdeer motel. I was still hungover, so, after she left, I took my first nap at Watership Down. And slept well.

Prepare yourselves for a litany of "firsts" during these next weeks. For instance, I brought my guitar over there, for the first time, during lunch break today. The first song I played in my new house was Dylan's "Paths of Victory":

"The gravel road is bumpy,
It's a hard old road to ride,
But there's a clearer road a-waitin'
With the cinders on the side. . . ."

. . . and then the chorus:

"Trails of trouble,
Roads of battles,
Paths of victory
We shall walk."

That was all I could remember, so I repeated those lyrics a few times, and then went back to work.