In the beginning of “Remembrance of Things Past”, Proust writes about being in a borderland between sleep and wakefulness, “I had gone on thinking, while I was asleep, about what I had just been reading, but these thoughts had taken a rather peculiar turn”.

I often work on blog posts as I’m falling asleep and I have many dreamlike half written blog posts waiting in the wings. Today I have spent time with many of these blog posts as I sleep and fight some cold that is passing around our house.

The theme of remembrance has been kicking around in my head. My blog post about Bill Seeley and my reflections of childhood at his house brought a response:

“about preserving childhood and specifically preserving boy-hood, something my oldest son..managed to do with his best friend…It started at about age 7 while devouring the Redwall books by Brian Jacques. They spent a decade in the woods acting out chapters in the books - costumes, props, well developed story lines - decisions about high-tech vs. low tech games, capes were essential…[The parents] observed the lengths that the boys went to to keep their imaginative play secret (it was very uncool in an age of structured sports and competitive travel soccer for 3rd graders). I suspect the boyhood …[they] experienced is becoming entirely too rare.”

Another post I wrote back in July about Falcon Ridge noted Derek Aramburu’s rendition of John Prine's "Paradise" (Muhlenberg County). Derek wrote me a note about his new CD, “Where We Hide”. In his note, he highlights is cover of Leaving on a Jet Plane which he describes as “a very different type of arrangement”. It is very different from so many other covers I’ve heard, but I strongly encourage you to check it out. Also on this CD is “Home”, the other song that he played at Falcon Ridge.

In my post, Second Life Machinima, social change and other media links, Amy Jussel of Shaping Youth pointed out Librophiliac Love Letter: A Compendium of Beautiful Libraries

Everyone has some kind of place that makes them feel transported to a magical realm. For some people it's castles with their noble history and crumbling towers. For others it's abandoned factories, ivy choked, a sense of foreboding around every corner. For us here at Curious Expeditions, there has always been something about libraries. Row after row, shelf after shelf, there is nothing more magical than a beautiful old library.

The post continues on with a wonderful set of photographs of great libraries around the world. This too ties back to remembrances. For me, I worked in my high school library. My “special cup” is still a brown hand crafted ceramic coffee mug that I was given one summer that I worked at the library during inventory. The mug is over thirty years old. It has one chip taken out of it, but I still use it regularly.

As I spend time exploring other blogs, I stumbled across The Hamster Wheel, Eccentricities of a Surgical Resident. He has been putting up a series of posts remembering his experiences in New Orleans after Katrina hit. This blog is a must read. He talks about what it was like at the hospital when things we have taken for granted stop working and life is like it was in those days years ago before pagers.

Then, today, I received an email from Liz Dupont-Diehl. Liz and I worked together during the Lamont campaign, and she has started her blog, Parents on the Path. In her first post, she talks about the difficulty in finding time to meditate as a parent in this crazy world. It is all part of the same problem going back to the comment about preserving childhood.

As I read it, I thought of an old story from Zen Flesh, Zen Bones. I can’t remember the details, nor can I find the story online. My copy of Zen Flesh, Zen Bones is still in an unpacked box somewhere, yet the thing that jumped out at me was the line about the monk attaining enlightenment when he had washed his dish. Perhaps that is where enlightenment occurs, in washing the dishes, getting the kids off to school, stopping at the library, working at the hospital during a crisis, or simply holding your daughter on your lap the day before she turns seven.

One of the other songs on Derek’s new CD, “You are in my heart” captures this very well. It is a love song to his daughter, the day before her seventh birthday, “and the world turns way to fast…you are in my heart and there you’ll forever stay… I’m holding on to six years young for just another day.”