The Month of January

This is the month of my birthday, and as I rapidly approach my sexagenarian years I am pleased and happy to be where I find myself, health- and happiness-wise. I feel Blessed to be on hand to help my octogenarian parents, a promise made decades ago, and be working in the field of my training. So, I am in a good headspace.

For the most part.

There have been personal losses associated with this month, and it has become a month of emotions, a month where crying is as like as not to happen for the most mundane reasons. First, the 12th of this month was the day I lost the first great love of my life, Nina. She was a tragic woman and could not steer herself out of the destructive path she was on, eventually contracting AIDS, a death sentence as she already had a weak immune system, but it was finally a brain tumor that took her, putting her in a coma for the last months of her life. She was nothing if not stubborn, but it was one of the many reasons I love her.

This is a song she said was as if I was speaking to her, before she was gone.

The 31st of this month is my brother Doug’s birthday and he is the one who passed from cancer 5 years ago. In his memory I keep my Christmas decorations up through January. I last saw him while he was still hearty the September before he passed as I was driving through Idaho on my way from Alaska to North Carolina. He was acting in a company and the present play he was in was a Sherlock Holmes comedy, Sherlock Holmes being my favorite literary character. I shared this song with people he cared for as a sort of tribute to him, as it struck me as very Sherlockian (the Old Boy played the violin) and melancholy:

He passed away last year and in May, but he also came to love Christmas through me and others who loved him, so my best friend Randy who I have mentioned before has been on my mind. As a matter of fact, the genesis for linking a song for each of the people I am remembering was ‘his idea’, as the video I will play for him popped up in my YouTube feed yesterday! The reason for this song is because I had an exercise for everyone in my RenFaire group wherein they needed to pick a piece of music that spoke to them about their character, something that could hopefully allow us all to see what they saw (or heard) in their character. Randy chose the original version of this song, but as this is the one I heard yesterday, I present it here:

I have written before that music has always been a big part of my life and I have been collecting tunes for as long as I can remember. These tunes above not only remind me of those people but also help me to cope with their losses. Music sometimes defines my day and almost always helps my writing mood, can I but find the right piece.

Whatcha Writin’?

At this point in time, nothing is being strictly written other than notes. I have begin extremely preliminary research on the next few books, however, getting in line books on Venice, the Medici and Borgias. Revisions to the first draft of my finished book will begin in February.

In the meantime I have been reading those Sherlock Holmes pastiches I have mentioned in previous blogs, been catching up watching Reacher, The House of the Dragon, Star Trek Prodigy to name a few. Gotta fit Westworld in there sometime…

Final Words/Thoughts

The ‘mood’ song at the beginning has some deeply felt words referring to those losses in the first part; each of them have had a lasting effect on me and will for the rest of my own existence. In each of those losses, there were things i learned or lived through only them. Here are those lyrics: