It is 7:13 AM on Saturday morning. I’m listening to Gordon Lightfoot sing the Canadian Railroad trilogy and I’ve just published my first Japanese language post in a while.
I love this song – my parents took trip to the Canadian Rockies and sent me some of the most spectacular pictures of nature that I’ve ever seen. That is something we’ll definitely have to do sometime in the future. While my Dad was on the trip he sent me this song and as many of Gordon’s songs it really moved me. I especially like the beginning:
There was a time in this fair land when the railroad did not run
When the wild majestic mountains stood alone against the sun
Long before the white man and long before the wheel
When the green dark forest was too silent to be real
The imagery here is so vivid I an almost place myself in those dark green silent forests. I wrote a post about the Varied Thrush visiting my backyard and how I’d love to visit his home up at the start of the Taiga forest. These lyrics bring back that same feeling of when I wrote that post.
As for Japanese, I’m continuing with the theme of 2016 which is to shed the unnecessary time wasting things and consolidate to those activities which enhance my life. It is time I actually started practicing Japanese, Spanish and French again. The thing is I really don’t like to open up a language book and study but I do like to blog! So, I thought the best way to improve would be to write blog posts in the various languages. The reason I was hesitant to do so before is that I know I’m making mistakes and am not very good writing in Japanese, Spanish and French. I see the mistakes glaring back at me but am not exactly sure how to fix them. But no matter, the desire to improve these languages has outweighed any embarrassment I might feel when writing.
Today, my son has karate and then a birthday party to go to so for the first time in a long time I’ve got an entire day to myself! I’m not exactly sure what I’m going to do yet. The thought to head over to the Russian banya Archimedes entered my mind but so did biking to the top of the mountain. And while I’m thinking of mountains why don’t I do something completely different like go hiking where I’ve never been before? These free days come so rarely that I must take advantage of it but I haven’t planned and am too indecisive right now. I’m like a child, overwhelmed by a toy store that they remain frozen for a moment while inspecting the scene. What am I going to do today?? – I don’t know and it is already 7:30 AM. What I’m not going to do is go to the gym since I can do that on any given weekday.
