gloom

Peter worked a double today. He left the house while I was still groggy at seven am, and I'm not expecting him home until after midnight. He'll be gone again (if he can drag himself out of bed) at seven, never mind the time change. I've been hovering in a dark mood, and wading through the packed last two weeks of Drexel's graduate quarter has not helped in the least. This evening I went into town for a break from the stuffy silence of a long day alone in the cabin to shower and pick up a case of soymilk at the grocery store. (A special-order from January. Thanks for the fast service, Freddies.) On the way home, gloomy and shivering with frozen hair standing at odd angles to my face and Twiki's heater not really up to the job, I flipped on NPR. Although expecting my usual disappointment in the after-hours selection, I was desperate for something to fill the icy ride home.

In piped the grainy, warbling first line of Dylan's 115th Dream. It was perfect, a tiny miracle over the static, a stumble into music that slid seamlessly alongside a perilous state of mind and lifted it ever so slightly, without a hint of saccharine to mar the gentle nudge away from danger.