My babies were awake late last night and Rachel was on call at the hospital. Bedtime was delayed by more than one factor, including potty-training incidents and emergency bathtimes. By the time I was able to call my time my own it was late and I was in no mental condition to do serious work, so I spent the last hour or so before going to sleep myself consulting my own pleasure. This involved: One large pot of black tea. Finishing Patrick O'Brian's The Yellow Admiral for the second time. Reading the first chapter or section of the wonderful Middle English poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in the "regularized" edition of R.T. Jones, idiosyncratically titled Sir Gawain and the Grene Gome. And listening to Bryn Terfel sing the cycle Songs of Travel, with words by Robert Louis Stevenson and music by Ralph Vaughn Williams.

I've loved these songs for many, many years. In high school, when I was studying voice, I performed several of them in recitals, and they were among my favorite pieces to learn and sing to myself. Good, vigorous, manly songs perfect for a powerful baritone, full of melancholy and beauty, the smell of Autumn, stars in a cold sky, wanderlust and longing. Hearing them is like tasting the little madeleine: even a few notes are sufficient to call up a whole complex, vague but simultaneously precise, delicately balanced structure of memory, imagination, and emotion. It's a dangerous, heartbreaking, but highly valued experience--not to be indulged in too often.