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having neither purple nor rain
Sunday, March 22 2026
While drinking coffee and playing Spelling Bee in front of the woodstove this morning, I noticed that my heart palpitations were back. And they stuck with me most of the day, only disappearing when I was physically active, consuming alcohol, or otherwise sedated.
After Gretchen and Charlotte got back from their morning walk, all of us (Charlotte, Neville, Gretchen, and I) drove down to Little Loaf in New Paltz, mostly because we hadn't been there in awhile. It was a busy Sunday morning, and we both ordered hot drinks and the kinds of food we like (a cæsar salad and french toast for Gretchen, and, for me a vegan BLAT — the A standing for avocado). [REDACTED] The BLAT and my cappuccino were good, and even enjoyed picking some at Gretchen's salad, which had some interesting savory note I couldn't quite place.
Before driving back to home, we crossed a small brook in the back onto the field of New Paltz Middle School. There was a baseball diamond there featuring prominent deer tracks in its exposed dirt. On encountering the first base plate, Neville decided it was a good place to piss. Meanwhile Gretchen and I were running around encouraging Charlotte to run quickly between us, which she was mostly game to do. She also retrieved a hurled stick several times, causing Gretchen to exclaim that she's never had a dog who would do that before. (That isn't strictly true; Sally would grab a stick and run away with it and Ramona would retrieve it after maybe one or two tosses at most.)
Back home in Hurley, I went to do some more work on the Chamomile Wall despite occasional rain. At o ne point I was gathering rocks at the bottom of the steep escarpment to its southwest when I happened to see a large brown form out of the corner of my eye. I was momentarily terrified, thinking a bear had snuck up on me. But no, it was Brigitte the Dog, one of the three belonging to Crazy Dave. Normally she would've barked at me, but not this time. I tapped her on the head as a friendly gesture, which she didn't much appreciate and she immediately ran away. Then I saw Crazy Dave himself coming north on the Stick Trail carrying an umbrella. I chose to retreat up the Chamomile Gorge instead of causing him and me any discomfort of having to interact.
My heart palpitations continued after I returned home, so I decided to I ended up taking a nap on the laboratory beanbag. This seemed to make them dissipate, though about 20 minutes after I woke up and started doing things, they returned.
This evening, Gretchen convinced me to see a movie at a new Upstate Films venue on Broadway in Kingston. It was Rain the Color of Blue with a Little Red in It, a re-imagination of Prince's Purple Rain, but set in Niger and featuring the real-life Nigerien Turareg musician Mdou Moctar. The name of the movie comes from the fact that the Tuareg do not have a word for "purple." (Amusingly, it occurred to me, they have neither purple nor rain.) I hadn't seen Prince's original, so it was helpful that Gretchen sketched out its basic plot: Prince's father is an asshole, and Prince himself is an asshole to his romantic interest. Then, after much riding of a purple motorcycle, there is a musical showdown. And that was largely the story arc of Rain the Color of Blue with a Little Red in It. But it was also a fascinating dive into dusty north-Nigerien culture, with is flat masonry residential compounds, herds of goats, and constant drinking of tea. As for the music, it was mostly played on familiar instruments (guitars, bass, and drum) but sounded suprisingly alien. The musicians there don't really play chords but instead play quick licks and riffs in unfamiliar musical scales that occasionally sound blues-adjacent. I enjoyed it much more than I thought I would, despite ongoing issues with heart palpitations. (It helped that I had bought a can of red wine.)
It bears mentioning here that Gretchen spent some time in Niger when she was in her early 20s while her father was head of Peace Corps medicine for all of West Africa. So she has a deep association with the desolate look of the place. It's not pretty, but it speaks to her on a basic level, much like how sprawling subdivisions of small ranch houses on rolling terrain speak to me, since that was how the world looked when I was a little boy living in suburban Maryland northeast of Washington, DC.
On the way home, we stopped at the Ghettoford Hannaford mostly for bananas and vegan milks, but also ended up buying cereal, bagels, avocados, tomato paste, and a good number of impulse purchases such as interesting Indian curry pastes. It was a little after 9:00pm and there were only a couple other shoppers there in addition to us.
After I started drinking booze tonight, my heart palpitations disappeared entirely, which supports the theory that they are caused by lingering stimulants in my system, probably that pseudoephedrine I'd taken yesterday.
The west end of the Chamomile Wall as it looked today, looking east. Click to enlarge.
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