An old and angry wind

Thursday-the-pretender, wet and windy.  A yowling storm brewed up last night/very early this morning, the remnants of which are still dogging the morning commute. Thursday isn't going to fool anyone while wrapped in this weather.  It only accentuates the fact that he isn't really the end of the week, he isn't that most-popular dude Friday, and we know it.  The wind slammed against the side of the house last night, recalling the wind in A. E. Houseman's A Shropshire Lad XXXI:

The gale, it plies the saplings double,

      And thick on Severn snow the leaves.

'Twould blow like this through holt and hanger

      When Uricon the city stood:

'Tis the old wind in the old anger,

      But then it threshed another wood.

Like that old wind from a Roman time freshly attacking the new woods of a later era, this was an experienced and angry wind that tantrumed in syncopated gusts, trying to confuse us with oddly timed bursts of breath, seeking to surprise and prise loose anything it could rip and tear.

There was nothing old or angry about this morning's music. On the cusp of lapping one full year of these (mostly) commute-playlist blog postings I still marvel at the way an iPod filled with 6000 or so tunes from a very wide variety of genres can randomly shuffle up a short playlist that is both interesting and yet well integrated.  Starting with The Beatles' We Can Work It Out (ultimately, they couldn't, of course) and ending with the instrumental/atmospheric rock of Explosion In The Sky makes for a richly transitioning landscape of music.  And I swear the first note of Kris Kristofferson's Help Me Make It Through the Night kicked in just before the final note of the previous Counting Crows tune (not possible, I know, but it really did sound like it).

Today's full playlist:

 - The Beatles: We Can Work It Out

 - Counting Crows: Catapult

 - Kris Kristofferson:  Help Me Make It Through the Night

 - Explosions In The Sky:  First Breath After Coma