The Apostrophe Blog
After days of bleak—gray, cold, wet, chill, puddles, sodden earth, wet shoes, dashing quickly from car to the side door of the house between falling drops—in the continuing interregnum, the between, the still-between—blue skies emerged on a Friday afternoon, this third day of January in the preposterous, future-sounding year of 2025. Yesterday, on its half-century anniversary since being released, I listened to the Bob Dylan album, Tangled Up in Blue, one that more than a few over the years have described as his masterpiece. One that he was allegedly inspired to write after seeing a billboard advertising the Joni Mitchell album, Blue.
Fifty years ago. Fifty years. The passage of time (cliché that it is to say that) is definitely on my mind with this turn of the calendar year, with the impending political nightmare on our horizon in a few short weeks. I was nineteen years old when this Dylan LP came out. I remember we wore it out on the turntable that spring semester at Oberlin College; perhaps back then I even believed I could study with it on in the background that momentous semester when I made decisions that were definitely foolhardy, that ended up altering the trajectory of the rest of my life. Yet words—their meaning, sound, look on the page, ability to express, convey, define, inform, celebrate, and undo—were my chosen companion then and words remain my chosen companion now thinking of how to describe the sun-setting sky tonight, thinking about those two record albums that were so much part of the soundtrack, the very heartbeat of my late adolescent life. Where I now sit as the light leaves another day behind, leaves me definitely tangled up in blue, not the color, the downhearted, dispirited mood.
From the thesaurus, blue, adjective:
1 she had bright blue eyes: sky blue, azure, cobalt (blue),
sapphire, cerulean, navy (blue), saxe (blue),
Oxford blue, Cambridge blue, ultramarine, lapis lazuli,
indigo, aquamarine, turquoise, teal (blue), cyan,
of the color of the sky, of the color of the sea.
2 informal Dad had died that year and Mom was feeling a bit blue:
depressed, down, sad, saddened, unhappy,
melancholy, miserable, sorrowful, gloomy, dejected,
downhearted, disheartened, despondent, dispirited,
low, in low spirits, low-spirited, heavy-hearted,
glum, morose, dismal, downcast, cast down,
tearful; informal down in the dumps,
down in the mouth, fed up.
ANTONYMS happy, cheerful
3 a blue movie: sexually explicit, explicit, indecent, dirty, filthy,
obscene, rude, coarse, vulgar, bawdy, lewd, racy, risqué,
salacious, naughty, wicked, improper, unseemly, smutty,
spicy, raw, offcolor, ribald, Rabelaisian; pornographic,
offensive, prurient, sordid, low, profane; erotic, arousing,
sexy, suggestive, titillating, explicit; informal near the
knuckle/bone, nudge-nudge, porn, porno, porny,
raunchy, skin; British informal fruity, saucy;
euphemistic adult. ANTONYMS clean, family
Interests: Reading, writing, not arithmetic. The art and craft of poetry. Photography. Vegetable and flower gardening especially heirloom bulbs and dahlias. Movies in real theatres. Theatre on real stages. Art in real galleries. Crossword puzzles and, of course, Wordle. Singer-songwriters like Aimee Mann and Patti Griffin. All kinds of music especially 1930s jazz. Venice, Italy! The Dude abides.
- Celebrating This Website’s China Anniversary - January 4, 2025
- Tangling Up in Blue - January 3, 2025
- The Scattering and the Shadows - December 31, 2024
