Have you ever had a day where you just can't seem to get your thoughts in order?

Where you keep trying to focus, but something, you're not sure what interrupts you push the thought

away perhaps it's painful or irritating or frivolous but it won't leave the thought

or memory remains like a splinter in the mind's eye.

You are distracted, pensive, longing for something that you are not consciously aware of.

As you turn your eyes back to your work, you struggle once again to find

solace from this intrusive, distracting thought. You are in need of a holiday. You can only do so much, and as much as you try to power through, the fact remains that you are nearing your burnout point.

If you don't change scenery, get a fresh perspective, things are going to look bad.

There is hope, there's always hope.

Your longing, your yearning can be cured.

It simply needs an opportunity to fulfill itself,

to escape the humdrum rhythm and embark on something new.

For a day, a week, get out of the workplace grind.

Find a boat.

Come to Memphis. Around 1300 B.C.C. E.C. A few decades after the reign of Armunhautep the third.

Egyptian scribes, writers, were composing works in a variety of genres.

Fairy tales, instructions, model and ideal letters, and of course, poems and songs.

Our subject today is a pair of these compositions, poems telling of ancient longing and the need for a holiday. I call these two poems the Memphis River Blues.

These blues poems tell of an Egyptian scribe's difficulty keeping to the rhythm and grind of daily life.

He wants to focus, but his heart, his mind, are in need of a break.

With nothing else to do, the scribe begins to daydream of fairer shores.

In the process, he writes a lovely, lovely poem.

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