A Sweet Unrest

All of my friends are welcome

 

 Thanksgiving is tomorrow which means fantastic food and counting blessings.  It's lovely to spend a day thinking about all the good things in life- beautiful children, family, friends both real and imaginary, books and music, beaded fringe and glitter nail polish (I realize those last two are probably just me).

This year I have an old school friend coming to stay which means one more beloved face at the table and, once the children are tucked into bed, tipsy Scrabble and uncontrollable giggling well into the wee hours.  Yay.

Every year on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, the morning DJ at the jazz station does a full show of songs about food.  She puts the most amazing set together each time and I always look forward to it.  She played this one last year.  My elder boy thinks the part about eating the table and napkins is hilarious.  

Cab Calloway - Everybody Eats When They Come To My House

Many many thanks to each of you who visit, comment, send music and drop a line every now and again.  Happy Thanksgiving.

The Snag

I just finished reading the new(ish) one by Billy Collins and I found a lot to like, several whole poems plus little bits sprinkled throughout- with him, for me, it is often not so much the wording of the individual lines but rather the way whole poems turn.  I'm probably not explaining it well at all but here's this.

The Snag by Billy Collins

The only time I found myself at all interested
in the concept of a time machine
was when I first heard that baldness in a man
was traceable to his maternal grandfather.

I pictured myself stepping into the odd craft
with a vial of poison tucked into a pocket
and, just in case, a newly sharpened kitchen knife.
Of course, I had not thought this through very carefully.

But even after I realized the drawback
of eradicating my own existence
not to mention the possible existence of my mother,
I came up with a better reason to travel back in time.

I pictured myself now setting the coordinates
for late 19th century County Waterford, where,
after I had hidden the machine behind a hedge
and located himself, the man I never knew,

we would enjoy several whiskeys and some talk
about the hard times and my strange looking clothes,
after which, with his permission of course,
I would climb into his lap

and rest my hand on the slope of his head,
that dome, which covered the troubled church of his mind
and was often covered in turn
by the dusty black hat he had earlier hung from a peg in the wall. 

 

And just because I love this song-

Lucky Soul - Woah Billy

Chances dance off your wrists

I reread this book during a recent clearout/reorganizing of one of my bookshelves.  It landed most definitely in the keep pile.  Here is the lead-off track, if you will.  

The Young by Roddy Lumsden

You bastards!  It's all sherbet, and folly
makes you laugh like mules.  Chances
dance off your wrists, each day ready,

sprites in your bones and spite not yet
swollen, not yet set.  You gather handful
after miracle handful, seeing straight,

reaching the lighthouse in record time,
pockets brim with scimitar things.  Now
is not a pinpoint but a sprawling realm.

Bewilderment and thrill are whip-quick
twins, carried on your backs, each vow
new to touch and each mistake a broken

biscuit.  I was you.  Sea robber boarding
the won galleon.  Roaring trees.  Machine
without levers, easy in bowel and lung.

One cartwheel over the quicksand curve
of Tuesday to Tuesday and you're gone,
summering, a ship on the farthest wave. 

Feel this city inside you

 

 

It’s the Saturday before Halloween and you’re off to a gig and you can be excited about it if you forget that this is your last night out with your best friend before she, steadying breath, moves to Las Vegas.  It’s for love and you’re happy for her, truly, and so you shut out the flat full of boxes and the moving truck and very carefully focus your energy on what to wear to a concert by The Damned in a city that most definitely dresses for the spookiest night of the year but in the end it’s the plain black dress and the incredible shoes and reaching into the abandoned drawer of dime store sparklies you find a giant rhinestone cross which probably dates back to the first season of Buffy and a time of not always fortunate fashion choices and you figure what the hell and fasten it to your neck and head out into the night.

And you meet them.  And apparently you met him once in your twenties after one of your own shows, because it’s one of those love stories that has flirted across decades, but no one can remember too much about that night and anyway it’s now that matters.  But speaking of your twenties, when you’re standing alone at the bar a roadie comes up and asks if you’d like to go backstage and have drinks with the band, something that hasn’t happened since that time, and in the interest of full disclosure there aren’t any girls that young in the club when this occurs and maybe they are desperate but still it feels like something to hold on to even as you decline, which you would anyway but especially tonight it would be hard to be charming and entertaining.

And anyway you’re here to be with her.  The girl who has picked you up and fairy dusted you off after every single crisis of your adult life.  Including the worst one.  She’s probably the reason you aren’t a bitter wreck, no one ever ever got so lucky in the best friend department.  She’s always leaned more towards stilettos and hair metal but there she is looking blissfully at home in a pair of Docs and her boyfriend’s ancient Siouxsie t-shirt.  Glowing.   Gently giggling about the difficulties of wearing fishnets with sequins, because they get tangled, not everybody knows that, and then with a slight, philosophical shrug of the shoulders she says “showgirl problems,”  takes a sip of her drink, beams at her boyfriend and all the costumed humanity packed in around her.  You’ve never loved her more.

The Sundays - Leave This City