Friday and a mostly Canadian muse

It's Friday, and that means the return of the popular dude. Yesterday was glorious sunshine and the top was down on the Miata all day. This morning is back to grey and threatening. I reach back and pull the top up over me about two-thirds of the way in this morning after a few small drops appear on my windshield. On these maybe-it-will-rain-maybe-it-won't mornings I think leaving the top down to see if I can make it all the way into campus without getting wet is a game I play with myself. This morning I lose just before I get to the second Starbucks along my route.

Regular readers (both of you) will know I am no small fan of yerba mate. My current perfect mate drinking set up for the office looks like this:




A gourd-ishly shaped Pete's Coffee mug rocking a small heap of Guayki's smokey barbacua blend mate, a spoon-style Argentinian bombilla, and a Guayaki travel mug full of additional hot water, to serve as my desk-top termica.

I'd much rather have my morning mate than coffee most days, but there are times (and especially on Friday mornings) when I wish I could get my mate via the Starbuck's drive through. Not because it is hard to make (nothing could be easier than setting some water to near-boil), but for the I'm-treating-myself-today aspect of picking up a cup of coffee on the way into the office. Ok, that's silly, I know, but there it is nonetheless. This morning I pass on by.

Today's commute featured a wonderful playlist, another of those randomly served up lists that make me wonder what magic really lives in the iPod's shuffle algorithm. Two of Canada's best poet/songwriters account for 50% of the playlist. If I were manually managing this list I would be tempted to add in one more song written by one Canadian (Ian Tyson) and made famous by another (Neil Young): Four Strong Winds. But that would be gilding the lily, I suppose.

Leonard Cohen (covering his own Hallelujah, and being covered by Perla Batalla) weaves a beautiful, almost mythical (is it real, or only shapes in the clouds?), story with his Ballad of the Absent Mare. Just one small piece of this poem demonstrates its artful imagery:

Oh the world is sweet
the world is wide
and she's there where
the light and the darkness divide
and the steam's coming off her
she's huge and she's shy
and she steps on the moon
when she paws at the sky

Admit it, you can see that horse now, can't you?

Then Bruce Cockburn with his Iris of the World, which reads, in part:

I WILL ALWAYS LOVE YOU
on a boulder by the shoulder
the paint will likely outlive
both the feeling and the holder
in the age of Global Warming
when all things are growing colder
it's beautiful the writer
opened up his heart and told her

Passing through the iris of the world
Passing through the iris of the world

I'm good at catching rainbows
not so good at catching trout
I'm good at blowing holes in things
and ranting in self doubt
I've got a way with time and space
but numbers freak me out
I've mostly dodged the dogmas
of what life is all about

Passing through the iris of the world
Passing through the iris of the world

So it's Friday, that saunteringly popular dude, and the skies are grey, the mate is self-serve (as befits the end of the work week), and the muse is mostly Canadian this morning as we pass through the iris of the world.

Today's full playlist:
- Gary Louris & Mark Olson: Precious Time
- Ella Fitzgerald: Desafinado
- Leonard Cohen: Hallelujah
- Fountains of Wayne: Please Don't Rock Me Tonight
- Bruce Cockburn: Iris Of The World
- Perla Batalla: Ballad of the Absent Mare

- Posted via Hermes.