Hurrah for the drinking dumping aphids of spring!

According to the calendar on my phone, it's Thursday already and it simply doesn't seem possible this week.  It was Monday only yesterday, I swear.  And the day before, and the day before that, too. Maybe there lies the issue, now I think about it.  It's been a week of Mondays.  Groundhog Day a week late.  This week I couldn't tell the Great Pretender from Mr. Maleable, Monday's Toady, or The Play Yard Bully.   I think I'll recognize the Popular Dude when he gets here, though.  I might even be chanting his name already.

I see a sea anemone
The enemy
See a sea anemone
And that'll be the end of me.
While the vicious fish was caught unawares in the tenderest of tendrils
Underneath her tender gills
     - Andrew Bird, from Anonanimal

Traffic is light and so is the morning as I toddle down the road.  Really noticeably lighter of sky than usual this morning.  Bright sunny days earlier this week, lighter early morning commute, still light when I get home - these are good signs.

And the surest sign I've seen yet that winter is in retreat and spring approaches from stage left?  On Tuesday I parked nose-first under a tree for an early meeting off-campus and came out to find aphid droppings all over my windshield.  The pitch is flowing, the aphids drinking and dumping, the machinery of growth is starting up again.

By Shipher Wu (photograph) and Gee-way Lin (aphid provision), National Taiwan University

Today's full playlist:

• Anonanimal - Andrew Bird
• It's a Heartache - Rod Stewart
• I Will Always Love You - Dolly Parton
• Anyhow - Leonard Cohen
• Andalucia - Pink Martini

Key change up, increase strings and background vocals, pick berries

Monday, fairly dry and dark, like a good merlot. Traffic is heavy, as traffic goes for my little back roads commute.

Something I read somewhere this weekend (someone's tweet, maybe?) referenced dialing in a Tony Orlando & Dawn "station" on Pandora, so I decided to give it a whirl.  I looked up Tony Orlando & Dawn on Google Play, selected the "radio" option, and quickly lost myself in a stream of nostalgic music.  Often campy, always melodic, some with notions about boys and girls that wouldn't sit well today, it was an era for background singers and key changes.  One of this morning's songs had at least 4 key changes in it (and I may have missed one).  Each change was into a higher key, to up the energy level of the song.  By the time the song ended it felt like the singers were on tip-toes.

I still had my phone set to that "station" so I let it run for the drive in this morning.  Yes, I was that guy conspicuously singing out loud to himself in the little red Fiat you passed, or followed, or sat beside at the light.  Deal with it.

Most of these are time and place songs for me.  They were popular tunes in my youth, when every individual year was an epoch unto itself.

Afternoon Delight takes me back to a strawberry patch somewhere in rural Whatcom County.  It was a top-40 tune one summer in my youth, one of the summers I picked strawberries as a summer job.  A big old (and I mean old by the standard of the day) ex-school bus would pick us up early morning.  We'd bounce around dozing in our seats while the bus lurched and ground its way through gear changes and the engine whined, the cabin filling with exhaust fumes sucked back in through any of the fogged over windows that were cracked open.  Mornings were chilly and afternoons were hot, so we'd wear layers of clothing.  My sack lunch would contain a soda pop can I'd put in the freezer overnight, all bulging and misshapen from the expanded frozen soda within, so it would still be cold-ish by mid-day when we broke for lunch.

Someone always had a small transistor radio with them, and top-40 tunes played loudly over the rows of berries while we picked.  Hunched uncomfortably (I was a tall and gangly kid) over the low rows of berries, nose full of the sweet smell of warm ripe strawberries and dust,  knees sore from kneeling in the dirt and soaked through from morning dew and also from blood-red juice from where they'd inadvertently landed on over-ripe berries that had fallen to the ground, I would listen to the same selection of tunes over and over and over again all day.  Two tunes in particular stick with me from that summer: Having My Baby, and, Afternoon Delight.  I hated them both by the end of summer.  It took me a long time to reacquire a taste for strawberries, and I still can't say I really like Afternoon Delight.

Honey places me in the back seat of a '66 Ford Country Squire wagon, black with wood paneled siding, my back and legs sticking to vinyl seats covered in that those clear plastic knobbly seat covers that were so popular back then.  I don't know why that song takes me back there, but clearly I must have heard it a time or two from that seat.

Billy, Don't Be a Hero is just getting started as I back into a parking spot on campus.  Just as well, as many more seconds and I would have hit the skip button on my steering wheel.  I never liked the contrived-story songs (and Honey also falls into that genre).  You don't hear many songs of that sort any more, at least none that I can think of.  They've been replaced by the contrived "like" or "share" this story to show you care stories on Facebook, I guess.  Skippable, in either case.

A good tune list in the main, for a Monday.

Today's Full Playlist:

• I Like Dreamin' - Kenny Nolan
• Rock Me Gently - Andy Kim
• Lady Willpower - Gary Puckett & The Union Gap
• Honey - Bobby Goldsboro
• Afternoon Delight - Starland Vocal Band
• Daydream - Tony Orlando and Dawn
• Billy, Don't Be A Hero - Bo Donaldson & The Heywoods

The fitful alternations of the rain, indeed

The fitful alternations of the rain,
When the chill wind, languid as with pain
Of its own heavy moisture, here and there
Drives through the gray and beamless atmosphere.
     - Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Fitful Alternations of the Rain

The rain this morning was fitful, yes, but of alternations, less so.  A steady torrent of large obsidian agates hit the windshield and flare across its surface before being swept up in the next pass of the wiper blades. The sort of heavy rain that plays tricks with the many sources of artificial light that penetrate the early morning darkness: headlights, tail lights, street lights, porch lights, store signs, bike reflectors, etc.  The light gets bounced around by the palpable volume of falling rain drops, making peripheral vision a kaleidoscope of sparkling distractions.

Reminds me, though I'm not precisely sure why, of a lyric from a Bruce Cockburn tune that wasn't part of today's playlist:

Ice cube in a dark drink shines like star light
Starlight shines like glass shards in dark hair
And the mind's eye tumbles out along the steel track
Fixing every shadow with its stare
     - from Night Train

Thursday has arrived and spirits are raised a bit by his coming, even though we know his ruse.  The joke's on him this time, though - today really is my work week's Friday.  It will be a long Thursday, with an evening board meeting, but then a day off to work on some community projects I've not been getting to lately.  Good stuff.

A great, short, mix of tunes this morning, too.

Today's full playlist:

• In The Days Before Rock 'n' Roll, Van Morrison
• Use Me While You Can, Bruce Cockburn
• Carpool, Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey
• Who Painted the Moon Black, Hayley Westenra

A thousand dreams blur my vision

Tuesday, no.. wait, it's Wednesday.  As I back out of the drive the soundtrack shuffle kicks off with Confusion, so at least there is symmetry for the drive in to work.  It's still dark, but warmer this morning (6° C, 42°F - it's all relative), so I crack open the "sun" roof a tad.

Monday was, or would have been, my mother's 81st birthday, the first she wasn't here to celebrate.  As luck would have it, this past Sunday I was sampling "new releases" of music and saw that Enya had a relatively recent album out.  I started to sample some of the tunes and hit the second track on the album, So I Could Find My Way.   Apart from a simple but incredibly beautiful melody hauntingly sung, the lyrics simply broke me open from the opening verse:

A thousand dreams you gave to me
You held me high, you held me high
And all those years you guided me
So I could find my way

How long your love had sheltered me
You held me high, you held me high
A harbour holding back the sea
So I could find my way

So let me give this dream to you
Upon another shore
So let me give this dream to you
Each night and ever more

    - Enya, from So I Could Find My Way (link to YouTube video of a live rendition)

The parent/child relationship is, of course, always complicated.  There is no single model of what that relationship holds.  I was fortunate, though, to have a mom who did love me and who, especially in my formative years, did everything she thought was best to enable my success, whatever form that would (or wouldn't) take.  So, yes, this verse did speak to me.  I have no idea if Enya was thinking about a lost parent when she wrote this song, and others may see different voices or faces in the lyric.  For me, this past weekend, though, the song was very prescient.

Fast forward back to this morning, and Cockburn also sings of love:

See you standing in the door against the dark
Fireflies around you like a crown of sparks
You blow me a kiss that blurs my vision
Blurs the human condition

You're the ocean ringing in my brain
You are my island ripe with cane
Catch the scent of strange flowers when you pass
Fluid motion like the wind in grass

It's your eyes I want to see
Looking into mine
Got you live on my mind
All the time
               - Bruce Cockburn, from Live On My Mind

December marked 34 years with my own beloved partner-in-life, and she still blurs my vision!  I am very fortunate.

Today's full playlist:

• Confusion, ELO
• Live On My Mind, Bruce Cockburn
• Federal Funding, Cake
• Flamenco Sketches (Alternate Take), Miles Davis

More little knots to untie

Tuesday, any day.  Early morning phone call while I am in the shower, voicemail waiting.  My cousin's voice, letting me know that, "...mom passed in the night."

I do not deny that a man who reaches a certain age
can no longer hope
that those from whom he came will remain
still alive with him, as my mother once
     -  Avot Yeshururn, from Memories Are a House

Mom passed away in April of this past year.  Her younger brother, my uncle, passed away this late fall, and this morning her older sister, my aunt, passed away.  All three siblings passed within 9 months of each other.

I know I've posted this quote from a Margery Allingham novel before, but it is worth reposting whenever there is grieving over a lost loved one:

"Well, you know, it's an evil thing, this attempt to reverse the process of mourning." The Canon stepped back on to his own territory and became a different being. "Mourning is not forgetting," he said gently, his helplessness vanishing and his voice becoming wise. "It is an undoing. Every minute tie has to be untied and something permanent and valuable recovered and assimilated from the knot. The end is gain, of course.  Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be made strong, in fact."
     - Margery Allingham, from Tigers In The Smoke

I have such fond memories of my aunt.  Big family Christmas Eves in a small house, all those summers just outside of Winthrop, dancing with our son in a hospital parking lot one time when mom was in the hospital, her quick sharp sense of humor.  All knots to untie and from which to reclaim something precious.

Such are the little memories of you;
They come and go, return and lie apart
From all main things of life; yet more than they,
With noiseless feet, they come and grip the heart.
     - George McClellan, from To Theodore

Traffic was very light this morning, the commute was extra short, the playlist short as well:

• You've Never Seen Everything, Bruce Cockburn
• Peace Memory, Pat Metheny
• Killing the Blues, Robert Plant & Alison Krauss
• Blue Skies, Landon Pigg

Music scattered all over the streets

Monday, and the music was scattered all over the streets.  Every turn on my side-streets-route into campus this morning brought a whole new genre of music with it.  The tunes crossed times, faiths, styles, tempos.  It shouldn't have gotten along nearly as well as it did.

Once, in the city of Kalamazoo,  
The gods went walking, two and two,  
With the friendly phoenix, the stars of Orion,  
The speaking pony and singing lion.
   - from Kalamazoo, by Vachel Lindsay

One song hails from an album titled Dub Qawwali, which features the late Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan singing songs in a devotional Sufi tradition dubbed over a raggae (almost hip hop?) beat.  Nusrat, a Pakistani singer, apparently sold more records than Elvis and his music is best known to American audiences as part of the Dead Men Walking soundtrack.  The album certainly has its beauty, though the structure of the music isn't as immediately accessible or comfortable to my ears as that of, say, Henry Mancini.

Everybody wants to rule the world
Say that you'll never never never never need it
One headline why believe it?
Everybody wants to rule the world

Thank you Tears for Fears for reminding me.  I listen to music to avoid, among other things, the endless cycle of non-news silliness and affrontery of the presidential election.  What a comic farce the whole thing continues to degenerate into.  Reminds me of a delightfully insightful poem by George Bradley, Some Assembly Required. It starts out:

Standing in line at the SuperSave, it all falls  
Into place, Princess Di and the aliens and diet  
Tips from outer space, King Tut and King Elvis,  
   Out of the subfusc air, the rank urgency of dusk,  
   Among the heavy odors of differing dungs,  
   Acrid signatures of urine, the bold perfume of musk . . .

and then, later, goes on:

Attention, shoppers, there lies a veldt within us each,  
Its grasses rustle with intent, and on that plain  
Was born the fine suspicion that has carried us so far,  
   To behold the unassuming fact and comprehend design,  
   To look upon confusion and construct its plot and act,  
To leap at merest notion found floating in the mind . . .  
Has brought us to these sheltered aisles under thin gray light,  
Where in boredom and abundance we seek our narrative,
Whatever tale comes now to kill us and can creep.

Whoops!  As Patrick Cassidy pulls me softly back to the real world I wonder how I made those connections out of an old light rock classic.  It's not only the music that's scattered this morning, I guess, and I can live with that on a Monday.

Today's full playlist:

• My Morning Jacket, Wordless Chorus
• Henry Mancini, Love Theme from Romeo and Juliet
• Tears for Fears, Everybody Wants to Rule the World
• Patrick Cassidy, Three Carolan Pieces: Kitty Magennis
• Gaudi with Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Tera Jana Kere Rang Lawe
• Merl Saunders, Jerry Garcia, It's Too Late (She's Gone) [Live]

The grace of space

Friday, the popular dude, is taut with the potential energy of cold and wrapped in the gothly black of deep winter this early morning.  He strides with confidence into the room of week-weary souls who are still tired from the recent spate of holidays and from the effort of breaking the heavier gravity of a warm winter bed.

Traffic is a bit lighter than usual, I think. Though I follow a truck towing a utility trailer full of garbage cans and scrap, moving at a crawl because their load is unsecured and (I assume) afraid to go fast enough to create a slipstream strong enough to lift and toss the contents of the trailer, just far enough to lose the honest pace of the morning commute.

In the hand of the cloud
Liquid as time
The heron's wings well
Know the grace of space
   - Bruce Cockburn, from Feet Fall On the Road

I've been listening to some pre-selected "stations" on Google's Music Play service the past few days, but this morning let the phone shuffle from my own entire library.  Fridays feel even better with comfort food and the familiar.  One song follows another, having to skip only once over an audiobook track that made its way into the mix, as I move from 4-way stop to stoplight to roundabout to campus entrance on my way in.

Stoplights edged the licorice street with ribbon,  
neon embroidering wet sidewalks.
  - Roberta Hill, from Leap In The Dark

Today's calendar looks only lightly dusted with predetermined things, so I can seize this rare gift of space to wrap up several loose ends and projects before following the popular dude into the weekend.

Further recommended poetry for a dark winter morning, though not specifically applicable to my here and now:  Winter Journal: Disseminate Birds over Water, by Emily Wilson

Today's full playlist:

• Feet Fall On the Road, Bruce Cockburn
• No Better Place, Fountains Of Wayne
• Your Secrets, Belle and Sebastian
• Write About Love, Belle and Sebastian
• Don't Think Twice, It's Alright, Donavon Frankenreiter
• Myrkur, Sigur Rós