Thursday, September 7, 2023

Three Beautiful Things 09-06-2023: When Gibbs is Away the Cats Will Play, Old Feelings Surface, A Loaded Session of Music and Cooking and Tequila

1. I dropped Gibbs off at the groomer this afternoon and so Copper and Luna spent about two and a half hours or so outside the bedroom. It's not so much that they do anything much different when they are in the living room and kitchen. They spend much of their time, no matter where they are, lying down, content. They like being where I am, though, and so today Luna jumped on the chair and sat beside me, purring, and Copper wandered around a bit.  Copper found a ball of Debbie's yarn to bat around for a short while, but eventually he found a spot on the rug near where I was seated and curled himself up, contented, at ease.

2. Late this afternoon, after I took a walk, I felt an urgency to listen to two John Gorka songs, "I Saw A Stranger with Your Hair" and "Love is Our Cross to Bear". Both songs are on his 1990 album, Land of the Bottom Line. I found the album on Spotify and played the songs. I was suddenly besieged by feelings I had nearly forty years ago, feelings that these two songs used to stir up in me when this album came out several years after I first felt them. When I was much younger, I had no idea that strong feelings never really go away. I thought, back then, that, in time, as I moved on from broken relationships, the enjoyment in these unions I once felt would disappear, as well as the desire to experience that enjoyment with that woman again. 

Now I know better. For years now, I've thought, yeah, The Boggles got it absolutely right in their song, "Video Killed the Radio Star" when they sang, "we can't rewind we've gone too far".  Decades ago, I thought (stupidly) that I could rewind, go back to where I was before my insides got all stirred up in a relationship and in its eventual demise.

But, I can't rewind, because, in a very good way, things went too far. 

And, so, for about ten minutes today, it was about 1990 again and the feelings of loss and yearning John Gorka stirred up in me back then were back for a while today, surprisingly fresh, surprisingly strong, and mercifully brief. 

I can't rewind, but the John Gorka songs ended, and soon the feelings that always live in my body returned to wherever they reside in me, go back to being dormant, and, today, I got on with my 2023 life and 1990 faded away.

3.  Life this evening in 2023 was good. I poured myself a mixture of tequila, fresh squeezed mandarin orange juice, a touch of Cointreau, and a squeeze of lime juice. 

I was in the mood for J. J. Cale and Leon Russell. I drifted into a mild euphoria listening to them separately and together, on YouTube, in a 1979 recording made at Russell's Paradise Studio.

As I prepared dinner, I switched the music to Leon Russell exclusively and boiled a pot of pasta, roasted some sliced almonds,  cooked up garlic and sun dried tomatoes in olive oil, and added halved cherry tomatoes and sliced mushrooms along with some vegetable stock concentrate, a half a cup of water, cream cheese, and butter to the garlic and sun-dried tomatoes.  

Before long, I had a sauce.

I had drained the spaghetti, returned it to its pot, and poured the sauce over it.

I filled a bowl of spaghetti for Debbie and one for me and topped both bowls with almonds and parsley.

It worked! 

No comments: