1. So every time the phone rings, my heart skips a beat because it could be kidney offer. Today my phone rang and I saw the word "transplant" on the screen, but I could tell the call came from the transplant clinic at Providence Sacred Heart.
I knew no one there would be offering me an organ (!).
I was right.
The transplant team I work with includes Helen, a social worker. I've enjoyed every one of our several conversations. Helen called because when she, Debbie, and I talked back on April 3rd, she forgot to raise a couple or three questions.
Here's one thing we discussed: Helen and I always talk about my alcohol consumption. In the over five years I've been talking with her, my use of alcohol has diminished quite a bit, so I could tell her that remains the case these days, that over the last several months I've almost never drunk alcohol on weekdays (unless I'm at the Wildhorse Resort!), but sometimes have a beer or a cocktail or three at the Inland Lounge on Friday or Saturday and enjoy a cocktail and some wine at family dinner.
I told Helen that I've cut back quite a bit since November, when I started the rehab program back in November and as I continue to hit the Fitness Center several days a week now. I'm trying to lose weight. Alcohol stimulates my appetite and it lowers my will power! I do much better at controlling the calories I consume when I don't drink alcohol.
I also sleep better. I exercise better, too, if I don't have alcohol in my system.
All this said, I miss drinking a variety of craft beers and when I do have one or two now, they taste especially good! So did sharing whiskey with Terry, Mike, and Ed at the Wildhorse!
2. While exercising today at the Fitness Center, I decided to try a different channel on the Sirius/XM app. I played Classic Rewind Deep Cuts. It focuses on music from the 80s -- and a little earlier. The station refers to this period as (something like) "The Cassette Age".
I huffed and puffed as the channel played Journey, Asia, Simple Minds, and other 80s bands, but I left the channel when they played Phil Collins' song, "I Don't Care Anymore" from his Hello, I Must Be Going album.
I began listening to this album in the year following the dissolution of my first marriage. I guess you could call the song "I Don't Care Anymore" a liar's song, a song expressing denial, a deeply ironic song, or, in that vein, a wickedly sarcastic song. Whatever you call it, the words of the song, the repeated "I don't care anymore" conflict savagely with the pained way Phil Collins sings the song and with his drumming, which relies heavily on his dark, menacing, and repeated use of the his kit's larger, lower sounding drums.
The song ended.
I left the channel, punched in my Spotify app, and dialed up the entire Hello, I Must Be Going album.
I trembled listening to it. My private (or personal) life, starting late in 1981 and continuing for several years, was dark, confused, disillusioned, and painful. In some ways, I was doing all right, but I was lost. Being unmoored shaded, sometimes darkened, even the things I was doing pretty well like my work as an instructor or the successes I experienced in graduate school or friendships during that period of time.
It's weird.
As confused, lost, and unmoored as I was, I have a storehouse of great memories from those years -- I loved my work, had many superb interactions and experiences with students, thoroughly enjoyed living in Spokane, enjoyed trips to Seattle, Eugene, Portland, Ashland, San Francisco, Boulder, and, in December of 1986, traveled to London and other parts of England for the last time.
Hello, I Must Be Going brought many memories and feelings from the Age of the Cassette into my consciousness. I welcomed them all, even as I gave in to self-recrimination, but also in to feeling great happiness.
I know I thought back then that if I could just get through the confusion, the bad behavior, my ascents into ecstasy and my descents into despondency, one day I'd be done with all of this.
But, as one of my favorite lines from The Boggles' "Video Killed the Radio Star" -- a song, by the way, from the Age of Cassette and the first song ever played on MTV -- goes: "in my mind and in my car/we can't rewind we've gone too far".
Back then I thought one day I'd be able to one day rewind, start over, put those turbulent years behind me, just move on, be able to say, "that's the past-- it's over", but, no.
I can't rewind.
I went too far.
Only if I somehow let those days die can they go away. If they die, part of me dies with them. So, they stay alive in me, and, sometimes they come knocking at my mind's door.
They aren't always welcome, but other times, like today, with the help of Phil Collins, I welcome those days back and I feel the complexity of the tattered and sometimes rapturous life I lived during the Age of the Cassette.
3. Upon returning home from the Fitness Center and all that memorable music, I fixed a superb Hello Fresh dish: Hoisin Sweet Potatoes and Mushroom with Ginger Rise and Sriracha Mayo.
I savored the way the sweetness of hoisin sauce interplayed with the heat of the sriracha sauce. Underneath these flavors, not too deep in the background, was the tasty saltiness of the soy sauce that was part of the sririach/mayo sauce. In addition, I obeyed the recipe and briefly cooked grated ginger and the white part of a few stalks of scallions in butter before adding water and jasmine rice to the pot. The ginger and scallion gave the rice a jolt of flavor and texture that worked beautifully underneath the roasted sweet potatoes, mushroom, and yellow bell peppers.
This meal REALLY worked.
Oh! By the way, it during those frayed days of the Cassette Age, being new at being single, I found great solace in teaching myself how to cook -- and had a blast doing so.
I cook a lot more now than I did then as I was learning, but I had to start somewhere and I was determined to be self-sufficient in the kitchen and to never rely on another person for meals again.
It worked.
From that point on, for over forty years now, I have either cooked for myself or shared the cooking with whomever I lived.
It's been blissful.
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