Nostalgia.
My mom and I went to Via Cappucino, the local coffee shop, to hear a couple of musicians tonight. They played in New Orleans not too long ago. I saw this on their little flier. They played at the Neutral Ground. I don't remember where that is.
The guy, Ron Morris, had a nice voice and sang some nice songs about love and hope. He played guitar and smiled and closed his eyes to the three or four of us sitting there. The girl, Jess Pillmore, accompanied him, and she had a robust, mournful voice. Then, she'd take her turn and sing with this strange depth about dive bars and awkwardness.
When he played, I felt transported back to the mountains, and I could see a gravel road stretched out in front of me, a creek next to it on one side, a steep slope upwards on the other. Thick trees canopied and stretched and puffed up overhead. Blue skies. Solitude. This painless sense of being in a world alone, bumping and skidding and righting myself.
When she sang, I was back in New Orleans, sitting in a red darkness, ears assaulted by pool balls and juke box music and forgotten sitcoms hanging over the bar. Outside, somewhere, the smell would be similar to that in the mountains, somewhere, but the smells I remember are the close ones, the stale ones. And it may sound as if this isn't a good memory, but it is. No skies. Solitude. But it wasn't painless. There were people, and I was still alone. And it may sound as if this isn't a good memory, but it is. Nostalgia can be that way. Melancholy takes on the somber profundity of a Dutch master. Water stains on wood panelling begin to take on the luster of a carefully-painted pearl earring.
And, listening to them go back and forth, feeling myself, like that poor sap in in Slaughterhouse Five, being shuttled between two separate yet equal states of sentimentality, I realized that I don't even know what I miss anymore because I've left so much behind me. I miss so many things that the absence of them becomes a presence.
Last night, while I was sobbing in bed at the thought of another day ahead of me, I could feel absent arms around me. That may not make sense, but I could feel the lack just as if it had a tangible body. So that, in a sense, this nobody seemed to hold me. It was sad because what I thought I wanted more than anything was just to feel small again. I've reached a point, like Alice, at which I am too big for the house and find the idea of staying this size, awkward and fearsome, miserable. I'd like to be small again, so that I could fit on someone's shoulder.
The guy, Ron Morris, had a nice voice and sang some nice songs about love and hope. He played guitar and smiled and closed his eyes to the three or four of us sitting there. The girl, Jess Pillmore, accompanied him, and she had a robust, mournful voice. Then, she'd take her turn and sing with this strange depth about dive bars and awkwardness.
When he played, I felt transported back to the mountains, and I could see a gravel road stretched out in front of me, a creek next to it on one side, a steep slope upwards on the other. Thick trees canopied and stretched and puffed up overhead. Blue skies. Solitude. This painless sense of being in a world alone, bumping and skidding and righting myself.
When she sang, I was back in New Orleans, sitting in a red darkness, ears assaulted by pool balls and juke box music and forgotten sitcoms hanging over the bar. Outside, somewhere, the smell would be similar to that in the mountains, somewhere, but the smells I remember are the close ones, the stale ones. And it may sound as if this isn't a good memory, but it is. No skies. Solitude. But it wasn't painless. There were people, and I was still alone. And it may sound as if this isn't a good memory, but it is. Nostalgia can be that way. Melancholy takes on the somber profundity of a Dutch master. Water stains on wood panelling begin to take on the luster of a carefully-painted pearl earring.
And, listening to them go back and forth, feeling myself, like that poor sap in in Slaughterhouse Five, being shuttled between two separate yet equal states of sentimentality, I realized that I don't even know what I miss anymore because I've left so much behind me. I miss so many things that the absence of them becomes a presence.
Last night, while I was sobbing in bed at the thought of another day ahead of me, I could feel absent arms around me. That may not make sense, but I could feel the lack just as if it had a tangible body. So that, in a sense, this nobody seemed to hold me. It was sad because what I thought I wanted more than anything was just to feel small again. I've reached a point, like Alice, at which I am too big for the house and find the idea of staying this size, awkward and fearsome, miserable. I'd like to be small again, so that I could fit on someone's shoulder.
posted by Autumn at 10:07 PM
2 Comments:
A bar was less than I needed.
It was late, even Belly (my dog) felt it, the streets empty of transport and the criminals all in bed. If ever the search for a tranquil faith should end, it might be like this again. We walked in the blackness as a reader of somber verses, a spell of the moonlight defined. We took turns leading each other, and I wondered that her nose was not so tired and blind with squinting as mine. It was not the heart of a moment, neither love nor breeze was in the air. Only, perhaps, a change in the smoothness of seasons, an unravelling which they perform with base design in the world's dim places. We were quiet, our voices having gone for home without saying goodnight. And then, when there was nothing left to romance from the darkness, we followed.
My goodness, I just yawned, and it would seem that Katrina is almost upon us.
And me without any cigarettes stockpiled. Bloody Hell.
Beautiful.
I love every line of that. I hope that you write often.
I also hope that you're well. I was thinking of you this morning as I watched the news, pirate. Take care of yourself.
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