Monday, January 26, 2009

This Evening's Paean


I've lived in warm climes (did I use that word?) (voluntarily?) so long, that cold is only an exotic thing, a desire associated with skiing and climbing mountains--you know, heros things.  Tonight, my doors are open and the cool air mingles with Astrud Gilberto and Bill Evans.  I have had it, of course, but there is no use speaking of it.  I want to--and will--at some date distanced by time and circumstance.  But tonight my respite is wine and whiskey and these sweet sounds of Brazilian Jazz.  Oh, God, one thinks, to be transported to one of those movies--you know, the one's associated with decades old Banana Republic catalogues, the one's before the Gap bought them, and the first Peterson catalogs based on writing more than merchandise.  Yes, tonight I have had it.  I'm a goner.  But I won't speak of it.  No.  I'll only drink the whiskey and the wine and read through good memoirs and think of old love that reached its Zenith before it fell into the anonymity of time.  I love everything tonight that isn't work, everything that was, all heroes and heroines, all blood consciousness that arose to a Lawrencian sensuality or the sensibility of a young (not older) Sylvia Plath, to all youth that knows not aging or death, to everything that aspires to heroism (though it may fall well short) or merely drinks in a fabulous bar on some mythical coast where all lovers and heros drink.  

I ramble, but I do not complain, which is the danger of this evening.  This is my paean to you, all lovers alone tonight, to everyone whose passion reaches to the moon (as well as to the nippy air or the frost on the ground or to those cool blue waters off the shores of islands we loooong for tonight).  Forget your misery for a moment, I say, and drink and listen and dance to those inciting tunes that call us at times.  

(Did I mention the whiskey and the wine?) (Truly, a rough day).  

5 comments:

  1. do you know how to handle a rough day or what???? poetry!!!

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  2. In the Slight Ripple, The Mind Perceives the Heart Delmore Schwartz

    In the slight ripple, the fishes dart
    Like fingers, centrifugal, like wishes
    Wanton. And pleasures rise
    as the eyes fall
    Through the lucid water. The small pebble,
    The clear clay bottom, the white shell
    Are apparent, though superficial.
    Who would ask more of the August afternoon?
    Who would dig mines and follow shadows?
    "I would," answers bored Heart, "Lounger, rise"
    (Underlip trembling, face white with stony anger),
    "The old error, the thought of sitting still,
    "The senses drinking, by the summer river,
    "On the tended lawn below the traffic,
    "As if time would pause
    and afternoon stay.
    "No, night comes soon,
    "With its cold mountains, with desolation,
    unless Love builds its city."





    I don't drink whiskey. I like wine. mostly, I like to be inebriated by the smell and sounds of those mythical coasts...

    I hate work. Let's start a commune.


    (have I mentioned I'm a life-long Dreamer?)

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  3. " Forget your misery for a moment, I say, and drink and listen and dance to those inciting tunes that call us at times"

    Words to live by :)

    thank you,sometimes we need someone else to tell us how to get though things. Tonight I'll follow your words to the best of my ability :)

    Danny < also life long dreamer and wanderer!

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  4. I envy anyone who can drink to relax and stop!

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  5. Rhonda,

    Sometimes.

    Burst,

    Delmore Schwartz wrote that? I never think of him in that way.

    D,

    Yea, but I think I've been called by too many inciting tunes sometimes. Good to meet a fellow wanderer, though.

    Nikon,

    Who said I could stop?

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