The Year of the Snake

Welcome to The Year of the Snake.  It is the first day of the Chinese New Year, so I went to The Source to find out what to expect.  

How could I go wrong.  First off, I wanted to know the logic behind a Chinese Horoscope.  It is pretty clear.

Inarguable, really.  It seems pretty solid.  So, I thought to look at what the Year of the Snake had in store for me.  

But that's not all.  It also said, "In this year of true romance, single men will also meet their soul mates."

There you go.  

Last night, I was dreaming hard about My Own True Love.  I am sure it was the result of watching the Taylor Sheridan show "1924."  The show was recommended to me by a woman who thought I would enjoy it.  Not the Montana part, not the Indian part, but the Africa part.  For a long while, when I was driving my open Jeep and wearing palomino colored pants and linen shirts and doing my Tarzan bit. . . well, you get my drift.  If you have seen the show, you know what I mean.  It is true high romance of a kind by which I was indoctrinated as a kid.  That guy is the kind of man a boy was supposed to want to be.  

And so it goes.  

If you haven't seen the show, it's o.k.  All the Sheridan shows I've seen are crafted around the most blatant cliches of the past.  The dialog is cliche.  The action is cliche.  The characters are cliches.  There is nothing fresh or new about any of it.  

Which is what makes it so attractive to a certain audience.  I am watching it with my mother, because of my mother.  All she watches on t.v. are old westerns.  This is a western based on many of the cliches of those shows from the '50s and '60s.  Strong men, strong women, a tolerance for suffering, certain moral codes.  The Sheridan show has some nudity which is new for my mother, and it makes it quite uncomfortable to watch with her, but I just make fun of those scenes which are, dare I say, cliched.  

But cliches are comfortable, and the people I know who would be the first to criticize them live in a cliched world of their own.  The cliches are, perhaps, newer, though I think they come from certain periods of which they are not cognizant, but to me they are obvious.  And that's ok.  Cliches are cliches for a reason.  Once upon a time, they were fresh ideas that caught hold of the public imagination and became part of the mass lingo.  

There is a comfort in them.  Hell, after watching Sheridan, I have a desire to read an old Raymond Chandler/Philip Marlowe novel again. 

Last night, I dreamed of authentic love.  It was, in part, I'm sure, based upon what I had just been watching.  

There is a woman who lives in my mother's neighborhood a few streets over.  She's a real looker as they used to say.  She just turned 50 but she looks to be in her late 30s.  In clothes, at least, she has a body built by. . . you finish the cliche.  All the old men in the neighborhood are crazy for her.  She is divorced and has a son who just left for college in the fall.  I am not like the other men, of course.  I mean. . . I assume that there is a bucket of snakes between her ears.  At least that has been my lived experience.  And that means she is probably someone who might be attracted to the likes of me.  So I am cool.  Real cool.  

She walks her dogs by my mother's house and always stops to talk.  I am friendly in a neighborly way, but over the years, little by little, she has spilled bits and pieces of her life.  If she is walking and sees my car, she always smiles and gives a big wave.  I don't think she would be so friendly if I were as creepy as the old men in the neighborhood.  Just a guess.  

I've always wondered what her dating life was like.  She is an executive in a big bank, is always put together even when in her exercise outfits, and is surely a man magnet.  And, of course, I have intuited that she must surely be sick of that which is why butter would never melt in my mouth when we speak.  I hope that image works.  

Anyway, as my mother says when she wants to skip ahead in a story, a couple days ago when she stopped by, somehow her dating habits creeped up.  I said I couldn't imagine how people ever used a dating app.  She rolled her eyes, took a deep breath, and agreed.  She launched into a tirade about bad dates.  

"People say the most inappropriate things," she said.  "I don't mean sexual.  They say things like 'I don't mind you being my sugar mama.'  That just isn't attractive.  I went through that with my ex.  It just isn't funny."

Of course I agreed.  Inevitably, at 50, she has an agenda.  And we agreed that experience makes finding someone to be with much more difficult.  There are too many red flags, too many things we know we don't want, and many fewer options.  

"It is just too much work," she said.  

"Yes," I agreed.  "The 24/7 thing isn't so very attractive anymore.  Someone stretched out on the couch with the remote wondering what you want to do."

"Dinners and drinks are fine, but when that's done, I want to go home. That's why I haven't dated since 2021."

Now that could have come as a shocker, but not for me.  I didn't tell her that I had her beat.  I just nodded in understanding.  I'm sure she has girlfriends with whom she goes for dinner and drinks.  I see "them" wherever I go.  

And yet I have dreams of high adventure and romance when I close my eyes. . . as in days of yore.  

When the neighbor said goodbye, I watched her walk away.  My mother said, "She sure keeps a good figure," and I replied with an old cliche--"Yes, she sure looks good when she's leaving."  Cliched, yes, but a nice oxymoron all the same.  

But the Chinese Horoscope holds out great hope for me this year.  They are usually pretty accurate, right?  

I'll try to be the strong, silent type.  

For those of you who. . . well. . . Charlie Watts was the drummer in The Rolling Stones.  I started listening to his jazz recordings back in the '90s, but I had never heard this one before.