Adrienne and Earl

The almost-twin deaths of Adrienne Rich and Earl Scruggs have me wondering about the kinds of gigs you could see in heaven. (Note: I’m an atheist and probably don’t believe in heaven, but I do like the idea of some world after this one where time is irrelevant and you get to coexist with things/people that came before and after you. Who wouldn’t be comforted by that idea?)

So far, I’m starting with the idea that Miles Davis found Can and they did some jamming.

I like the image of Kurt Cobain asking Jerry Garcia for a performance of “Brokedown Palace” every night.

Hayden Carruth is off pestering Ben Webster.

See why this is great? It’s like fantasy sports, but with culture.

The Trumpeter Chronicles, cont'd

If you’ar an assiduous reader of this blog (and, come on, you’re not – I’m not even an assiduous reader of this blog), you may remember a character by the name of the Trumpeter, so nicknamed on account of her prolific farting. (Which, by the way, has not abated. Why should it?) This morning, I get to work and walk into the staff kitchen to put lunch in the fridge. The Trumpeter is futzing with something, so I keep my head down and try to avoid making too much noise. Alas, she heard the scuffle of my shoes...

Me:…

Trumpeter: Good morning!

Me: …morning…

Trumpeter: How are you?

Me:…fine…you?

Trumpeter: Well, I’m not sure if it was physical therapy last night or not, but I seem to have a strain in my kidney area!

Me:…

Trumpeter: Since it could be a kidney infection, I’m doubling up on the cranberry juice.

Me:…good, uh, luck. With that.

As my parents prepare to pack up and temporarily move house...

…I recently had the opportunity to sit down with my little sis and my mom and watch some old family tapes. A series of startling observations ensued, including:

 

*a bit of a sad feeling realizing that something fun was going on while I was away at college

*kids are so rude – I mean, we just sat there and ate. No “thank you’s,” no “this is great.”

*I probably wasn’t crazy about the “let’s film this stuff.” I mean, I know I wasn’t. I didn’t want a videographer at the wedding. I’m of the “just be awake, and conscious, and you can remember all the important stuff. Your brain is the best camera there is.” Well, no. The brain is a terrible terrible camera. Don’t trust it to record anything. Video is amazing. The amount of stuff you forget is amazing. Video is awesome.

*every time my mom got tired of filming one of her children, she’d say, “Ok, we need to hurry up. The, uh, battery is dying.” My mom is a genius.

*I really wish someone had told me as a kid to just embrace clichés – to be young, to be a kid, to be happy, to be open. Youth is wasted on surly teenagers.

 

And then it was time to go home, because where my parents live isn’t my home anymore. Which is mostly a good thing, except for when you’re feeling a little melancholy, a little old, and a little worn.

 

Why has this never happened?

 

The light turns green. Theoretically, if the 6 cars in front of me and I all accelerate at the same time and at the same rate, we should be able to to start moving as a block as soon as the light turns green, thus eliminating the need to wait for the ripple of forward motion to reach all the way back to me. Now, I know that there are a number of things that would have to align for this to happen – strictly speaking, there are a lot of variables here, and it’s fairly likely that you could repeat this a million times and not get it to work.

 

But I’ve stopped at way more than a million stoplights, I assume, or I will have stopped at way more than a million before I die. On some probabilistic level, like the 10,000 monkeys typing away, this should happen simply due to a random confluence of events. And yet, every time the light turns green, I inch forward only to see that 3 of the 5 cars ahead of me are waiting for the ripple to reach them. And I’m pretty sure it will somehow never happen, which seems wrong.