An Aries Knows (this site is more fun when people read and comment)
Current Photo Friday theme: Park
The only park I care about ON THIS DATE, Globe Life Park in Arlington, Texas. Home of the Texas Rangers and tonight, site where I will be enjoying Paul McCartney IN CONCERT. My first concert with a former Beatle ever. And you’ll be hearing about it for weeks when I have time to remember and celebrate it in bits and pieces.
I LOVE PAUL McCARTNEY!
When I was redoing my necklace/bracelets, I texted Lynne a group of charms I was going to put on one bracelet and said, “Bet you’d never guess the theme of this bracelet. And it ain’t Texas.”
She answered, “It might ‘rust.'”
She was referencing one of the four main characters in my second unpublished novel, and I had been sure she would say, “the second book.”
However, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that Rusty is possibly one of the most vivid and dominating characters I’ve written because she is so full of contradictions. In a book balanced with three other major characters, which also includes two VERY strong characters who don’t even have POVs in this novel, she has to have a really strong voice to hold her own.
She is at once fragile but unbreakable, teeming with emotional conflict but very sure of who and what she loves, mystical and yet able to cut right through the bullshit to the bare bones of an experience.
I realized how strong her voice is when I found this journal. It was an accidental find–I was actually looking for notes on my first unpublished novel.
Every page contains songs Rusty wrote. I am not a songwriter, but it doesn’t matter. Rusty’s songs gave me instant recall of the journey she takes in that novel though I haven’t read it for many years.
If wishes could come true, my late friend Riley would be here with me, because I know he could turn these songs into something special, both by extracting only the lyrics he wanted then by putting music to them. He may be the only person I’d be brave enough to hand this flood-damaged book to and say, “Please make magic for me.”
I’ve never been as courageous as Rusty–probably why I needed to write her.
When Tom and I first married and moved to Houston, not making much money and buried in student loan debt, I was walking through the/a mall one day and spied this brass necklace–a different kind of charm necklace, I guess–and I wanted it. I was deeply into writing a novel about a musician and constantly surrounded myself with totems to create a writing mood.
The necklace didn’t even cost very much–maybe forty dollars?–but I put it on layaway to be able to buy it. That’s how little disposable income we had. I threw a few dollars at it when I could until it was mine.
Later, different times and places, I found the grand piano brass pin that was a good match for the necklace. And on a different occasion, a pair of grand piano earrings.
We met Tom’s family in Destin, I think, for vacation sometime during that era, and my friend Riley happened to be living in Florida then, so I got to spend some time with him. He loved this whole little jewelry ensemble–of course! he was a musician and songwriter who payed piano, guitar, drums–and when we said goodbye, he asked if he could have one of the earrings. I gave it to him immediately, maybe our own version of the best friend charm, split into two, which each friend wears on a bracelet until they are reunited.
Who knows whatever happened to his earring. I’d give damn near everything I own to bring him back.
I believe that one day, I’ll be able to write the novel in my head that’s meant to honor the profound friendship we had. Last month marked eleven years since he slipped from my life and out of this world, and I miss him every single day.
The phone rings. It’s Riley.
“Hey, can I come over? I have a new album with your song on it.”
“I have a song?” I ask, smiling. He always chooses a song that’s mine from every album.
“Yeah, it’s your song.”
“Sure. Come over.”
Later he comes in with his distinctive walk and his smile and his dancing eyes, so very Riley-ish, looking like he has something up his sleeve.
He takes out the record and hands me the album cover. I stare at the photo of someone I don’t know: “Elton John.”
Riley gently lowers the arm to play the first song, and midway into it, I laugh. He’s right. It is “your song.”
We listened to the whole album more than once, and I loved it so much that when he left, he told me it wasn’t just my song. It was my album.
It’s drowned now. I have it on CD of course, and no flood water can wash away the memory of the boy I planned to still be hanging out with sixty years on.
I miss you each day, Riley. You can tell everybody that’s your song.
And I cry every time I watch this.
ETA 2022: I’m not sure which video I linked to, but it’s no longer a good link. Since probably everyone knows “Your Song,” I’ve chosen to try again using “Sixty Years On.”
I haven’t done a Polyvore collection in a long while. Since March is Riley’s birth month, and I miss him always, I made a Beatles collage in his honor.
Sending love across the universe to you, as always.
Since the flood, as I’ve thrown ruined stuff away, I truly do understand that things are just things and most are replaceable but some are not, and I just have to deal. I am dealing, actually.
But sometimes a thing is more than a thing. Here’s an example.
I’ve featured this album on my blog before. It’s utterly ruined. Every record inside is in its own sleeve with lyrics, and those sleeves remain a soggy mess stuck to the records.
I’ve long had all this music in my iTunes. There isn’t one song from it I can’t hear whenever I want to. I don’t need the album replaced.
It can’t be replaced. It was given to me by Riley when I was a teenager, and we’d lie on the floor in front of my parents’ stereo and listen to it and talk about the Beatles and music and everything else that came into our heads for hours. It’s one of the things Riley touched and I touched, so our energy is in it together. Riley is dead, and there’s never going to be any new tangible thing like this album for us.
So while it’s just a thing, it’s a thing with an energy that is connected to my heart and soul. It’s a thing that’s hard to throw away. But I will, and everything will go on because after all, all things must pass.
Today is my friend Riley’s birthday. I miss him so much. I want to read a new poem from him, hear a new song, and tell him all the ideas I have in my head for things I want to write, the main one using our adolescence together in a ghost story.
Tom and I started going through those bins on our carport that so desperately need purging. I have an action plan for some of them, so I’m on my way. But mostly I wanted to find all my Riley correspondence. It stretches back more years than I will admit to. I’m lucky that he liked to draw and write and gave me so much of his work.
None of his stuff, of course, is part of the purge. Somebody else can trash it after I’m gone. It still means too much to me.
I love you, John Riley. Thank you for an amazing history.
Ugh, this year, the last week…the death of Leonard Cohen, whose songs I’ve had the privilege of teaching as poetry (and Kate McKinnon’s SNL opening was everything, by the way).
Now another loss that sent me to the closet where my silent albums live.
Lucky enough to have seen him at Farm Aid V, and lucky enough to have friends who could afford all his albums when I was a financially struggling youngster. Besides his solo success, Leon Russell recorded and performed with damn near everyone in his long career. Songwriter, session musician, superstar. This is for Debbie and all the nights we listened to Will O’ the Wisp, for that character Douglas and what he owes to Leon Russell, among many, and for Riley, just because I miss him so much.
Current Photo Friday theme: Blue
How I enjoyed creating this offering (ofrenda) and remembering the ones I’ve loved and lost. They’re always welcome to visit.
Today’s button is part of a bigger picture.
A few years ago, Lynne and I were digging something out of her large walk-in closet at her Green Acres house (she’s in a different home now, and about to move again, but that’s a good story for another day), and she pointed out her fringed, suede vest hanging in the corner, a leftover relic from our hippie high school days. I felt a pang of envy that she still had it and wondered aloud what might have happened to my fringed jacket from that same era. I thought I had a photo of Lynne’s vest, but I can’t find it, though I did one time put a high school photo of me in my fringed jacket on my blog, right after I discovered that it STILL existed. My sister had held on to it through the years and taunted that it would remain forever in her possession.
Debby has just moved to Houston–she found a bunch of buttons in her former basement that she brought to me, and the one above was among them. What she did not bring was my fringed jacket. It had been inadvertently left in a closet of clothes she was donating.
I felt a moment of regret, then I let it go. After all, up until three years ago, I thought the jacket was long gone from my life. It would never fit me now, and anyway, though the jacket would be a tangible connection to people and times that are gone but still loved, it’s all alive in my mind, right?
Then–as Debby was unpacking–look what she discovered!
And I’m sixteen again. Lynne will pick me up in her tiny white three-speed Opel, and we’ll go to my sister’s house that is never warm enough to hang out with Debby’s friends and probably Riley will come over and maybe My First Boyfriend and there’ll be cards and frozen baby Reeses Cups and breaking the law, breaking the law, as hippies did.
I still have my memories AND my jacket. Thanks, Debby!