Originally Posted Saturday, January 19, 2014
Astrud Gilberto is half the sound of my childhood, I think. Not in actuality, but in the idealized childhood I would remember--and an idealized adulthood that I would live. Click on "Misty Roses" for a bit of it. Really weird, haunting stuff, I think.
This woman's face is of that memory, too. She, like the song and the time of martinis and cigarettes and very beautiful clothing, does not belong in the contemporary world. But then again. . . who does? Piercings and tats and craft beers are not bad things in and of themselves, and I'll give it to hipsters--photographs of them will age well. In twenty or thirty years, they will mark the time better than the people who are walking the Red Carpet at the Oscars. I like to look at pretty people, but I took a gander at the photos from the Actor's Guild Awards and man, that is some ugly clothing. I feel like I'm living in the '70s all over again. I'll defend the Hipster aesthetic if not the haughty attitude. All that is too much like religion for me. I just can't stand to be on anybody's side completely, I guess.
It is colder here than the temperature indicates. This is the coldest fifty degrees you will ever experience. It is thirty-eight right now and my heater runs incessantly trying to warm this old cracker construction. I am certainly happy with my new Starbucks mug bought yesterday when I picked up another pound of Kenya. I went shopping for things yesterday in a leisurely manner. Publix (it is the local big chain grocery), Chamberlains (a big, almost chain "health food" store), Starbucks (I'm just keeping things parallel here by using parenthesis and the word "chain"), and Fresh Market (blah blah blah chain). I realized in my slowness that I am always trying to be super efficient, that I practically run through the stores headed for what I want or need, and dash to the checkout pissed that they are slow slow. But yesterday I picked up things I never look at, oddities to me that apparently have a market, and fairly shuffled my way through the stores. I said hello to people who smiled at me and even kept up my part of the conversations that ensued. It was all good fun. I was one of those pain in the ass slow people who are usually blocking up the aisles. And I bought a mug.
I don't know where I think I heard the music, by the way. My parents never played music in the house. It is funny because they bought one of those big console stereos. I don't think they ever bought an album, though. Surely they must have. Perhaps I am confused on this, but I sure don't remember them ever using it. They never danced together in the living room. They never made martinis and never even had drinks together in any formal way. So where does my memory of all this come from? I guess it was some of the neighbors who did such things. They used their stereos on occasion (the children were not allowed to touch it) and had drinks in cold glasses with condensation. I don't know. I don't care. It is the sound of my childhood. It came, perhaps, from somewhere within.
It is colder here than the temperature indicates. This is the coldest fifty degrees you will ever experience. It is thirty-eight right now and my heater runs incessantly trying to warm this old cracker construction. I am certainly happy with my new Starbucks mug bought yesterday when I picked up another pound of Kenya. I went shopping for things yesterday in a leisurely manner. Publix (it is the local big chain grocery), Chamberlains (a big, almost chain "health food" store), Starbucks (I'm just keeping things parallel here by using parenthesis and the word "chain"), and Fresh Market (blah blah blah chain). I realized in my slowness that I am always trying to be super efficient, that I practically run through the stores headed for what I want or need, and dash to the checkout pissed that they are slow slow. But yesterday I picked up things I never look at, oddities to me that apparently have a market, and fairly shuffled my way through the stores. I said hello to people who smiled at me and even kept up my part of the conversations that ensued. It was all good fun. I was one of those pain in the ass slow people who are usually blocking up the aisles. And I bought a mug.
I don't know where I think I heard the music, by the way. My parents never played music in the house. It is funny because they bought one of those big console stereos. I don't think they ever bought an album, though. Surely they must have. Perhaps I am confused on this, but I sure don't remember them ever using it. They never danced together in the living room. They never made martinis and never even had drinks together in any formal way. So where does my memory of all this come from? I guess it was some of the neighbors who did such things. They used their stereos on occasion (the children were not allowed to touch it) and had drinks in cold glasses with condensation. I don't know. I don't care. It is the sound of my childhood. It came, perhaps, from somewhere within.
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