Reading: Middlemarch and Dancing Shoes

Listening: How Green Was My Valley. And I did walk to work today

Moving: Walked five miles

12 August 2002: Still Leaving

"When you told me you were leaving me I did not know what to say but my eyes told no lies and my tears fell in a silent way."

Haitch gave me a few things as she packed: a purple corduroy hat, a slate blue embroidered box containing scented candles, and three Shoes books, Ballet, Dancing, and Theater. Also a dear card whose note reminded me of things I meant to give her, including one item that would do better along a road trip than in a care package.

As I scampered about getting ready to meet everyone for dinner and goodbye, this is what I compiled:

• a box of Girl Scout Tagalongs. I have given her a box at late summer for three years now, when the Garcia effect from her overindulgence at regular Girl Scout cookie time has receded (this was the thing better for the road trip than a care package)
• Nobody's Fool, because she's reading for pleasure for the first time in years. (Her first book was The Lovely Bones, this week's flavor of the month among escribitionists.) The main reason is that it's set in upstate New York, though about three hours closer to civilization than where she's headed. Other reasons are that I love it and that I heard about it from an old, briefly resurfaced, friend.
• a collection of songs:
  • Billy Joel, New York State of Mind (even though she's moving to New York State, not New York City)
  • Shriekback, Everything that Rises Must Converge (for Flannery O'Connor)
  • Peter Gabriel, Mercy Street (for Anne Sexton)
  • Kate Bush, The Sensual World (for James Joyce)
  • Cat Stevens, Peace Train (in case she didn't know the non-10,000 Maniacs version)
  • David Gray, Babylon (I would have included Don Henley's "Boys of Summer," too, but I don't have it at all let alone on CD)
  • Cat Stevens, Into White (sad, because she's leaving)
  • Cowboy Junkies, If You Were the Woman and I Was the Man (because it's a great song)
  • Kate Bush, Jig of Life (a happy favorite of mine)
  • Peter Gabriel, Solsbury Hill (ditto)
  • Des'ree, You Gotta Be (because however pop and trite, it's soothing and reassuring and I like it, damn it)
  • k.d. lang, Constant Craving (why this one particularly? not sure)
  • Cowboy Junkies, Speaking Confidentially (obvious)
  • Innocence Mission, Wonder of Birds (because of Blake, and because various others on that album are too depressing or guilttrippy)
  • Kate Bush, Them Heavy People (because she is)
  • Michelle Shocked, Silent Way

  (Because I have too much time on my hands, I just ran the average of the release dates of those songs. 1986, OMFB. Even knocking out Cat's two it's 1988. Without the other two '70s and the single one from this millennium, 1989.)

• a card I found last week, the latest in my line of penguin stuff. A penguin toddles along a sidewalk, in focus in front of blurred people. Its caption: "Bravery is no more than a series of small steps."
• and a ball. I have to find the name of the pertinent episode: Lisa Simpson is quite used to being the smartest kid in school, until one day when this other smart chick moves in. Lisa loves the companionship until one day she goes to her new friend's house for dinner and the whole family are smart, as Lisa's are not at all. So they play word games around the table, and when she cannot participate, the new girl's father reaches for a ball, puts it into Lisa's hands, and says, "Here's a ball. Why don't you play with it?" Ever after that episode, when RDC goes off on one of his tangents, Haitch and I will mime handing the other one a ball and perhaps have a small game of mime catch. So last night I got home from work and asked RDC some thing or other and he said a whole bunch of techy stuff, about 15% of which I followed and 100% of which reminded me about something else: I scampered downstairs remembering that I wanted to give Haitch a ball. I gave myself a birthday party in 1992, the memory of which I should like to strike from my brain, except that Julia gave me a ball that flashes when it strikes a surface--a mitt or the floor. It's been idling in a box of oddments ever since and I was glad for it to have a better home. If it winds up in Haitch's box of oddments, at least there will have been the regifting story in the middle.

At Benny's, Haitch's until-last-Saturday roommate, The Other H, who is now Hilp, looked at the cd's song list. She had happened across "The Truth about Cats and Dogs" and watched it through to the end (RDC made a sympathetic noise) to learn who sang "Angel Mine."

The Cowboy Junkies. You will be assimilated. I told Hilp how Haitch has resisted the force of my will ever since their pathetic sound at Fiddler's Green ruined Lilith Fair, and how I converted my sister and how my sister converted her own roommate. Haitch was desperate, pleading of RDC, "You hate the Cowboy Junkies, don't you?" No, he loves them. He just hates most of my other music, except Peter Gabriel. (It's a good thing for him that he likes those two. And if he doesn't listen to Kate Bush on his own he doesn't run screaming from the house. Quite.)

However, I told Hilp, I have my priorities. A Junkies email on 25 July listed that their sole Denver date in 2002 would be the same night as Haitch's post-defense party but not even that induced me to cancel on her.

The obsession continues. Amazon has a skewed sense of my musical preferences because I have never bought a Junkies album thence. But anyway checking release dates for Lay It Down (1996, as I thought) and Black-Eyed Man (1992, really? I bought it fresh?), I read some comments. Someone discovered the Junkies through a gig on SNL and luckily gave the year, 1989. Okay, I could record all SNL episodes, but I don't want to. I want to find the episode number for the 18 February 1989 show and make Tivo look for only that one. Comedy Central and NBC don't help; IMDb doesn't even list SNL among Leslie Nielsen's notable TV appearances; and the web is, dare I say it, not as useful as it could be. Oh well. I can sift among upcoming episodes, but Comedy Central repeats of SNL are usual cut to an hour, aren't they?

At a bar after Benny's, I ordered drinks.

No really, it's that momentous. I have never ordered anything more than a single soda from a bar before. This time I ordered four shots of Wild Turkey, three Newcastles, two Bailey's & Kahlua, and a water (I shared Haitch's water). The bartender asked me if I wanted to keep the tab open, and I said sure but still waited around to sign my debit receipt. I don't get out much.

I had first bounced up to the bar to ask why its logo was No Squirrels. I was kneeling on a stool chatting to the bartender (whose only answer was that they didn't like squirrely people) when a man two seats down commented that I was the tallest person in the place. I wasn't excessively tempted to tell this story, only somewhat. I wondered briefly whether he was just being friendly or actually being pick-uppy; I was grinning, not at him but at my four-year-old self; I had my answer of friendly or pick-uppy when he said something about how if I was going to keep smiling like that, he would do something or other that I tuned out.

Speaking of my nursery school, the Nut Lady (who lives on the same street) is in a nursing home. Poor old fruitloop.