11.23.2008

Rugging in November

I'm working on a rug and listening to a jazz recording that my dad has been playing a lot lately- always when I'm working on this rug. So since he isn't home and I'm about to work on this rug some more, I've got to have the music, too. The music is very 1963 movie/New York City. There is one song, the third track, that is of a melancholic note, and about a third of the way into the intro, a flute gives it more of that sixties element, or shopping in the carpeted frozen foods section at Byerly's element- it does take me right there, too. Wait, isn't all of Byerly's carpeted? Maybe jars of pasta sauce don't break as easily when they fall, but when they do . . . .
Anyway. This sure is pleasant. I'm making a memory right now, which makes me think of a  thousand little memorable moments right from the one I am in the process of making. I think of rainy November nights in my old studio apartment in downtown Vancouver- big windows facing down onto the dumpsters where the bums dug in the rain. (I once threw a banana down, but the bum was offended or something and didn't want it).
I think of the shabby Steven's Square apartment in Minneapolis of my first-ever, jazz-loving, conceited boyfriend- same dark rain, but looking down onto the street near Nicollet where a cop car light was whirling. 
I think of my old high school friend who lived downtown St. Paul in a tall, tall apartment building with her mom. Same type of dark November night, but it was a Friday and we were trying, as highschoolers, to convince the bartenders at the Artist's Quarter on the corner to let us stay just for the music- really, truly, we just wanted to hear music. We were not there for the booze or the old guys older than our fathers.
Good Heavens! Here I've dug up this memorable set of moody memories and suddenly the music goes to church! Abbey choir of some sort. What is it? "The Rose Ensemble. Really lovely, but entirely different mood. Ahh, they sing at the Basilica in Minneapolis. Now maybe I should watch "Elizabeth" or something. I guess it's good to know I still have imagination enough to take me out of this house, away from the now. Who says it is no good to live in the past?

1 comment:

Dr Em said...

That conceited boyfriend was the inspiration for Mike's song, "Skanky Boyfriends." It goes like this, to the tune of "Lunchlady" by Adam Sandler:

Parkers and Longleys
Parkers and Longleys

Skanky boyfriends