The Wild Winds of Fortune

Yesterday, I met with my job coach. She is a wonderful woman, full of warmth and encouragement.  We talked about my edited resume and my hobbies, and I told her about the Paris Powerpoint project (which at this point qualifies as an obsession more than a hobby), and we set up dates for mock interviews and clothing analysis.  She pointed me towards some job openings I have to send in resumes and letters for.

“You need to take time to appreciate you,” she said.  “You’re so busy looking towards the past and comparing yourself to other people, and looking towards the future and worrying, that you miss what is special about you right now.  What you have done in your life.

“Pat yourself on the back, once in a while.”

I don’t think I know how to do that.

Today’s playlist consists of standards sung by Tony Bennett, Ray Charles, Ella Fitzgerald, Nat King Cole, and more contemporary singers such as Diana Krall, Josh Groban, and Michael Bublè.* I am turning into my parents, clearly. (I also slipped in Adele’s “Someone Like You.” I’m not sure why.)

This is my Valium list.  Why take benzos when you’ve got “Unforgettable” by Nat King (and Natalie) Cole,  let alone Dianne Reeve’s version of “One for My Baby”?

*And Lady GaGa.  She and Bennett did a fun version of “The Lady Is a Tramp” on his Duets album.  The girl can sing.

How do you keep the music playing?
How do you make it last?
How do keep the song from fading too fast?
“How Do You Keep The Music Playing?”  Lyrics by Alan and Marilyn Bergman

The Rocket Scientist and I were married in 1983.  This was our song, of sorts.  It captured the fear of two people entering into the most intimate and emotionally charged relationship of their lives.

How do you lose yourself to someone
And never lose your way? 
How do you not run out of new things to say?

We married young, at least by today’s standards.  We were engaged in college, and were married one  month after I graduated.  We didn’t know what we were getting into.  We realized this.  We got married anyway.

We had to fight to get married.  His family, and my priest, were dead set against it.  We got married anyway.


And since we know we’re always changing
How can it be the same?
And tell me how year after year you’re sure your heart will fall apart
Each time you hear my name

Today is not an anniversary. It is not thirty-two years since we met, or twenty-nine since we got married.  The memories came to mind today because on iTunes I discovered a version of this song by Tony Bennett and Aretha Franklin which I love much more than the original by James Ingram and Patti Austin.  It is sung by people who are older and wiser both than we were at the time and even than we are now.  People older than us still asking those same questions.

I know the way you feel for me
is now or never
The more I love the more I am afraid
That in your eyes I may  not see forever


The fear is still there, at the back of my mind.  I don’t think it ever completely goes away for most people.

Relationships change.  Ours is no exception. You cannot see forever in people’s eyes; it is simply a good thing to see today.  The heart no longer falls apart at the mention of a name. But that does not mean the end:  the energy new relationships have mutates and deepens into a different sort of strength. Once you weather enough storms, you find equilibrium. And God knows, we have had our storms, our pain, our share of train wrecks.

I can’t say we will be married forever.  Contrary to the fairy tales, I think that is an unrealistic thing for most people to say.  I know or have heard of too many couples that got divorced after being together even longer than we have.  Life happens; people change. The world around you becomes a different place. You become a different person.

I do know this, however.  If tomorrow I were to walk away, or he were, soon I would be on the phone or IM or sending emails seeking solace or counsel or just a laugh — or he will.  He will probably always be my best friend,* and I his, regardless of our status as as partners or even a romantic couple.



If we can be the best of lovers
And be the best of friends
The music never ends

I don’t think we’ve done half-bad.


Love you, babe.


*And hopefully traveling companion. Unlike a lot of couples, we travel very well together.  We both love seeing new places and having adventures, and have the capacity to roll with the punches.   I have often told him that if we got divorced, I would still want to travel with him.

I used to never put titles on my posts.  It seemed too much bother.  However, I have been trying to do better about this, because it seems to make the pages easier to read.

There is a post I am currently working on about my experiences this past Sunday.  The perfect title for it would be from the Nick Drake Cave* song, “There She Goes, My Beautiful World.”  I was dismayed to remember that I had already used that title for this post.

Rats.

*It does help to doublecheck the artist’s name before you post.

Today’s musical playlist is comedy.  I’ve been listening to enough depressing ballads lately, I decided to refrain from inflicting them on everyone else here.  I am sitting in the dining/living room, the Red-Headed Menace is on the sofa, and the Rocket Scientist is in the kitchen homebrewing (it is a small house — 1100 sq feet,  5-6 residents).

One of my selections is Kip Adotta’s “Wet Dream.” I love this piece to death.  It drives both RS and RHM up the wall.  The reason in both cases are the simply awful puns.

It’s like Tabasco sauce.  My eldest son has yet to find a food on which he will not put hot sauce — except for possibly ice cream.  I really don’t care for it — my tastes tend to be more … subtle.  (The Not So Little Drummer Boy says that they are not subtle but boring.)

Puns are like hot sauce. Certain types of minds (mine, for example), think they are screamingly funny. Perhaps people like me have simply never progressed beyond whatever age it is that revels in wordplay and silliness.  Perhaps we like them because they allow us to pretend we’re smarter than other people. Those other people find them stupid.  Those other people find them annoying.

Oh, well.  I just need to find similarly warped minds to hang out with.


Edited to add: Speaking of warped, my favorite song on this playlist is Tom Lehrer’s “Masochism Tango.” Railfan and Red-Headed Menace hate it, which simply makes it even more lovely in my eyes, er, ears.

Listening to Weird Al’s “One More Minute” (the best breakup song ever, and the reason Weird Al deserves to be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame), I had to explain to the Red-Headed Menace what a Rolodex was.

I feel so old.

ETA:

Then there was this exchange:

Me: “The legend you are about to hear is true.  Only the needle should be changed to protect the record.”* [looking at RHM]  You have no idea what that means, do you?
RHM: No, not at all.

Sigh.

*From Stan Freberg’s “St. George and the Dragonet.”  That allusion is lost on all of my offspring as well.

The problem with going to sleep listening to the “Dance of the Hours” segment of Fantasia is that you wake up with your brain stuck on Allan Sherman’s “Hello Muddah Hello Faddah.” 

“And the head coach wants no sissies, so he reads to us from something called Ulysses…”

A little over a year ago, I took a class on the newest iteration of MS Office. During class, I made an eight-slide presentation that had thirty-six animations in it.

Just imagine what I can do with fifty to sixty slides.  This is going to be fun.  At least for me.

Watch out, world.  I have PowerPoint and I am not afraid to use it.

The guy who just sat down next to me in Starbucks brought his computer.  Not a laptop, but a full-size iMac G5 with a tower and everything.  Guess he’s planning to be here quite a while.

Which reminds me, I need to go home — I’ve been here long enough myself.  Time to go make dinner.

Tuesday, during a discussion about the State of the Union address on Fox News,  Stephen Moore, usually a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, said “This idea of all the members, Republicans and Democrats sitting next to each other, that’s like date rape.”

No, Mr. Moore, it’s not.  This is what date rape looks like.*

*He is not the first to use this insanely offensive analogy: Grover Nordquist once said  “Bipartisanship is another form of date rape.”  I sincerely hope that these men never have their wives or daughters learn first hand the meaning of the term. Edited to add: I have just had it pointed out to me that being male does not automatically shield people from being raped.  That is true, but I have to confess that being terribly human, I would not be as upset if Moore or Nordquist got raped as if their relatives did — not because they are men but because they are poor excuses for human beings.  It has now been pointed out to me that that mindset views rape as punishment — “they had it coming to them.”  The person pointing this out is absolutely right, of course, and is on this issue a much better person than I am.  Of course, no one should ever have to experience being raped.

The nonprofit I volunteer at is planning their Spring Gala, which is our major fundraiser for the year.  This year’s theme is “April In Paris.” At our planning meeting, someone suggested that it would be cool to have movies about Paris playing in the background (sans sound) during the pre-dinner cocktail reception.

This is why I am sitting cursing MGM (who is, according to the Copyright Office records, the rights holder here) for my inability to find a place to write to request permission to show An American in Paris.  (It was so much easier to find where to get permission for Warner Brother’s April in Paris.)* And wondering if the recent Supreme Court decision in Golan v. Holder means that even early silent films are off limits without permission.  Goodbye, Georges Méliès. (Even though his films are fantasies which would not show shots of Paris, his works are pretty well known and would be of interest following Scorcese’s Hugo — which is a wonderful movie I enthusiastically recommend.)

Our other option is to use a slide show of public domain pictures of Paris.  Fortunately, the Internet is greatly helpful:  I spent a couple of hours online yesterday and found easily 50-60 shots which I can use.  Everything from the Eiffel Tower and the Mona Lisa to Père Lachaise cemetery and Sacré-Cœur cathedral.  I have yet to locate a public domain picture of one of Hector Guimard’s  Art Nouveau Metro station entrances, but I am sure one is out there.**

The problem for me is…. I want to go back to Paris.  NOW.

It’s odd to be homesick for a city which I have only seen three times in my life, for a grand total of less than two weeks.  I have felt it before, that longing for somewhere far away, although it is usually centered on London or Madrid.  (And every time I see one of them, the Lord of The Rings movies fill me with a desire to be in New Zealand.) In both cases, I have spent even less time there than in Paris.

Maybe it is just getting older (my excuse for everything these days, it seems), but I am restless.  I want to roam, to feel that excitement of trying to figure out the signs in a language I do not speak or navigate strange roads where people drive on the other side. I want to see the misty hills of Scotland again.  I want to lose myself in the corridors of the Louvre.  I want to sit at a cafe on the Plaza Major and have churros con chocolat.*** I want to walk along the Keizersgracht and watch the boats carrying the tourists go by. I want to see the malachite room in the Winter Palace, and wonder what it must have been like for the czar to sit there while the Russian people rioted outside, and how in some ways those everyday Russians are the ancestors of the Occupy movement.

I want to leave here and… just go.  There is some outside chance I will go to Italy in the fall, and that will help. I will hopefully get to see Rome, Florence, and Milan. But even that is not an unmixed blessing.

I’ll just have that many more places to long for when my eyes are discontented with the horizon in front of me.

*There are probably better movies to use; both of these were primarily shot on sound stages. I’m looking into it.
**If anyone reading this has .jpgs of these — or any other Paris pictures — that they would like to donate to the cause, you can email me using my profile.
***Actually,  the best churros con chocolat in Madrid are at Chocolateria San Gines,  5 Pasadizo de San Ginés.  Oh, my God. They are so decadently good.  And, according to Wikipedia, they also have a branch in …. Tokyo.