Let me tell you a story.

[constance]

Once upon a time, there was a wondrous traveling singer whose songs
made grown men weep and grown women huddle together in wary
enthrallment. He sang for kings and impoverished college DJs alike,
and this man, of prodigious acoustical and electric power, was known
to the world as Robyn Hitchcock.

And then there was an ordinary woman, an ageing and increasingly
musically disoriented fan, who, when newfangled trends in music
threatened to overwhelm her, turned to songs such as "I'm an Old
Pervert" and "Uncorrected Personality Traits" for comfort, and,
inexplicably and perhaps somewhat disturbingly, found it there.

This is a true story, and it is, strange to say, also a love story.
The two of them lived in harmony together with their specters and
creepily funny imagery, and things were good, and the woman in
question has been singing the aforementioned two songs in her head,
separately and sometimes mixed together, for the last week and it
makes her happy.

The end.

:::

This morning I got to work and there were pancakes with maple syrup
and orange juice. And there is a new laptop wending its way to me to
replace my old laptop which (like Kevin Costner in Message in a Bottle)
died tragically in a terrible storm a few weeks ago and to also replace
the new old laptop which turned out not to be such a good idea and
which I will now maybe have to resell, and I am wearing blue jeans and
a hoodie and I am sitting in a cubicle with sunshine warming the back
of my head, and I got, for once, an entirely adequate amount of sleep
last night, and I got my tax refund too, and I am in a lovely mood and
I hope you are as well.

Kisses to you are being sent out over the airwaves. I hope you get them.

Comments

[alkaloid.livejournal.com]

It's like having a wife and a dead wife. :-*

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

I'm so so happy to see you back on LJ. I went to visit you occasionally when you lived in that other neighborhood, but it kind of felt like conversations you have with people in your dreams, where you feel you've made some sort of contact but it certainly isn't the normal kind.

I owe you two e-mails, though I will probably only send you one.

[miraminx.livejournal.com]

This term I'm teaching trying to teach literary analysis to undergrads. Last week we began the dreaded poetry section. Hit any undergrad and you get the knee-jerk answer, "I hate poetry." "Why?" "It's hard. I don't understand it." (There's a point to this story, really. Just bear with me).

In an effort to liven things up, I brought in a couple of poems in English. The first one begins,

Blinking on and off it's the Queen of Eyes
With her carapace shell and her black lace thighs
I don't know why she never gets anywhere with you

[etc.]

So we talked about the imagery in the poem, the use of metaphor and allusion, the use of repetition, etc. and then I said, "I've got the poet reciting this on CD. Would you like to hear it?" "OK," they said numbly.

Three minutes later: Prof. Minx is yelling, "Look! Poetry is all around you! But you call it MUSIC! You're surrounded by poetry in your daily life! Pay attention to it!" And the students are sitting there thinking, "My God, she's really gone right round the twist now."

The kicker? Today in class a student said, "I don't like poetry. It's hard and I don't understand it."