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Utopian Turtletop. Monsieur Croche's BĂȘte Noire. Contact: turtletop [at] hotmail [dot] com

Tuesday, August 12, 2008



Driving Sunday afternoon, Sinatra singing "Fly Me to the Moon" comes on the radio. The kid asks me to start the song again. I can't, it's on the radio. He asks if I have a CD of it. I do, two versions, but not Sinatra -- Bennett and the Four Lads. The kid says that playing "among the stars" is impossible, and if someone could live on Jupiter or Mars, their bodies would have to be different so that they wouldn't be able to live on Earth too.

We listen to the song at home. The kid asks what it's about. "It's about love."

"I like this song, because I'm interested in love and I'm interested in astronomy."

* * *

Earlier that day, I heard a big hit of 1971, "Here Comes that Rainy Day Feeling Again." In 1971 I was 8. I don't know why, but probably no song conjures my childhood more than that song. The radio station my parents favored must have played it a lot.

Easy for me to idealize childhood and forget about my own social insecurities, and all of the constant intense change, and the long patches of scholastic dullness; but when I hear a song that pulls me back there, I'm in my parents' kitchen, and everything is good -- it's Edenic. My parents' kitchen was the garden of Eden, where the reigning deities loved me, and food was there for the taking, without any strife or toil that I was conscious of.

The Garden is in my heart.



Comments:
Must be because your favorite sister was born in 1971.
 
Well gosh darn it, that must be it!
 
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