Mood Piece
Song of Love
My biggest regret in life — apart from wishing I’d spelled “recognize” correctly in the 8th grade spelling bee … I’d have taken State!! To this day, I think about that brain fart moment when I dropped the g, and puttered out “r-e-c-o-n-i-z-e” … and the judge then, pausing significantly, completely ignoring me, turning to my opponent and intoning, “Recognize?”.
… My opponent remembering the goddamn g! Spelling “recognize” CORRECTLY, and setting off my lifelong descent into failure.
“Needless to say, you failed” … my driving instructor also intoned to me, several years later, as I dinged a parked car while parallel parking. I didn’t get my license that day, my first try, at sixteen, and my piss-poor, abyss-diving life drove downward …
Brother Theodore on Letterman: all angsty pangsty, acting like he just burped up from hell. Dark chords were struck, a bond was born, his shtick of torment, mine as well …
— but where was I? Failure … Regret!
The (second) biggest regret of my life is that I can’t play an instrument. Bopping sub tactilely, digging “the” jazz, doesn’t qualify me as a SoundCloud “creator”. House all piano-less, tuneless fingers … notes and tones just heard, unplayed. Oh, would I spoke the languages of nature (plants) and music! I can only see and hear … Appreciate.
And then, that one who got away. You know who you are (Claudia) … You ‘got’ me, understsood my Drang, my Sturm, und stood beside me. You, who laughed at my suggestions, my sad efforts at suggestiveness … You laughing, tousled hair and bird-like visage, made my losing less …
Could we have played things differently? If I blew notes, instead of all that air when we togethered??
Would we each be part of One, still? How I wonder where you went!
But I digress …
The parking meter’s hungry. I can ill-afford to feed her … Traipsing out, about to do so when I trip upon my laces, sprung undone because the shoes are cheap, like a bed in a hostel instead of a suite.
It’s raining, as I’m on the street … Getting up ‘cause a cop on his beat comes to greet me. Otherwise, I’d die here (“lie” or “lay”?) and just forget you. But I can’t forget you, Claudia! Feel you playing still, my instrument … You taught me all the things I could’ve kept, to keep in time, you mine … but me, I tuned them out, and we …
Our concert’s over.
Now I try my best to solo, but I can’t create the music!
No, the biggest regret of my life — beyond the lack of talent and the 8th grade spelling contest — is that blue, I note our lost motif and recoGnize it won’t repeat …