Better late than never...

...is what I always say.

Is my mantra.

Is, truly, how my generally in-many-ways late-bloomin' life has unfolded. Tonight is no exception.

I commute to and from work by bus and to pass the time (other than by staring slack-jawed out the window at the passing urban landscape since I'm tired BEFORE work begins and AFTER work ends), I usually stuff my ear buds into my ear canals and either listen to my mp3 player, or tune in the little radio it comes with and surf up and down the dial in search of an interesting news snippet or a decent song.

Recently, I've been hearing Blue Oyster Cult's (sorry, can't place the trademark umlaut over the "O") "Don't Fear the Reaper," got all into it (which only took about 30 years--it was released in 1976, to be exact--hence, the Late Bloomy-ness of it all) and just downloaded it for my continued listening pleasure.

It's all moodily existential in a collegiate emo-esque, my-parents-don't-understand-me-cause- I-am-brimming-with-ennui-and-read-Nietzsche/Plath/Sexton kind of way.

Personally, it makes me want to wear blowzy layered skirts of gauzy black fabric over torn fishnets with Doc Martens and bodices made of velveteen and wear my hair long and parted in the middle (this is sounding a bit goth, admittedly) and tattoo one of my boobs and wear too much black eyeliner and write lots of bad poetry and daydream about sex and straight razors (possibly together) and how nice it might feel to run my fingertips along the backs of the necks of all the equally tormented young dudes in my writing classes and convince everyone I know that no one--NO ONE--has ever felt love/pain/loss as deeply or purely or exquisitely as I have, ever, ever. Ever.

In the whole entire history of the world, from the very word go.

That kind of thing.

Luckily I'm well out of college, black looks terrible on me (and black eyeliner makes me look disconcertingly iron-deficient), I actually love my parents, and I don't daydream about sex and straight razors.

Well, not about straight razors, anyway.

Although, yes, I do find the backs of necks terribly sexy, I think Anne Sexton's poetry is sadly brilliant, and I do have a small tattoo, but it's not on my boob.

And I'm very content to listen to my thirty-years-too-late song on iTunes while I do the evening dishes.

And she ran to him/then they started to fly
They looked backward and said goodbye/she had become like they are
She had taken his hand/she had become like they are
Come on baby/don't fear the reaper....

Oldies but Goodies

I have recently been on a vintage Sesame Street kick; I'm not sure why, exactly.

Kinda like when you get a "worm" stuck in your brain--a song snippet that replays itself, over and over, which you find yourself compulsively singing and humming while going about your daily business of toothbrushing, dishwashing, cooking, sitting idly on the bus, whatever, wherever.

And there it remains, like a nervous tic, stubbornly, fixedly, and you simply cannot rest until you find the full version of the song and then replay that, over and over and over, infusing your psyche and satisfying the annoying, cloying appetite of the "worm" that squiggled its way into your brain and planted the song snippet in the first place.

It's a little addictive, a little obsessive, a little repetitive; yes, yes, yes.

And this is the state I have been in over certain vintage Sesame Street animations that I can recall from my kid-hood, specifically, an orange that rolls itself out of a countertop fruit bowl and sings the "Habanera" from Bizet's "Carmen....


...and a many-armed yogi that sits in full lotus and counts to 20 accompanied by sitar music & a woman's voice, which is a total, utter and complete "Hey, kids! It's LSD!" kick-ass psychadelic mind-trip (good for the commune-reared child or, hell, just the Berkeley-reared child, like me).


And now, I can say with great relief that this particular gnawing worm has been satisfied, thanks to my roommate (who initially found the singing orange for me) and YouTube.