Electronic Writer

Tonight, after work, I made a nice dinner for myself. I love to feed myself with good things. I had some minnestrone soup, and a salad with feta cheese and grilled chicken. It was easy stuff to prepare, but I feel better about myself when I take some time out of my life and make me something yummy to eat.

I finished the dishes as my espresso percolated to a finish. I could smell the oily coffee over the scent of the soap and warm water. I dried my hands, poured the inky blackness into a clear glass, and finally sat back to sip that espresso.

It has been a long week–for many reasons. I am glad it is finally over. There will be a chance to do some things for myself for a couple of days–more cooking, and more writing. There will be a chance to get my mind off things for a couple of days before I return to the week-long money-earning process.

I have always imagined myself to be surrounded by a bubble of sorts–a thin membrane separating the crushing weight of the universe pressing inwards towards me. During my short 90 years on this earth, I suspect that I will always push that membrane outwards. I will ceaslessly expand that space inside that I occupy, or else I will surely be crushed . . . . This is the measure that I use to evaluate my efforts. Am I winning, or is the pressure of life stronger than me.

Right now, I am making progress on expanding that bubble. I AM growing, and life is currently NOT pummeling me, but I could be happier. As I sit, relaxing for the first time all week, I let my mind wander a bit, and the CD is playing in the background. It is Jackson Browne’s, “the next voice you hear: the best of jackson browne.” The songs have wound their way along to “Sky Blue and Black.”

This song has always evoked a mixture of feelings for me. It is a love song, but a sad one. It is a song saying that he is sorry and that he misses her. And, there was a solemnness to it when I saw him sing it at Red Rocks. There was something about how his voice formed the letters in this one that set it apart–something in the way he sang this song that even the casual listener heard.

While I lived in Denver, I had become really close over the course of 8 or 9 months with a friend who was from Morocco originally. He had been living in the US for years–and was about to gain his citizenship. Although his English was great, we spent a good deal of time speaking in French to help me get back into practice. In fact, we literally spent months talking only in French.

My restaurant vocabulary was particularly acute because we both worked in a restaurant. As we ventured out to other conversations about friends, girlfriends, travel, families, hates and loves, however, I had to stretch my vocabulary. The more we talked about literature and pop culture, the more words I had to learn. The more I had to learn to be able to describe. The more that the subtleties of language mattered, the harder I had to work to voice them in the French language.

When Jackson Browne was schedule to play at Red Rocks Amphiteatre, I bought tickets. Red Rocks is a mystical place for a summer concert. The short-sleeve t-shirt weather, the lights of Denver flickering in the background, the afternoon thunderstorm lumbering across the plains towards Nebraska, the stars, and the wavy and colorful stratified sandstone lining the edges make it a perfect place on earth to experience music. I had been dating a woman in the run-up to the concert and things in our relationship had finally gone awry about a week before the show. I gave the spare ticket to a coworker, and went to see the show basically by myself.

The following week, my friend and I had both worked a lunch shift, finished early in the afternoon, and caught a late lunch on a patio somwhere in the downtown area. We took the time to talk over a couple of beers while waiting for the afternoon shower to dump the hour of rain and move East towards Nebraska. After the rain finally let up, we walked back towards our neighborhoods, and he inquired about my obsession with Jackson Browne’s music.

It was not an obsession, I told him, but rather that his music has an element that speaks to me. He sings about common things: love lost, broken-down cars, drug problems, and spending your whole life working for money–and how empty that makes you feel. Jackson Browne also, at times, shines like a poet. He puts words to moments that I have experienced. And, “Sky Blue and Black” has one of those moments:

I remember as we walked that afternoon how important it was for me to translate the subtleties of the word choices from English into French. It was difficult to convey just exactly how the simple imagery worked together to make the lyrics into something much more complex. Those simple details had become reminders of both his loneliness and his acceptance of the way things had ended. They were simple things that we cannot escape–that sound of your tires in the rain, or seeing the reflection of a sunset. But rather than becoming a trap, he see the beauty in them. That is how he thinks of her. The beauty of the little things everywhere around him remind him . . . of her.

It was a great experience working through that song–translating the subtleties into French. Every time I hear it, I think of that afternoon. And now, perhaps, I will also think of her.