December 31, 2011

Lightened the challenge of this day by spreading out cooking over the last few days. A pistachio cream pie and a Julia Child cream of cauliflower and watercress soup chill in the fridge. Wild rice and roasted goose and root vegetable should be, by comparison, simple this afternoon. DJ is making an eggnog which may slay all the senses and render my care unnecessary.

On K’s sudden impulse, we drove to Johnson City, Tennessee last night to the Down Home bar, to hear Doc Bonhomie, Russell’s band. The drive was seriously dark in both directions, but the bar was merry and the band were all excellent musicians, amiable and crowd-pleasing, with nary a faltering voice among them. They did largely originals which, while impressive, lent a sort of soft-focus monochromatic lyricism to the first set, after which one rejoiced at the hard-rocking vitality of the various covers and rock allusions in the second. If I were their manager I’d tell them, don’t do two college-boy soul-revelations back to back, at least not in a bar in Johnson City. Their skill in any case was amazing. That they got their start together in the ETSU chorus is everywhere (and splendidly) apparent.

Oh, anthems at the year’s end! One may always fiddle and adjust, and there may be whole vast areas of possible improvement to which one is simply blind, but forgiving that, I don’t know what I could do to make a better life for myself, a life for myself that I desire and dream of, than I have already, or am doing, in some cases almost from the beginning of it. What is left is for the universe, and were there any way to force the universe’s hand, I would have found it, having, there also, tried almost everything. Though I am not good, I am not the worst in the world at lying back and letting it all unfold, so that is the pertinent resolution here at the end. The universe thus far has largely wasted me, but one keeps in fighting trim, keeps one’s lines solid in mind, heeds distant cues for the moment when the curtain opens.

The cats make playthings out of my cast-offs. There is something there.