pink drinks and white nights

There we were, last night, the Sad Liberals, coming together in the old neighborhood, skirting in our discussions the real troubles of the world, preferring to focus on developments in our own homes and spaces, because, really, it’s too hard to replay the news stories that one hears each day, too hard to remember how close it came to being a different set of stories that November 2nd.

When I left the old neighborhood this past summer to live downtown, I am sure in those blocks I left behind images of a person driven by wild chaos: those last months were all about frantic cooking, ranting, packing and yes, cosmo drinking. A mad fury, needed to get me from one place to the next.

So I am handed a gift last night, something for the tree, but something I decided to put up on my loft refrigerator.





A nostalgic prod into days when I made cosmos that were too strong, where I hardly saw the pink in them, where what I said did not matter just as long as I said it forcefully, where evenings rolled into mornings on the strength of a calendar pushing one day into the next.

Of course, friends know better than to say that I have settled down into a steady pace now. I’m up late, up early, up all ours of the night. Agitated by the wealth of bright things that happen each day, I need less sleep. Markers of chaos then, of great sanguinity now.

Late last night I drove home on one of those bright winter nights were you need no headlights to see what’s ahead. Deer tracks, visible on both sides of the road, white fields, tinted with blue light, serene calm outside, pounding music inside my own space. That pretty much describes my movements now – both the serenity and the pounding music within.