Chickens, Concertos, and Cheers: A Dietary Journal for March 11-18

Dear Senior Burns,

I despaired recently upon learning these posts reached a wider audience than the intended none. Truly, I believed we were alone here -- just me and you, Senior Burns, slavering at words like a meat-head pumping iron in a mirror. The only problem, keeping with the metaphor, I forgot that the internet is a giant Gold's Gym: mirrors impinge from all sides. Truly again, Senior Burns, we are not alone. My responsive choice became to either abandon or embrace the available space -- public mirrors and all. As you can see, I've chosen the latter, typing furiously as veins press the edges of my strained neck like prank-snakes in a pillow case. That final metaphor got lost.

Here be the dietary bits I relished over Spring Break -- morsels that I cannot fathom anyone else giving a whipless dollop about.

WORDS: I polished off Stephen King's 1982 novella Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption in two sittings, fully convinced by the end that Andy Dufresne's pages contain the smoothest, most effortless storytelling King ever set to type. It ranks at the top of both my King and my short-fiction list, serving as the gold-standard for what a narrative can achieve when carved with care and conviction. Essential reading for anyone who bears the humbling distinction of human.

Also finished reading Alice Walker's The Chicken Chronicles: A Memoir. Her Pulitzer winner The Color Purple devastated me some weeks back -- it's the saddest, most brutal story I've read to date: and I read loads of horror -- so I needed to chase it with something a bit lighter. The Chicken Chronicles, apparently, was an accidental book, comprised of nearly 40 blogged "letters" Walker wrote to her backyard chickens, all of whom possess names and personalities and prerogatives Walker is determined to celebrate. After The Color Purple, I was glad to meet a more joyful, playful, lighter side of Walker, even if her epistles weigh heavy at times with her dietary politics. Still, the thing I loved most from Walker's letters, the aspect most readily expectant from her voice, was her poetic call to paying attention. 

And the theme rolls around once more, Senior Burns: paying attention to paying attention. Surely, we could stretch an entire manuscript between us here -- like Walker and her brood -- on such a theme. It is that summertime bee that refuses to buzz off but whose buzzing speaks to something vital in the biosphere. Pay attention. Pay attention. What wants to be noticed? Who speaks up from the ground? 

MUSICS: Violin concertos have owned me since the dawning ball dropped. I woke New Year's Day with a hankering for violin that was not fiddle, and somehow stumbled upon Nicola Benedetti playing Elgar's Violin Concerto. Benedetti has become a constant companion: her live rendition of Shostakovich's Violin Concerto No. 1  a nutritional supplement my bones require on the daily. 

A few weeks back I jammed The Bangles debut. Then I discovered some hipster in the Bronx who makes a Berlin-school style electronica that pops my nerd collar. During all of this, Tom Petty's Full Moon Fever found its way into my car stereo mid-January, where it remains. Otherwise, my ears hunger only for violin. And I firmly believe I've found in classical violin what I sought in jazz for too long and for too many dollars. A certain homecoming has occurred in the violin, especially in Benedetti's Shostakovich.

That said, some Swiss boys stole my ears this past week with their blackened melodics. And now I'm expecting Stortregn's Impermenance to top the throne of my top three 2021 albums. Such an early prediction of such a grand trifecta! Senior Burns, I believe -- for the sheer fun of it -- I'll write an old school record review for these boys soon enough. Thanks for being my epistolary chicken.

CINEMAS: After two local brothers made cheerful reference within a 24-hour span, I queued up the pilot episode of Cheers and -- as in a Scottish violinist's interpretation of a silenced Soviet master -- found a homecoming. I remember liking Cheers as a kid, but I was not privy to the full package of Cheers. The writing. The acting. The cast. The fact that Sam Malone is a recovered "great drunk" who owns his bar for "sentimental reasons." It is dadgum perfection in the televisual form. Expect more, Senior Burns.

Best line thus far:
Sam -- "Norm, how's life treating you?"
Norm -- "Like he caught me in bed with his wife."

Latonya spent two nights at Casa de Steph Lee this past week, which afforded me space to watch Crystal Lake Memories -- an almost seven-hour documentary about the Friday the 13th franchise. And, yes, this was time well spent.

NATURES: After the Great Texas Freezeout of mid-February, all plant life above ground is the color of half-burned toast while ground-level topography, all those grasses and weeds drinking deep the ice melt and frequent showers since, are greener than St. Paddy's puke half-a-keg into a pub crawl. Palm Trees are especially sad, looking like humiliated sweet potatoes that rolled behind the kitchen counter. Texas looks as sad on the outside as her people seem to feel on the inside. The yellow rose of Texas is just half-dead red. That's all for my nature report.

Admittedly, after a year of pandemic, three failed 8-week semesters, and the Great Texas Freezeout, my amount of media consumption above is too much. Far too much. Paying Attention -- learning to pay attention as Alice Walker sought so diligently -- requires a certain amount of Nothing. Staring into space. Listening for the buzz of vitality. Comparing the lush ground to the limp above ground. Breathing in the RIGHT NOW, even as RIGHT NOW feels like a dirty rest stop on an underestimated road-trip. Next week, I intend to have less to report, Senior Burns. Allow me to be the Anti-American: my less shall be to our more. And, as a result, we'll be much closer to paying attention to Paying Attention.

Until next time, záijián, my friend.