Pickles & Onions

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PICKLES & ONIONS

I was gonna do The Cure this week, and we were gonna talk about home. I was gonna share Lovesong and the lyrics, like the old days, because we’re back to being lawless.  I would say how it’s a love song for a love of deep knowing and deep comfort, wherever it be, ya know? I was gonna break out the Plato. 

I was gonna tell ya how I was singing along to The Doors when my high school boyfriend heard something hilarious. He corrected me: A coat tree in your heart? No, it’s a country. And that was disappointing because fuck a country. What good did a country ever do me? But a coat tree in the hall of someone’s heart, now, that warms the cold cockles. I was gonna mention that Midwestern saying: “Take off your coat and stay a while.” You are wanted. You are loved. You are home. To be brought home to one’s self, as happens in the Cure song, that’s really the stuff. I’ve had one country do that for me – Greece – but I’ve known a few souls who could reel me back to myself. It’s not the domain of romance alone. We all need someone we can cream on, but even Mick admits that there’s more to it.  A lover can make you come, but who can call you home? 

I was gonna tell you about the time my dad disappeared into the New Mexico wilderness and once, under a bright moon, a moon like a lantern, he heard my mother calling him. Paul! Paul! Dad came down the mountain at dawn, tired from riding all night, overgrown and bearded. He was high on his steed, shafts of sunlight on his shoulders. He looked like a painting in a church.

A man dropped to his knees.

“How am I worthy of this visitation? What do you ask of me?”

Dad said, “Hey, buddy, how ‘bout a beer.”

 “Oh christ, I’m broke. I’m always telling ya.” 

“Yea, what about that 20$ sticking out of your pocket?”

“That’s for me and a friend for later.”

How’s that for a gospel? Ya like that, punks?

Well, you’da loved the next part which was about my mom following a UFO all night. until it led her right back home. No orifices were probed in the telling of this story and, maybe that’s a shame, but it’s my point.

I was gonna tell you about Carly. Every time bestie entered my house, she’d check the freezer for her favorite ice cream. I kept Cherries Jubilee on hand and oh boy, it made her feel real good. From there, I might’ve veered into Simone Weil’s “the real good” – what it is and how capitalism is trying to kill it. 

“Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.”

― Simone Weil

This love is the best love. Take it wherever you find it, and make it happen for others. Never be stingy. If someone feels safe with you, then you are doing something right. Be that childhood nursery rhyme with the intertwined fingers, where the church with its steeple opens up to reveal all the wiggling people. I mean, man, ya see? Right here, I might’ve laid some Arnold Mindell on you.

I’d hit ya with the Dreamingbody and how the ancient Greeks called fingers (digits) the “midwives of the soul” which is fucking wild, because neuroscience shows that our moving hands keep us sane. Not the working hands (not the typing away at spreadsheets hands) but the loving hands. The intimate movements we use to make love, mittens, supper, home. Art. 

We’re lacking in this department, due to dishwashers, microwave dinners and dollar store gloves. Our hands are suffering under capitalism. Our minds wither with them. For you, nerds, I would’ve posted a link to the studies on this.

I’d recall Uncle Herb meeting us on the porch, calling “Hey you honkys!”

That would lead to the coat tree in my grandparent’s front hall and the smell of the hall. And the sound-nails, tails-of the terriers in their winter sweaters. That coat tree was gonna bring me back to this artwork by Ami and I’d close with this line: we all need someplace to hang our panties. 

But I got distracted by Ami’s artist bio. I found out that the artist has been in a “Stateless” band for 35 years. Immediately, I’m listening to Danball Bat, and suddenly, I’m thinking, “Okay, but like…is there no better love than pickles and onions? “