Captain Beefheart

Because I have too much time to think, something that is always in my mind since I was a fan of Captain Beefheart and the lyric “Someone’s had too much too think” from his song Ashtray Heartaaa, I especially think of the meaning of words in Spanish and their equivalents in English. I think of word and their ramifications in how I use them. There are three in my mind a lot. These are route (routines), cycles and stages.

When I see a lovely blond woman in her early 20s (remember at 84 I am much too old to be a “viejo verde”or dirty old man) I smile. I see her as my Rosemary when I first saw her on December 15 1967. That was a stage in my life I cannot return to.

Some days when I have many activities I liven up and escape my melancholy. These come in cycles.

My route to some sort of sanity is to plan my blogs and put the ideas in my blog book that is next to my bedside table.

The route word reminds me of my friend Jim Christy (he has disappeared in Toronto, I believe) who I hired to build a red stone path in the back garden of our Kerrisdale home garden. He stopped at a place and asked me, “Alex , to the left is your garage door and straight ahead is the laneway gate. What should I do?” I answered, “Borges.” He knew exactly what route to take. Borges wrote a story, El jardín de senderos que se bifurcan – or the garden with the bifurcating paths.

A note here. In Spanish the titles of books have only the first word letter capitalized. The same applies to the names of poems.

When I photographed Captain Beefheart we spoke of our love for Harris Tweeds

And here a photograph of one of my daily routines. Mid afternoon. I sit down at the head of my dining room table to read while having a large mug of  Earl Grey Tea. I adore my Lisbon made but available at my Safeway "natas". The silver device for serving butter at tea has been in my family since I was a little boy. I was never curious to ask my mother where it came from. The plate underneath it Rosemary and I bought in Guanajuato, Mexico.