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| Breached reservoir -- Nashville, TN 1912 |
Trampolines were involved last night when I dreamed of you. You were lying on a grassy knoll at one point (why, why are those two words only associated with JFK?), and when you disappeared, I made my way over a giant trampoline back to my real life.
Today, I have a hangover and it's not from alcohol.
I got an email from a publicist at IHOP who asked whether I'd like to write about their upcoming promotion. If your New Year’s resolution is to enjoy more of IHOP’s delicious buttermilk pancakes—and whose isn’t?—you’ll be happy to know that we’ve brought back ‘All You Can Eat’, one of our most popular traditions and one that guests look forward to all year long, the publicist wrote, and my memory cast back, way back, to Nashville, Tennessee and a guitar player I thought I loved but really didn't. We ate mushrooms together and laughed through the day and into the night. Did we really go to a mall and walk around clothing displays? He was always so enamored of my hair, and it was short then, way too short. I should have known. In the wee hours of the morning, we went to IHOP and ate stacks of them --buttermilk pancakes -- slathered in syrup, then made our way back to the guitarist's dark apartment, hungover, grim.
Should I share this story with the publicist, my memories of stacks of buttermilk pancakes at IHOP entwined with hallucination, illicit and breached love?
I think it was a Sambo's (remember them, back in the dark pre-politically correct days?) where we used to go for our after-mushroom pancakes. Our bodies pressed up against each other, all of us somehow in love with each other after our psychedelic journeys together.
ReplyDeleteI still get a frisson of it all when I walk into one of those horrifically over-lit places smelling of coffee, syrup, batter becoming golden and bacon.
I admire your fortitude and grasp on managing life despite the afflications of your darling girl..I love the way you write the words, the humour in most of them and the strength it shows too..I shall be back to read again..meanwhile have a super New Year, and I hope that it will bring you comfort and joy as they say** janzi over the pond..
ReplyDelete"I should have known."
ReplyDeleteThere is a whole untold story in those words.
You are a poet. This packs a punch, but you feel it slowly, as the poetry unspools.
I too picked up on "I should have known."
ReplyDeleteIf this is your way to write about IHOP's new pancake special, you definitely get points for creativity! :)