You're No Good

What is that makes me put on Linda Ronstadt today? This afternoon, before going off to do my work, whatever that is, furrowing my brow over papers I seem to grade, staring at my office computer screen, wandering the buildings.

Classroom persona. Office persona. Hallway persona.

Anyway, what is it that makes me slip that cd into my player?
Why did I even buy that cd? How long ago and when?

No matter.

Like you, I’ve got hundreds of cds, maybe a thousand. And they can’t all be explained.

The question isn’t even really why did I put this one in.
The question is: what’s its effect on me.

This is me returning to complete health on a day when the sun shines.
This is me in this afternoon that feels like morning.
Sitting here tired eyed in my workout pants, clothes washing in the machine, bath running hot, tv dead.

Shades up, not a bad day at all, nothing dark on this horizon, the phone waking me up, my son calling, Good morning, daddy. How did you sleep? What did you dream?

Pneumonia fleeing my body.
Heartache like sore muscle pain, something you can enjoy.
This GA winter not rainy, not the way I remember the last two.

This is me greeting the day, reading the computer news, playing a few games of chess, drinking my chocolate soy milk.

This is me deciding on Linda Ronstadt, slipping her in.

Nostalgia factor, the music my mother listened to. The music I heard before I got out of the garden. Gordon Lightfoot. Jim Croce. Neil Diamond. Chris Williams.

I know why I have this Linda Ronstadt cd.
I have all of those cds.
I can quote you songs from them all.
The way my father taught me to collect movies.
The way I buy the Westerns we used to watch.
I can quote you lines from them all.

This is me, Thursday morning, revved up, feeling good.

First rift of “You’re No Good” and I’m out of the chair, pirouetting across the floor.
Dancing like Beavis, dancing light Elaine, dancing like a Saturday Night Skit.

But I’m not trying to be funny.
This is my joy dance.
Flinging my arms around.
Kicking my legs.
Winging walls, furniture, leaping over my laptop and again.
Getting all breathless.
Silly.

I’d never dance like this in front of anybody. Not unless I was a kid and it was my mother. I’d never let some girl see me like this.

But the funny thing is, unselfconscious as I feel, this is when I like myself the best.