High as a Kite in a Charcoal Sky
01/22/2006 03:19 a.m.
This may sound crazy, but I think the highest emotional state I can reach somehow combines the sweetness of joy and the ache of melancholy. It seems to me that it is a richer state than joy alone. Here is a half assed analogy: It is like the difference between Kool-Aid and Coffee, the coffee being the headier brew.

I think this is why something like Morrissey’s rendition of Moon River, a recent discovery of mine at the local library, is so powerful. There is pain and joy and longing all intermingled and swelling to a full bodied emotion. I’ve got that song stuck in my head. It is much like the Andy Williams version, but this one drones on for nine minutes, and in the background during the instrumental, a heartbroken woman weeps in the distance. To me, this piece is high art because it makes me feel so alive. (I know, I know, I keep referencing Moon River in this journal, but I make no apologies to those of you who find it cheesy.)

For no particular reason, I have been in an overall heightened state these past few days, and it combines joy and melancholy in one powerful charge. For example, Sunday was perfectly chilly with drizzle and wind here in North Carolina. The leaves are down, piled, and scattered everywhere in reds, browns, and yellows.

I did simple goof-off things like eating lunch at the Indian buffet, so diverse in little explosions of great spice flavors in the curried vegetables and meats (bless them for doing that, and damn ye, mcdonalds). Then I went downtown to the moldy old library and picked out a book called “The Leaf and Cloud” by Mary Oliver, and though I don't hardly know her, I think I could love her. Next, I walked around town (whistling Moon River the whole time, and in a way no chance listener could enjoy. I just can’t whistle with the style of a 1950’s barber) and got this deep down bone chill while standing steamy mouthed behind the BB&T building where the wind whips between the structures and the fountains hiss and the pigeons bathe.

I went to Borders and savored a vanilla Café’ Au Let and purchased the new Ray Davies EP (his first release in years, and halleluiah, a full album is coming in 2006, God bless that knobby kneed Englishman!) and a calendar for my Mom that has lighthouses in storms with huge sprays of waves curling high on their cylindrical shapes (it tingles my spine to look at these-imagine sitting in the top of such a structure looking down and around at a storm-sea rising up at you.)

And miracle of miracles, this mood has carried forth into my rainy Monday. Despite the weather, all the doors and windows have been flung open for a time, and I welcome this. On and on I go...