View from the Canyon
It always starts like this: I’m in some restaurant, a diner, a chop house, a noodle joint, and I hear amid the clatter of knives on greasy plates, the laughter and the lies - I hear that song. Our song. In this case it was “When I Grow Too Old To Dream”, from Jimmy Smith, Back at the Chicken Shack. Nice smooth organ grooves, thick like sauce on a rib. Stanley Turrentine on tenor and Kenny Burrell choking that guitar until it weeps like a beautiful child.
It always brings me back. Back to memories of... Bondo. All those days we spent last week, sitting out on my lanai naked, wearing nothing but bonnets made from flowers, and talking about astrology and the mysterious origins of various common seasonings.
Where does salt come from? I asked.
And Bondo said, I can’t believe I don’t know that.
There’s so much we don’t know, Bondo, I said. Like, how does TV even work? I totally don’t get it. It may as well be the ghosts of tiny Vikings trapped in there.
And, like, dolphins, Bondo said.
And I said, what about dolphins? I don’t follow you.
And Bondo said, nothing, it’s just that they’re really smart, and we still don’t know how smart.
And that reminded me that I still love Angie Dickenson. Why? Because that was a woman who understood how smart fucking dolphins are. Angie, I’m getting down with this Bondo woman now, but back in the day? You and me? Sparks.
Bondo, who I met at the Burbank Airport, dressed in her Bonnet of Flowers
Saturday, February 3, 2007
Memories: As Fragile as Moonbeams? Or...Deadly.
