Place of Refuge

Place of Refuge

13 May 2011

Long Play


So,
please don't
be upset with me --
(I suspect you'll be relieved)
this is no intense
essay on the meaning of life, the world,
and everything.

I call those "channellings",
and this is not one
of them.
I am certain I lose readers when I do those channellings
those long,
long riffs -- and I'm grateful to those of you
who remain with me.
They're getting harder to do,
because what was meant to be said
in them,
has been said.
For the most part.
(But there may be more to come --
it's not something I have a terrific amount of control
over.)

For now, all I'm going to say
is that we should all learn to love life,
now, peacefully,
if we want to keep living life
as we know it.

That's all we can do.

So, in my own attempt
to learn to live life fully and happily
every single fucking lonely day

I decided to do a cleaning out of my stuff.
My goal:
to make sure that everything in my current house
is something I actually use and/or can use
in the near future.
Otherwise,
it's getting thrown out.


You see, I've moved so very much,
and accumulated stuff
all along the way,
and I've actually moved old stuff with me.
I'm talking old stuff, 
like this 30+ year old Sony TV
sitting behind me at this very moment.
It was always a good TV,
and it worked right up until
the change from switch
from analog to digital.
I'm bound and determined
to get it working this summer,
and I will.



The other thing I've carried around with me
-- also a Sony --
is a turntable,
that I bought in about
1983.
Seriously.
I've been absolutely convinced that
I would one day again
use it to
play the two boxes of albums I've also been carrying around with me
for the past thirty years,
or so.

Well, in my current abode, I have a room
that needs to be furnished,
and all my spare furniture includes
an old TV and my turntable,
and two boxes of albums.

So this past week I finally did it,
I went out to the nearby Radio Shack and bought
a receiver and speakers.
I took the first receive back
(I think it was a Panasonic):
it was a nightmare to set up and figure out,
and when I did figure it out,
I could not get either my turntable or my iPod
to work with it.

There I was: I had paid $200 dollars for this sucker,
and I was already thinking about the other components
I would have to buy to get it
to make due;
and then I got furious at my self: 
Why make due?  Why keep some crappy piece of equipment
that probably won't last even half
as long as my Sonys?
And I took it back,
and got
another receiver -
this one is a Sherwood -
that
not only plays my iPod, but also
my nearly 30 year old Sony turntable
is currently working as well as it ever did,
and me,
I'm a happy woman, listening to my old
Ricki Lee Jones collection,
and feeling like I found
a part of me again.



1 comment:

Debra She Who Seeks said...

Some of those old albums are absolutely irreplaceable, aren't they? I kept about 15 LPs from my once vast collection that I knew would not be reissued on CDs and about 5 years ago, I yearned to hear them again, so I bought a small portable record player just to play them on. I only listen to them once or twice a year now, but what memories those LPs bring back!