TheBanyanTree: Cecil's Play List

[tobie at shpilchas.net]

Oh Dale,

	Absolutely beautiful. I am not one for nostalgia. There is no era in my life that I would wish to visit inspired by a wistful yearning. But hearing about Cecil, long gone Cecil, whose death I assumed but never heard about, and Dee, our Dee, an indomitable spirit. Often I think about Youngblood, how I flew down to Houston with an enormous artwork covered with souvenir spoons — I had to sit outside on a back stoop while she and Alice smoked and smoked and smoked and smoked.

	You know the last email that Youngblood wrote to me was maybe the most mysteriously poetic. She said the cancer had spread to her brain and she wasn’t thinking straight, but there was this disjointed that comes to me every once in a while and I love it. Love it.   There were a few words that came before it which I don't’ recall. But the best part was this:   "……pearling roll joints."   Sometimes I feel like that—like whatever it is I’m saying makes sense to me but not to anyone else in the world or maybe in the world to come. But it still satisfies.

	It’s Shabbat, the candles lit, and as such I can push everything profane and mundane away, just shove it off the plane of disturbances and take a rest from it all. It’s a discipline to be sure, learning to push it all away, but well worth the agony of the training. You don’t have to be Jewish to gather up the comfort and relief of the Sabbath. And it needn’t be religious at all. I don’t consider myself religious, but I have a purist streak a mile wide and value ritual. Okay, then there’s the five thousand years of history and the extremely limited gene pool ……….. so ………. I am respecting my ancestors who came to the United States escaping the pogroms in Lithuania/Russia/Poland (they never knew which country they were living in. The borders were all in dispute and the Jews were only allowed to live in "the Pale of Settlement". I looked at a map once and it suddenly made sense: the Pale was a strip of territory along the disputed borders. It was like this:  Yeah, you can come invade us but you’ll have to go through our Jews first.

	How did I get off on that?

	Cecil Talley. Cecil. And Dee and Youngblood and …… I don’t think I remember Barra the Bard. Can you enlighten me? I’ve been here for a long time and so much has happened.  You’d hardly believe it. I haven’t talked about it much. But let me just say …………………………………… phew.  Still here. Still capable of being ecstatic. 
	
	Thanks, Dale. 

Love to you all,


Tobie

> On Dec 10, 2021, at 6:25 PM, dale.m.parish--- via TheBanyanTree <thebanyantree at lists.remsset.com> wrote:
> 
> I was digging through some storage boxes and stumbled across some cassette
> tapes among the audio books on CDs.  One was Cecil's Play List from The
> Spoon, volume 2, J-O.  Don't see volumes 1 and 3 on top, but I still have
> the files from which I printed the cassette labels with the names and
> artists of all Cecil's wish list.  I shipped him all three cassette volumes
> after I'd collected all of his picks for which I could find recordings only
> a few months before we heard of his death, so can only hope that he got a
> chance to listen to them in time.  I'm going to have to mount the cassette
> drive and listen to these again, and look for the other two volumes.  I've
> lost the story he told of how his family moved west in the wagon.
> 
> 
> 
> I also miss Dee's selections on the juke box.  And Wes's train rides.  The
> two Julies always kept my attention, as did Barra the Bard, whom I see is
> still on the net, telling stories at Renaissance festivals.  Corresponded
> with her a few years ago, and she sent me a special story I was trying to
> recall.
> 
> 
> 
> Pilgrimage time is coming.  Miss Stargazr's Tangerine Dream.  Wonder who's
> driving it now.  The cemetery in Galveston is much prettier in March than it
> is in December, when all the daisies are blooming-- a solid field of yellow,
> punctuated by gravestones and markers.  
> 
> 
> 
> Hugs,
> 
> Dale
> 
> --
> 
> Dale M. Parish                                   For All Of Mankind'S
> Supposed Accomplishments,
> 
> 628 Parish RD                                    Our Continued Existence Is
> Dependent Upon 20
> 
> Orange TX 77632-0264                    Centimeters Of Topsoil And The Fact
> That It Rains.
> 
> <mailto:Dale.M.Parish at gmail.com> Dale.M.Parish at gmail.com
> --Toilet Stall Wall
> 
> 409-790-2352
> 
> 
> 
> 
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"Haste makes waste."   Old proverb

"He who hesitates is lost."    Old proverb

"Look before you leap."  Old proverb

"Man plans: and God laughs.  "Old Yiddish Proverb

Tobie Helene Shapiro
mailto:tobie at shpilchas.net <mailto:tobie at shpilchas.net>