A toast
I have made a fancy cocktail called “El Presidente” with rum, dry vermouth, cointreau, grenadine, and a twist of lemon. (And a cherry for extra.) A toast to Vicky and Peter. Co-inventors of the RISC chip, and the oriental shorthair cat, among so many other things but I like those tiny touchpoints. I used their Cointreau and their fancy lead crystal coupe glasses.
The other day I did a rare post on FB. I do think about this a lot as my reference points (people) fail to communicate. Communing with (personal) ghosts becomes less meaningful as others who didn’t know them personally lose the meanings associated with their reality. Communing with parasocial, famous ghosts, like dead novelists and poets, or figures from “history” is something I’m used to. It means my head is in the clouds, I may have learned to act relatively normal but the way I actually feel is like I’m surrounded by this fog of imaginaryness, my poet’s geography. I can see now that aging is like moving further into that alien and misty world where even fewer people can share the landscape.
Had my little cup of Sightglass coffee from Alice’s memorial. It is very moving to think of her wanting her friends to share something she loved in this way. I am reminded of a friend who for 30-40 years has been pouring part of her morning coffee every day into a tiny cup for Jim and telling Jim what’s up. I don’t go that far but I do have particular places where I anchor my memories of people and say hello to them as I pass.
For Alice that is Atlas Coffee near her old place and Mint Plaza for the new. For my friend Beth Brown that is when I am in Pacifica near Crestview and I think of her books, loafing in her hot tub, her gossip about her many pet rats, all our other gossip and just her funny little face. For Eno it is any sort of picture of a hunky manly dude and also when I have some boba (OK, that’s not a geographic place but…. she was always sending me her thirsty-ass hunk pics, which aren’t my jam but it made me laugh) and I like to think of what she would have to say about our political situation. The landscape and daily life becomes more and more full of ghosts, benevolent ghosts as I get older. They enhance and deepen my life every day.
That sucks to lose people in real life but I do see how they remain present in our memories and how I will integrate that. The other trick is to keep making new beautiful friends and appreciating them to the max. I really love people!!!
Alice’s coffee is very delicious — I had it as a pourover, a french press cup, and then as filter brew and am not sure which came out best.