Last week after listening to “La Reina del Baile” (ABBA’s Spanish version of “Dancing Queen”), I sought out other versions of the song. The Real Group and Frida performed a fantastic a cappella version for the Queen of Sweden’s 50th birthday.

Being unfamiliar with The Real Group, I looked for more of their music and saw they had covered “Nature Boy”. How wonderful, I thought, that they covered a song by Big Star, although I found myself preferring the more raw vocals of Alex Chilton.

Until that day, I didn’t know Chilton was not the writer of “Nature Boy”. I was also completely unfamiliar with any other versions of the song, most notably Nat King Cole’s original. I didn’t know it was written by someone named eden ahbez, who around that time lived under the Hollywood Sign.

In that moment of revelation I felt like the boy who heard Andy Williams’s Greatest Hits on 8-track, thinking he must have written most of the songs on that album. As a boy, I assumed every musician of the time was writing most of their own songs.

This remains the gold standard for me: singers and bands should write the music they perform, just as poets should read their own words, and stand-up comedians should write their own lines, and scientists should present their own research. But I can’t fully justify this. After all, I certainly don’t expect orchestras or conductors to compose their own music, or writers to be the readers of their audiobooks, or actors to pen their own lines, or undergraduate students to develop their own theories.

Why this distinction? That’s just the way it is, sometimes performers create the work they perform, and sometimes they don’t is hardly a reason.

Kelly, Kyle, Dad, and I are staying outside Newton, New Jersey, where today we celebrated Auntie Connie’s 100th. While her actual birthday was last Tuesday, the four of us couldn’t travel out here until the weekend, gathering together with Gaby, Chrissy, Maria, Anna; Gus, Chil, Justine (with her dog Lola), Matt; Bong, Malu, and Rafael.

My experience is limited so I am only supposing: for those among us who have the fortune to reach the century mark, our personalities become tumbled by life’s currents, our rough edges worn away until what remains is a polished essence of our souls.

…

So you could be looking out the window upon a gathering in your backyard, making out one of your brothers with your keen eyesight, holding in your warm soft hand the hand of that brother’s son, smiling as you recognize and remember both of them, your expression changing abruptly as you remember that brother’s twin has died. But a few minutes later you could be struggling to recall the name of your beloved husband, who served in the Navy and had the foresight to provide for you for decades after he passed. Or you could be seeing the balloons that spelled out “100” and not know those balloons are there for you.

You are living the second childhood Jacques describes in “As You Like It.”

…

The years can play out in different ways. At a diner afterwards, we met someone who is 99, wearing a cap indicating that he himself served in the Navy during the Second World War. Dad at 91 clearly recalls the names of everyone in the three families who lived with him in the jungles of the Philippines during the war, hiding from and fighting against the Japanese occupation. It helps to have a photo, a rare photo from that time and place, somehow developed by my father’s father.

In that photo, Auntie Connie is standing straight, tan, confident, smiling. 

A list of the ways West Side Story (2021) is better than West Side Story (1961):

• Choreography is tight in the street scenes: spectacular with the larger number of dancers.
• Rita Moreno; Rita Moreno again.
• Casting actors with Latino heritage is far better than putting them in brownface.
• Rachel Zegler speaking and singing is better than Natalie Wood speaking and not-singing.
• Spanish! Spanish spoken between the Puerto Rican characters.
• Bright clear voices in the “America” number.
• A wider depiction of New York City, near the time of my birth there and where I have lived as an adult.
• “Somewhere (There’s A Place for Us)”: having Valentina voice those lyrics.
• “A Boy Like That / I Have A Love”: more natural blocking and vocal inflection.

A list of the ways where I can’t decide which version I prefer:

• Staging. The original is claustrophobic, appropriately. (In the new version, going to the Cloisters implies Maria and Tony’s problems will dissolve if only they would leave the neighborhood, but the reality is racism exists everywhere.) On the other hand, the more realistic establishing shots in the new version take us beyond the occasionally distracting artifice of a movie set that looks like a Broadway stage.

This afternoon I’ve been occupied with picking up a heavy dresser that I saw listed on Nextdoor, chopping up vegetables to make roasted mirepoix, and practicing Spanish on Duolingo.

When I pulled into the alley just a few blocks south to pick up the dresser, the woman who listed its availability happened to be there. She said they had it for many years and pointed out that the entire right side was covered with découpage: old photos and messages from which I did and continue to avert my eyes, because I am stunned by its sentimental value. She said that she had taken a picture for her daughter. It was a task to put the dresser in the car, involving removing a seat belt, folding down the seats, removing the cover and netting, and then lifting the hefty object. This afternoon I will bring the dresser into the house, clean it up, haul it to the second floor, organize some clothes. For now I’ll leave the collage.

I enjoy roasted mirepoix and it is so simple to make. I was inspired years ago when Marissa was making a delicious roast in a cast-iron pot, and the aroma was marvelous. Having been a pescetarian for exactly sixteen years today, I had to find a solution — so I made a vegetable roast, with ingredients similar to what I would use when I made pot roast, minus the beef. Besides chopped carrots, onions, and celery, I pour generous amounts of good-quality extra virgin olive oil, Worcestershire sauce, garlic powder, black pepper, and salt. Today I omitted the potatoes (usually I incorporate root vegetables, such as a variety of baking potatoes and sometimes sweet potatoes). It’s not exactly how I would make beef pot roast — in my version, there would be powdered onion soup and condensed mushroom soup — but it’s healthier and simple. Over the years this simple recipe has received good reviews from people whose tastes I respect very much: Jason at a office holiday potluck; Kelly and Kyle during Thanksgiving. The only difficult part, once the shopping is done, is chopping everything up. To cook down six kilos of vegetables requires a lot of chopping. Because it cooks for well over an hour, it’s also suitable during the colder months. I hope the oven, with its unreliable digital controls are unreliable, holds through. I just stirred the vegetables in their roasting pans to baste them, and the LEDs flashed in a worrisome way when I opened the oven door.

There is a relatively new feature on the Duolingo app, to listen and respond to audio. This is exactly the sort of feature that Duolingo had been missing and for which I turned to Pimsleur in the past. Pimsleur is more comprehensive and demanding — I can feel my brain working at the end of a half-hour session — but it is also requires a greater length of uninterrupted time. With Duolingo, I can be chopping vegetables or cleaning house while listening and responding. I do remain highly motivated to learn Spanish as well as other languages: in the short term, for our trip next month; for the long term, to be able to become more of a global citizen.

The sky is getting dark and the sun will set soon. I should take a walk over to the Homewood Library to return and pick up items before they close, and I do want to empty the car before tomorrow morning, when I will head over to campus for office hours and to continue cleaning the office. But I also need to mind the vegetables. Probably I should rake the leaves this weekend too — the yellow leaves from the neighboring gingko tree rained down on the sidewalk and front lawn overnight. At least that can wait until tomorrow afternoon; it’s a Sunday night game this week, and there is no precipitation in the forecast.

It happened around this time, exactly sixteen years ago — actually, it probably happened around the time I began to sit down and write. The sun was bright that day, the weather was warm. He breathed hard, he labored to hang onto life, he wouldn’t give up. We were together for sixteen years, one month, and four days. Sixteen years ago today I said goodbye.

It is difficult to lose a friend.

27 days ago I received two trees from Tree Pittsburgh. I hope that I did not do them a grave disservice by leaving them in their planters on the deck until now. I was away for awhile, and then just kept on putting it off upon my return. I finally planted them in our backyard today.

I had my choice of trees at the end of the celebration of Westinghouse Park becoming designated an arboretum. Other people had requested these trees ahead of time and then didn’t pick them up. There were some beautiful well-known species, including a maple and an oak. I asked for advice on trees that would work in a relatively small backyard and then chose these two for that quality: serviceberry and dogwood. I was also influenced by their names, because they would decorate the yard around the resting place of the inimitable Mookie, the best dog in the world. I was also drawn to the fruit-bearing nature of the serviceberry (labeled Amelanchier laevis) and the genus/species of the dogwood (Cornel officinalis) reminded me of my beloved alma mater

The last time I used that shovel was to dig Mookie’s grave in the spring of 2006. He died sixteen years ago this month, after more than sixteen years of service. The dirt smell on my hands reminds me of making moats at the base of the tree that shaded my childhood home. 

The last time I planted a tree was after Arbor Day in 1973 or 1974. I received a tiny sprout of a locust tree at school, bringing it home in a container the size of a Dixie cup. I planted it and over the years it grew. I remember when it grew taller than my height, and then taller than the dinner bell mounted on a nearby post, and then tall enough for me to grab onto its branches, and then rivaling the height of the house. The guy who bought the house, who himself lived there before we did, he had it cut down. When I learned that, it was like a part of me had been chopped down too.

I delayed planting these two trees because I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t sure quite where to place them. I didn’t want to place them too close to Mookie’s unmarked grave, or maybe I should place one directly on top, to anchor and prevent any disturbance, but that would be a final admission that he and I would never be buried together.  I wanted to keep them away from the foundation of the house, away from fences, away from the garage. Yet I wanted them to be close enough to provide shade to the windows in the summer and some privacy from the neighbors. I wanted them to be spaced from each other a natural way. To be perfectly honest, I wasn’t sure even whether to plant them at all — this was the yard where the children ran and played when they were younger. Trees get in the way of running, and will be in the way when I mow the lawn.

I brought them home and we’ve now had a couple of nights where the temperature is below freezing. The trees deserve to live. Yesterday I plotted out their sites. Today I dug two holes and planted them.

On Saturday the children and I walked to Giant Eagle so I could get vaccinated. (My second dose of Shingrix, not for COVID-19. I am the only adult in my immediate family — including three sisters living in three different states, parents, spouse, and father-in-law — who has not yet had received the coronavirus vaccine.)

From my shingles vaccination back in October, I anticipated flu-like symptoms, so I drank copious water and took ibuprofen in advanced. Nevertheless, I suffered tenderness at the injection site, achy eyeballs and knee joints, dry throat, and overall exhaustion. I fell asleep before 8pm.

Over the past two nights I have averaged over seven hours of sleep, which is two hours more than I usually manage. During a full of Zoom calls yesterday, I remained off-camera and largely prone. This morning the worst has passed, although I am still tired, a bit fuzzy in my thinking, with swollen hands.

…

I received this vaccination on the weekend for two main reasons. First, the lines at the pharmacy are extensive on weekdays, when they are delivering the COVID vaccine. Second, this would allow me time to recover and rest.

Rest. Two more hours of sleep. Prone. The vaccination forced me to take a sliver of vacation. Even during weekends, I am normally focused on writing and reading on the glowing screen of my laptop, in order to compose and reply to email messages, grade and assign homework, plan lectures.

The vaccination enabled me to take a break without guilt. To care of myself.