Thursday Snippets: Pandemic Protocols and Other Writing

--This morning's internet rabbit hole revolved around music.  First I wanted to find the song that was on the very end of a Jefferson Airplane album.  It has a memorable line that repeats, a line about doing what we want.  That song is "Stairway to Cleveland."  From there, I wanted to find the more popular song that was on the album, "Find Your Way Back."  And later, just for fun, Rush's song, "Distant Early Warning."  I thought about how I bought those albums for just a song, and then struggled to like parts of the rest of the album.

--If I was making a list of music that influenced me, those groups and music wouldn't have made the list.  But I can still sing them, and I still felt this pang when I heard them.

--It's a pang that's nostalgia pierced with loss.  I've been feeling that pain a lot lately.  Some of those pangs are about things I hadn't thought about in years/decades.  The other morning, I was thinking about how a cake recipe is similar to a muffin recipe, and I remembered the time when oat bran seemed like the healthiest thing we could eat.  I felt a pang for the oat bran muffins I made in grad school, even though I have no desire to eat them.

--My morning has gotten away from me, but it's for good reasons.  I've been writing poems.

--And I got some cooking done.  Last night I got some mangoes that needed to be used today.  So I made a mango black bean kind of thing.  I used too much coconut milk, so now it's more like a sauce that will need some rice.  It's amazingly good.

--I have made 2 main dishes for tonight.  I also needed to use up some potatoes.  So we will also have a potato chili cheese soup.

--And now I need to get to work getting ready for work.  It will be a heavy writing day there too, but not the kind of writing I enjoy.

--And now a different kind of writing that seems surreal.  I missed the course in grad school that trains us how to write pandemic protocols to have the least pernicious impact on pedagogy.  But I aced the course in alliteration.

--Of course there was no course in alliteration.  But I would have aced it, had it existed, and had I taken the course.