thank you notes 1/15
i'm thankful that i work in a windowless office. i'm thankful, even though this sometimes depresses me, because it also occasionally allows for a dramatic reveal of the evening, such as happened yesterday, when i biked to work in the morning bundled up tight through a frigid dark world covered in high piles of luminescent white snow and ice. i'm thankful for the end of the day, when i opened the exit door and stepped out onto the loading dock and suddenly saw that the broad expanse of the soccer field to the north of the building was almost completely green, saw and understood, slowly panning my head across the field in a sleepy awe, that in the eight hours i had been staring at the picture of a blue sky on my desktop, everything had melted away and the world was warm and fresh again, in color. i'm thankful that the snow melted, even though i love the snow and its presence makes me happy, because its absence makes lots of other people happier and the world safer and more hospitable for all. i'm thankful that on the loading dock i took off my gloves and coat and hat and shoved them into my backpack, thankful to bike home quickly and with great joy over the damp paths past packs of students wearing shorts and t-shirts and talking about who was going out tonight and where. i'm thankful, as i rode through campus and then downtown, for the odd places where the last traces of the snow remained, for the way they hinted at complicated combinations of shade and wind that conspired to keep freezing.
i'm thankful that d didn't really like the oatmeal raisin cookie gelato that i bought for dessert, even though i had hoped she would, because it turned out that i really liked it and when, after a few bites, she said that she was satisfied and would rather have another glass of wine and left it to me to eat the rest, i was very thankful to have it all to myself. i'm thankful for the way the cold oats tasted and felt mixed with the ice cream on my tongue (thankful for the novelty, since usually oats are the body of a crumble forming a warm contrast to ice cream). i'm thankful for the squishiness of the occasional raisin and the sweet bits of brown sugar. i'm thankful that the premium version of the grocery store brand of strawberry sorbet (d's favorite flavor) was on sale and that i bought that as well on the same trip, thinking we would eat it on the weekend, but then d had it all to herself, her own nice thing the way i had the gelato.
i'm thankful to have learned what the term "pickle" means in the hospitality industry ("those special or extra things we do to make people happy" - as in a pickle on the plate with a cheeseburger and fries). i'm thankful i learned this in the context of a junior faculty member making an amazon purchase of a $69.88 vhs tape called "give 'em the pickle" to use in his class this semester. i'm thankful that i did not know this context or the meaning of the term "pickle" in the hospitality industry when i saw the email notification of the amazon purchase and instead just saw a faded picture of an excited old man in a gray suit holding up a large pickle and a speech bubble coming out of his mouth printed with 'give 'em the pickle.' i'm thankful that i did not know the context or the meaning when i saw the video, because it was much more funny that way, but then i am also happy to know them now, because i think the pickle is a nice concept and is part of the way that i want to engage with the world, part of what i want each of these details to be for you. i'm thankful that you don't have to be in the hospitality industry to be hospitable. i'm thankful for pickles (actual), which, for me, are always a pickle (conceptual, in the hospitality sense). i'm thankful for this extended analysis of the phrase "in a pickle."
i'm thankful for the picture d showed me this morning of a dog trying to eat a rainbow. i'm thankful that d found out she was able to refinance her student loans to cut her interest and that her application was approved overnight. i'm thankful to have watched, in the second season of mind of a chef (which is on amazon prime video for free and is way better, with the easygoing stoner genius of ed lee, than the overly quirky first season), a chef cooking pit barbeque use a literal mop to baste it with a vinegar-based sauce. i'm thankful that the bottle of beer i bought from the grocery store's build your own six pack station and which, hanging in a plastic grocery bag from the right handlebar of my bike, pulled the bike over and crashed to the floor of the mud room. i'm thankful that the bottle didn't break and, though the top opened a bit and sprayed a spurt of foam onto the wood floor, there was still plenty to eat.
i'm thankful for tm from the dean's office, who was powerwalking on the track during her break while i was doing yoga beside the track on my break. i'm thankful for how kind she always is to everyone and how nice to me in particular, thankful for her wry smile and little winks and eye rolls. i'm thankful that after our breaks, we met up in the hallway walking back to work and i asked her how she was doing and she pulled out her earbuds and said, excitedly and in that slightly too loud for the room way you sometimes talk when you've been listening to music on headphones, "i'm just so happy that the beatles are on spotify!" i'm thankful that i'm so happy about that too and that we could share that happiness in the hallway, that we talked about how good the remasters sounded. i'm thankful for how this corporate action negotiated in a boardroom somewhere for the sake of shareholder profits has resulted in tm feeling happy as she gets up from her desk in her windowless office and goes and takes a walk in the afternoon as the world warms up around her. i'm thankful for that, and for me too, thankful that because of this stupid app i'm rediscovering the beatles, who i loved when i was younger and then stopped feeling like it was cool to love and then got over that but didn't listen to them because they weren't on spotify and then actually downloaded torrents of all of the albums and put them on my phone literally two days before they went up on spotify. i'm thankful to go back to songs and albums i didn't overplay as much as others when i was younger and to hear new things in them. i'm thankful for the proto-disco feel of the scratchy guitar and delightful multi-tracked falsetto of the bridge and chorus of "martha my dear" and for the strange collision of that sensibility with the music hall piano and oompah horns in the verse. i'm thankful for the four bass drum hits and the off-center voice singing "all the children sing" to kick in the chorus of "the continuing story of bungalow bill." i'm thankful for the strange little mumbles, vocal and otherwise, at the end of so many tracks, at the sense of play they represent.
i'm thankful that i'm listening to "blackbird" right now while d is sweetly asleep on the other side of the couch from me under a blanket. i'm thankful that i forgot about the actual birdsong that's layered under the acoustic guitar. i'm thankful for the song "happiness is a warm gun." i'm thankful that i always like the plastic soul of the last section the best, so much so that in the past i often wished that it was a separate track, but tonight, after a long and draining day at work, i'm thankful for the strange dissonances of the early sections, for the point and counterpoint which has to be a large part of why the high honey sweetness of the melodies and harmonies and skittery drum fills in the last section feel so good when they finally hit.
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