A Weary Anniversary



Ronnie Lane, Anniversary.
Count Basie, Jive At Five.
Willie Brown, Future Blues.

They were wheeling wheeling in each other's arms heedless at the far end where they had drawn up one of the white blinds. Above a rather low ceiling five great chandeliers swept one after the other almost to the waxed parquet floor reflecting in their hundred thousand drops the single sparkle of a distant day, again and again red velvet panelled walls, and two girls, minute in purple, dancing multiplied to eternity in these trembling pears of glass.

Henry Green, Loving, 1945.

Today marks the fifth anniversary of Locust St. I don't know who, if anyone, has been reading this thing since 2004 but if so, here's to your perseverance and good taste.

This blog will very likely be over and done a year from now. It's time, you know? A new decade coming. I'm getting older, you're getting older, your children are getting older. But I do hope to wind it down with some measure of grace, or at least a few more good tunes.

It's a wistful day but a fine one. I started this when I was living in New York and was married: now I'm neither. I called it Locust St. because that's what I looked at every morning from my desk, and the name's become, over the years, a symbol of a passed life. So you could say the title grew into itself.

Happy autumn,
C.O.