It was a very good year? Dec. 30, 2012

   

As the year concludes, I keep thinking about the change of priorities poem from 2003, and some of the other poems posted – the “gilt frames” and the “trickling up” and some of the things she said to me early on about her past, about how jealous her husband had been, always suspicious of her cheating on him when she claimed she never did, and how on she met that little woman on some cruise who taught her what she needed, perhaps paving the way for a way of life that she was already inclined to do, finding the code that opened it all up for her, allowing her to become one of the privileged with an entourage, she becoming part of that class of people she had previously hated.

All of this is simply speculation, guess work based on clues that might or might not be real, a path of bread crumbs she has spread behind her in a series of poems.

There are so many gaps in her official history, such as the period after she gave up teaching and before she took to the sea with the band, when she still worked as a barmaid for a 7th Avenue Deli in New York or when she lived for the first time on this side of the Hudson, when she hung out at the dance center on Broadway, desperate to make a living as a singer, while tutoring people, when finally she met her husband and he helped her make an CD, joining her husband on tour with the band in early 2004.

The time line doesn’t always line up since her poem said she met the old lady in 2003, but she really didn’t go on tour until 2004.

But 2003 was a banner year because she had finally found someone who could help fulfill her dream of making it in the music industry, who helped shape her music. Before that, she was just a girl pounding out her songs on guitar.

I don’t think she took into account how even when they went on tour together with a band full of perverted old men, she would find herself in yet another trap, eye candy for audience to look at during those long days and nights at sea

When exactly did she meet the little old woman who “gorged on brothers and sisters” and what exactly did the old woman teach her that changed her life.

From the perspective of the poem, 2003 was an important year in her life, one in which she changed priorities, but from what to what?  And where does that leave her now as whole decade later? Will she write a poem ten years from now about 2013 is a year of changing priorities? Will she finally find her portrait hanging on gilt walls in a gilt frame?

Who can say?

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