Receive

I lost myself on a cool damp night
Gave myself in that misty light
Was hypnotized by a strange delight
Under a lilac tree
I made wine from the lilac tree
Put my heart in its recipe
It makes me see what I want to see
and be what I want to be

When I think more than I want to think
Do things I never should do
I drink much more than I ought to drink
Because I brings me back you…

Lilac wine is sweet and heady,
like my love
Lilac wine, I feel unsteady,
like my love
Listen to me…
I cannot see clearly
Isn’t that he coming to me nearly here?

Lilac wine is sweet and heady
where’s my love?
Lilac wine, I feel unsteady,
where’s my love?

Listen to me, why is everything so hazy?
Isn’t that he, or am I just going crazy, dear?
Lilac Wine, I feel unready
for my love…

 

“Lilac Wine” – James Shelton

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I’ve got a nasty little habit of hanging on to 99% of the receipts that end up in my pocket. It used to make sense when I was working and tracking my expenses, but this year, it has turned into a major nuisance, as the mounds of heat-sensitive paper are really starting to impede my ability to move around the bedroom.

Regardless of how useless these tiny slips of accounting have become due to my profligate INSEAD ways (hey, it’s all borrowed money anyway, right?), they do serve a purpose: to hit myself in the head and heart repeatedly with the sledgehammer of nostalgia. I’ve been accused of living in the past (and the future, but never the present, God forbid), and what better way to take a 8.27 second 100 meter sprint through the caverns of time than examining every little transaction from August 2007?

From the mundane, “Hey, I sure ate a lot of fish in the cafeteria during P1/P2,” to the shocking, “Dear lord, I drank a lot of beer in P3,” to the good times, and the bad, the cascade is relentless, burying me in an avalanche of tidbits, left gasping for breath.

 

Here’s one for the sandwich I bought at that stand in CDG Terminal 3 the day I landed, before picking up my little leased Citroen.

Here’s one from my first trip to Paris, driving around bewildered, dumfounded and awed by the history, like the tourist that I am, forever transiting from one locale to the next.

Here’s one from that weekend awash in champagne and crepes, breathing with effervescent happiness and twinkling eyes.

Ooh, here’s one from a visit to McDonald’s in August. I love that place more than I should.

Here’s one from that amazing dinner, honoring a cleanly lost bet with glasses of out-of-place mojitos, after an afternoon spent wandering back alleys filled with the clanking din of hammers on silver, where foreign skin is nary seen.

Oops, here’s one from Freddy’s Bar for a box of overpriced cigarettes. Off to the other stack to join your brothers and sisters you go.

Here’s the UPS tracking tag for a gift. I love gifts, though only on the giving end, never the receiving. Correction; what I love the fleeting moment of happiness, the toothy smile, the imperceptible jump in the seat of someone opening a present. That’s why I give. Fuck the “stuff.”

Ah, here we go. Pizza Pazza. This one makes me chuckle. I’d bet some serious money that if I had a receipt for every visit to this fine Italian establishment, one of the line items would always be the same.

Here’s one from that day spent racing to Paris, trying to find something to wear for the Winter Ball. I should’ve stayed in bed; I shouldn’t have gone; I should’ve been struck with the flu or dengue fever or cholera or a falling decision tree.

Here’s the stub from a flight home to days spent in grey, awaiting the return to hope, only to find more grey.

 

Another will join it soon, if nothing works out. Even receipts fade, eventually.