careless girls in white lace dresses

    There's no photo for this, I didn't have a camera back in the 1970s and I'm not sure I would have had the presence of mind to take pictures anyhow. We didn't then. Maybe because we didn't think we'd have to remember, maybe because we thought we would always remember, maybe because remembering didn't matter much when the now was so very, very exciting.

    Jack Hopson died a few days ago. 

    I haven't thought about Jack in years. We were facebook friends and I guess he'll be immortal there because that's how facebook is. I get occasional birthday reminders about people who have been dead five, ten years. Anyhow, Jack. His death is sitting with me for a while, not because we were close friends. We were never close friends, even back when I knew him, but but because Jack coming along was a turning point in my life. I don't think I would be sitting in this place, as this person, if I hadn't known Jack.  Well, if jane hadn't known Jack.

    Jane and I became friends working at the long-gone Smugglers' Attice, a Pier One sort of place with red and orange shag carpeting which I raked every day if I was on the early shift. How I started there is this whole other xtory about my needed a job after leaving Howard and talking myself into this one. Jane was a reader too and that's how I started hanging out with her and her then boyfriend, to-be husband, then ex-husband, which is another whole story. Jack  comes into the picture after Jane and David (the boyfriend/husband/ex) have split. They become a couple when Jane and I are living together. When Jack suggests we all go to Nantucket, probably because of something to do with the rent at the apartment, we do. They leave to go to Jack's folks' place in North Carolina. I decide to stay on Nantucket. 

    Without Nantucket, I would not have one of my best oldest friends. I might not write. I definitely would not have gone to California in 1974 and pretty much all of my life from then on unspools from that point. Last night I was having dinner, nothing special, some soup because it's been cold and I was thinking how much I like my life. This life that began from a series of happy accidents. Jack was one of those accidents, so in memory of him tonight I'm changing the strings on my guitar and maybe playing a little blues, like he showed me.