The fair is in Pomona!

I ended a very short-lived relationship with a guy I really thought was "the one" back last March 31.  I've been working to move through the pain and disappointment since then.  The day before I ended our relationship, "the guy" had hung up on me as I was sharing with him that I was ill.  Turns out he was probably the person who made me ill, even; but he thought he was so far superior to me, that he could just dismiss me at his will.  He had been pulling similar stunts for the previous three months, and that was the final straw.  I gave him twenty-four hours, and then fired off an Email, letting him know that his behavior was simply not acceptable.

Since then, he's managed to manipulate the situation, making himself out to be the injured party.  He's never said "I'm sorry," once; and I really feel as if I not only got a raw deal while I was with him, but I also feel as if he's being encouraged in his continued abuse of me by just about everyone and everything.

I am really fed up with how unfair we humans are with one another.  I'd really like to experience a guilty party being held accountable for the damage he caused, just once.  It is just not right that the jerks and perpetrators manage to get away with doing great harm, and those harmed seem never to get any kind of "justice."

What are your thoughts?

So, anyone heard the Joni Mitchell "Both Sides Now" disk from 2000?

I've owned this CD for years, and I liked it a lot; but having recently gone through a really disheartening break-up with a guy I really thought was "the one," I listened to the disk again, and I'm hooked.

When she sings "I've been around, I'm an old hand, I'll understand if you have to go," and then the orchestra swells one just has to be moved.  One really wants to say "Don't go to strangers, lover come to me," when she sings it for us, even when one knows that to have a former lover as a confidant must be the most exquisite masochism that any human has ever dreamt.

I guess what I'm saying is this lady, just as she was back when I was a kid, listening to "Blue" and crying alone when JV (I will never reveal more than his initials) wouldn't even show me the time of day, is a great blues singer.  This lady is the real thing.  This lady has chops as real and honest as any of the great lady singers of the past sixty years.

The two Joni standards "A Case of You" and "Both Sides Now" are wonderful, especially her "crone's" take on  the lyrics in "Both Sides," but she's equally wonderful in "Don't Worry 'Bout Me."  As a matter of fact, she may be best in the torch songs from the 30's she's chosen to record here.

Too bad we didn't get a few more of these disks from Joni over the previous decade.  The voice is a mess, and that's good for some reason.  This is a woman singing about having lived and loved, and Joni's lived apparently.

Joni, come play Washington, with a big band.  I'll pay to come see you, and thanks for giving me another set that allows me to cry my heart out, because I really needed that over the past few weeks.  In fact we all need to that sometimes.  I mean, we do live most of the time with much less than charitable fellow men these days, its seems to me.

Life's hard and then we die, but this disk makes one remember that every once in a while we can enjoy one another, even as we know we're going to hurt one another, eventually.  Thanks for painting that picture Joni.  Thanks for this lovely, sometimes lush, bittersweet set.  Thanks for having given us so much for so long.