Dang: My New Favorite Word

Dang.

I just burnt a perfectly good pot of chili for which I set beans to soak, for which I'd seasoned beautifully with red pepper flakes, onion, garlic, but I set it to boil, told myself to set the timer so I wouldn't forget then forgot all about it by the time I got upstairs to my painting, a painting of a little blue-eyed girl, cuddled under a patchwork quilt, painting while I listened to the beginnings of Prairie Home Companion on which Joshua Bell, glorious violinist, is violining even as I type, having come back from downstairs, drawn by the scent of chili. Stronger the scent loomed & blossomed, as I approached the kitchen, morphed into the stench of burnt chili.

Dang.

And dang: I intended to post a few words about Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart yesterday, 27 Jan being the 256th anniversary of his birth, in Salzburg, Austria, where, I trust, 'Wolfgang' did not sound like a completely impossible name, if not suggestive of feral canine threat. I've made a tiny daily ritual of checking Wikipedia to see whose birthday is today. Not as obsessive as it sounds. Just a way of remembering, of noting the existence of long-gone birthday dudes & dudettes, such as Simonie Gabrielle Colette, the French writer pictured here, born on the 28th of January, 1873, on whose lips the word 'dang' would be foreign indeed, but looking at her picture, I want to know her better. I want to track down what she's written. Failing that, I can at least note her birthday. A grain of sand in the scales, on the side of memory. Lest she be forgotten, her and the rest of the folks living in the Deadlands, so I can have the tiny little itty bitty 'cool!' of knowing that W.A. Mozart & Kaiser Wilhelm II & Donna Reed share a birthday; so I'll know a little more, so I can fill in the blanks of my handsome little birthday book given to me by my friend Vicki Grove, so when I'm dead, some relative or another can find it among my detritus, my effects. The joke is that I might be the only one who'd love charming junk like that. Ah well. Dang.