The best Willie Nelson song in the world is
                                    the first
                                    one on his album Teatro.You hadn't consider before but, like it or not, you are now suddenly
                                    forced to.As a result, something quite small or quite
                                    significant -- pertaining to your perception -- is now
                                    about to change.I'm sorry to have done that to you.
                                    You'll thank me one day.
                                    
                                    Anyway, what makes the first track so good is the
                                    first four lines: 
                                    
                                    the sun is filled with ice and gives no warmth at all
                                    the sky was never blue
                                    the stars are tear drops looking for a place to fall
                                    and I never cared for you.
                                    
                                    These are the four best Willie Nelson lines and the
                                    best song because, agree or not, you're forced to
                                    consider the possibility.And once you consider such
                                    an idea, in those exact terms, in these exciting
                                    times, the world is not quite as inviting.     It is,
                                    however, somehow, cozier.Because we cannot be allowed
                                    to know for certain what we think we know.      Deep down,
                                    we do not want anything like that to be the case. We
                                    may want to believe that anything CAN happen, we just
                                    don't want to know that anything DOES happen. 
                                    
                                    The solution?
                                    
                                    Watch pots. Like I do.
                                    
                                    I wait for the alchemy of boiling. See, there is
                                    "before boiling" and there is "boiling" -- and then
                                    there is "after boiling" (which is different than
                                    "before boiling" -- as you know). I watch because they
                                    say a watched pot never boils. In fact, when I first
                                    started watching, I found that what they said was
                                    true. But now that I know how to watch a pot properly,
                                    it boils just as it would if I weren't watching. It is
                                    important -- it feels good to have this experience
                                    locked down. To comprehend perceiving those three
                                    different states.
                                    
                                    In non-chemistry terms, you'd call those states
                                    "California," "immortality" and "the hopeless lush" --
                                    while the proverbial H2O is the sitting back on "an
                                    eve" (if not "the eve"), and not minding what follows.
                                    Drizzle down pints, then power down whisky, then
                                    doubles, then the hard stuff like all existence
                                    depends upon it. I mean, addicts have it DOWN. There
                                    are two explanations for this. The first is: "Oops, I
                                    can't help my erratic state, (sir or m'am), it has to
                                    do with what I have consumed." In the second, we tell
                                    ourselves, "it is what I have consumed that properly
                                    pickles my experience with this erratic state...I
                                    shall be able to find it again on other nights."
                                    
                                    And now that I think of it, I guess there's a third
                                    too. This applies to she who orders three triples at
                                    last call, stumbles into the darkest and thickest
                                    clump of forest in the downtown park afterwards,
                                    seeking all those others who ordered triples, who
                                    can't -- who won't, who wouldn't and never can -- call
                                    it a night, because "what must be" has not yet been
                                    properly exorcised (because that can NEVER be properly
                                    exorcised) -- and why must the night end simply
                                    because last's been called. Why must existence come to
                                    an end? In others' words -- Johnson, then Dylan I --
                                    "he who makes himself a beast gets rid of the burden
                                    of being a man..." and "rage, etc against the dying of
                                    the night..." And in other words still: when did we
                                    become so eager to leave our erratic states? Why do we
                                    pussy foot to last call, then rush so resolutely to
                                    our beds and coffins, and never learn just exactly
                                    that of which we were capable, what states of
                                    existence could have been.
                                    
                                    -ck
                                    
                                    ps When it's 3pm and there's weather (+25 or any kind
                                    of rain), I find myself wishing you were over for a
                                    nap. BTW, I liked an inch of dust and the abyss.