The Dark Side of the Moon: Pink Floyd Classification: Rock Subclassification: Classic Rock Release: 1973 It is interesting, potentially a sign of cosmic interference that my first two entries on my album collection, as dissimilar as they are, come from the year 1973. If I am to fully adopt the belief that mysticism is our only hope to reclaiming truth and the ability to communicate with one another then I must stop being surprised by these odd coincidences. I need not embrace wild fantasies. The road to the dark side, that is. Anger, fear, jealousy, conspiracy theories. There is only darkness. But, the road to the light is fraught with many incidents when the path to enlightenment lies within touching distance of the most horrific and stupid Internet theory. If I were to come home with a rust bucket that once claimed to be 1973 Pontiac Catalina Safari Wagon based on this mystical experience I would have given into the darkness inside of me. This would be funny if it weren't a real possibility. The way to enlightenment is to sit and ponder how I can feel nostalgic for a time that preexisted me. I am timesick and I must know the cure. Pink Floyd Albums hit differently at different ages. They are less celebrations and more laments in my middle age. I listen to a lot Pink Floyd these days. Pink Floyd is one of those bands that you should always listen to the whole album through. No shuffling, no skipping. The album is a whole, and a song in isolation is deprived of its encapsulating riches. I will be visiting Pink Floyd on many occasions on this blog. In order to keep this post at a readable word count it will focus on a single line in a single track. We will strip the lyric and deprive it of its encapsulating riches. We will turn in it into a mania! "And then one day you find ten years have got behind you. No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun." One day I was listening to this album, cooking a curry. I remember it vividly. For a few months, in my early twenties, I lived in an apartment complex that was predominately Indian immigrant families. I was a recluse at that point in my life, but that is unimportant. The overwhelming aromas in that building brought me an unspeakable joy and light that brought me, ever so momentarily out of the unspeakable darkness I was living in. Turns out the reclusive bit was important after all. It was a sweet potato and carrot curry, I was going vegetarian for Erin's sake. I was free-handing the spices and herbs when Time spun round the table. Had I missed the starting gun? The thought gnawed away at me and became obsessive. It consumed me. I made the curry so spicy that I struggled to eat it. Erin couldn't touch it. Thankfully, I had made a side dish. It was an Afghani recipe called lubya. A curried kidney dish that I cooked some eggs with. I came to know of this dish from reading Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns. One of the character's favorite dish is beans and eggs. I cooked some eggs on the lubya and it has become a staple in the Linehan household. Never exactly the same, but bearing a Wittgensteinian family resemblance. I determined later that evening that I had missed the starting gun. I must have been lost in deep thought over something as trivial and important as the Pythagoras' religious scruples over beans. How can one abstain from beans? I'm chasing the sun and it's sinking. I'd probably catch up to it in a 1973 Pontiac Catalina Safari Wagon. 1973 is important. I'm going to put the breaks on buying another station wagon. That dream hurt me too recently to be reconsidered and welcomed back into the aspirational fold.
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