THEY OPENED UP a new restaurant on Oru Street, and put some nice apartments on the upper floors. The renovations were welcome and the food was good, if not even more overpriced than at the older competitor establishments. Nothing like dropping five euros for a cup of coffee to awaken one to his utter impoverishment. Also, the bathroom was in another house, so you would have to walk through the yard in a towel to take a shower, with all of the curious village ladies looking on. Vesta was there, of course, staring out the window and organizing a yoga retreat. Celeste was there too, sunning herself on the deck, looking pretty.
It was just like old times.
At some point, Celeste asked me about how I became a fan of the Grateful Dead, and I told her about how the band’s name had seeped slowly into my awareness over time. I knew of the Deadheads, and their tie-dye shirts, and their profound philosophical locker room dissections of tunes like “Touch of Grey” or “Ripple.” The first album I ever bought though was 1968’s Anthem of the Sun. I recalled how I had gone into the record shop and pointed at the cassette on the wall. I was 15. Even the mandala-inspired covert art seemed like a first-class ticket to another dimension. There was more to life than this. That was my first escape into their world.
“Just listen to the drums on ‘Quadlibet for Tender Feet,'” I told Celeste and played her the song. Celeste grasped her shawl like a Southern belle as if to say, ‘I do declare,’ and gave me a pitying look and said, “Oh you. You just love to talk about yourself.” “But I am not talking about myself this time,” I said. “We are talking about Kreutzmann and Hart. We are talking about the Dead.”
north! 