tupelo honey, an appreciation

One of my favourite songs of all time is "Tupelo Honey" by Van Morrison...the damn thing crushes me whenever I hear it. In part because it was "our song" between myself and the Mad Gypsy. Everytime I hear it, I think of her with reverent and passionate nostalgia.

I looked up the lyrics, finding them many places, with various different versions printed. Even found them in the program for a memorial service, misprinted and misinterpreted. Will I be thus misrepresented one day? Hold it, I know I already am in some quarters and corners.

"Men with insight, men in granite. Knights in armor, intent on chivalry." Every time I hear those words, I see a strange tomorrow, built on a present made past.

Perhaps I need to include Tupelo, Mississippi, on my tour, for sentimental reasons, despite many a blasphemous oath to never return to that state of so many grave disappointments. Plans had been made, once upon an ancient day, for I and the Gypsy to be reunited there, but hearts change and fires blow with strange winds and she thought better of it, concerned I would not desert my beloved Los Angeles. I left it for lesser passions than mine for her, saving the lives and dreams of others as I immolated mine own. Sad, but irrevocable.

But, as it crushes me, it reminds me of the colour of kisses made regent in thoughts and dreams and actions. It floods me with a sense of purpose, of hope. She was one of the unexpected muses, unsought but beautiful and my soul rested a season in her arms. I would not have survived, not as anything approaching myself, were it not for her, cushioning me from the fiery needles of my loneliness and memory.

I am many things to many people. Some are truth. Some are illusion. Some are riddle inexplicable and ridiculous in their complexity. I know who I am. I know what I am. And, although sometimes I fail in my purpose, I still recall it well.

In the end, I'm just looking for something as sweet as tupelo honey and my angel of the first degree, and damned to my own song of remorse, sung in solitude.

But still intent on chivalry.