Thursday, May 26, 2011

Shop Around

The opening of "Shop Around" by Smokey Robinson and the Miracles goes:

When I became of age my mother called me to her side
She said 'son you're growing up now, pretty soon
You'll take a bride'...

That's nice, to have a mother who's looking out for her son's development. I can lovingly picture Old Mother Anymom working at her knitting, crocheting, needlepoint, or stamp collection, looking over her brood of one or more children, peering over her glasses and rocking and mentally marking her place as to where she sees each child in his/her development.

I'm sure my own Mother Anymom was that way. We kids were in a kind of ongoing reverie, thinking we were independent and free, physically and mentally, while all along we still existed and drifted along in the womb and placenta of life. Mentally, we really hadn't gone beyond the thumb-sucking stage, in the larger existential sense we couldn't discern whether our diapers were empty or full.

Connect the dots, make the link from one star to the other (larger sense), and thank God that Anymom was watching, making this connection with her sewing and that connection, glancing down at our feet -- they were getting bigger -- looking up at our legs -- they were getting hairier -- noticing our development further up -- getting gonadier -- then our chest -- more and more like a barrel -- our chin -- a nascent Maynard G. Krebs -- then our eyes. Our eyes were very telling, because we were glancing all around for any passing of our true love, at least his/her eyes.

The real reason we're not falling all over ourselves on the street, the reason there aren't shameless orgies on every corner, is that we avoid eye contact. It's not the ordinance against such things, because nature can't be so easily contained. We've been brought up with the idea that eye contact is an invasion, and, yes it is! Even Mother Anymom doesn't go there, because that's how she got to be Mom Anymother; she made eye contact with Dad Anyfather.

Back to the spinning loom, she's glancing over at our eyes -- any more than a glance and we'd be in the icon with her forever, never growing up, with her remaining supremely big -- and she sees our own glancing about, looking for our true love, for the on ramp to our own ecstasy, and she decides, now is the time for the talk.

So, "when I became of age my mother called me to her side."

Smokey Anyson battles against the thick placenta, slicing it like vines with a machete to get there, avoiding eye contact lest he be set in a gold-framed icon. "Yes, Mother dear?" "Son, you're growing up now." He glances down to his palpitating heart; his whole body is a massive pump -- that's true. We're one with existence, breathing, thrusting, pumping, making those eye connections, to the point where to even say it's us is to leave out 99% of the infinite truth. You must notice this anytime you have sex, or even vomit, it's obviously not the conscious you, the ego, doing it. Mother Anymom knows, really meaning in that way that every birth is the Virgin Birth!

"Yes, I'm growing up now ... give me my marching orders ... my dispatch papers ..."

"Pretty soon you'll take a bride."

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"Shop Around" was written by William "Smokey" Robinson & Berry Gordy

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