What Is the Meaning of the 1978 Atlanta Braves? (card 19 of 25)
(continued from Pat Rockett)
Lately my mind is dry and brittle, like a Christmas tree kept around much too long into a new year. The last few days, a perfect pop song called “Let Her Dance” by the Bobby Fuller Four has been looping in and around the dead branches like a long strand of blinking colored lights. Around and around it goes, pulsing with light, as I work at my job where I check documents for errors, or go to and from work on bus and train, or slouch on the couch and eat too much with the TV on, or sit at my desk to try to write with fingers of cement. Life seems thin sometimes, most of all when I’m between the writing of books. All my halting adult life I’ve worked on books, the majority of them never making it out of my notebooks in one piece but at least pulling me along through the days for a while. It’s my way of loving life.
“Well, I’ll find me a new love,” the narrator in “Let Her Dance” vows, but within the context of the song, within the freezing of a specific moment forever that’s the trademark of a perfect pop song, the singer is forever between loves. The love he thought he had is dancing with someone else “like she don’t even care . . . to our favorite song.” What can you do in these moments? What’s the solution? You were connected, and now you’re back on your own.
***
(Love versus Hate update: Vic Correll’s back-of-the-card “Play Ball” result has been added to the ongoing contest. The “Play Ball” game on the back of the 1978 Topps baseball cards was designed to be “played by two.” Every 1978 card reiterates this necessity. I ignored it in 1978 and have ignored it during the prolonged experiment with the game on this site. A long time ago I learned to diminish the gnawing passage of time by myself. I find solitary ways to connect until I can’t find these connections.)
***
What’s the solution? No solution. Let her dance.
Cardboard Gods 
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