Shuffle Synchronicities: Volume 1 - #329

"Sittin' Here In Limbo" by Jerry Garcia, David Grisman - 12/12/21

"Sittin' Here In Limbo" by Jerry Garcia, David Grisman

Synchronistically enough, a version of this song came up before when I was writing about the end of the short dating relationship with the children’s TV writer and the beginning of the short dating relationship with the therapist in this post.

And perhaps even more synchronistically, last night after a date with another person, that went fairly well, another Jerry Garcia song came on as I was driving home:

“Reuben and Cherise” by Jerry Garcia Band

This was after I almost didn’t go on the date because I was so tired from all my Marie Kondo-ing of my apartment until 4 AM the night before.

But I shuffled in order to decide what to do and got:

“Hari Om” by Ravi Shankar

Which felt like a synchronicity because she had picked out an Indian restaurant for our date.

“Sittin’ Here in Limbo” lyrics again strike a memoiristic chord:

I don't know what life will show me
But I know what I've seen
I can't see where life will lead me
But I know where I've been

Tried my hand at love and friendship
But all that is passed and gone
This little boy is moving on

It’s been almost a year since I started Shuffle Synchronicities with a post about my separation from my now ex-wife, based on a synchronistic song by perhaps my suicided dad’s favorite musician, Bruce Springsteen, about Springsteen’s own divorce.

You could say I ‘tried my hand at love and friendship. But all that is passed and gone’.

And I still ‘can’t see where my life will lead me’.

But life since then has ‘shown me’ some interesting stuff.

For instance, last night’s date was with a trans woman.

She’s a poet and she also has a day job working on film screenings in LA, and is a spiritual person who has worked on integrating her transgender and pansexual identities into her faith.

When I got the other Jerry Garcia song last night, “Reuben and Cherise”, I only researched that it is supposedly a riff on a Greek myth Orpheus and Eurydice.

But a close read of the lyrics today shows what I intuited even though I didn’t study them then:

Cherise was dressing as Pirouette in white
When a fatal vision gripped her tight
Cherise beware tonight
Reuben, Reuben, tell me truly true
I feel afraid and I don't know why I do
Is there another girl for you?

If you could see my heart, you would know it's true
There's none Cherise, except for you, except for you
I'd swear to it on my very soul
If I lie, may I fall down cold

Cherise, Reuben’s partner, is dressed in white at the New Orleans Carnival and has a ‘fatal vision’ and asks her partner, Reuben, to tell her truly, is there another girl for him.

He responds that ‘there’s none Cherise, except for you, except for you’.

But then in the next verse, a new woman appears, dressed in red.

Looking out on the crowd, who is standing there
Sweet Ruby Claire at Reuben stared, at Reuben stared
She was dressed as Pirouette in red
And her hair hung gently down

The crowd pressed round, Ruby stood as though alone
Reuben's song took on a different tone
And he played it just for her
The song that he played was the carnival parade
Each note cut a thread of Cherise's fate
It cut through like a blade

It seems like Reuben has fallen for this new woman, Ruby.

But then it is Ruby who freezes and turns to stone, not Cherise or Reuben.

Reuben was strumming his painted mandolin
When Ruby froze and turned to stone
For the strings played all alone
The voice of Cherise from the face of the mandolin
Singing Reuben, Reuben tell me true
For I have no one but you

If you could see my heart, you would know it's true
There's none Cherise, except for you, except for you
I'd swear to it on my very soul
If I lie, may I fall down cold

The concluding verse includes:

The truth of love an unsung song must tell
The course of love must follow blind

This makes me think of my own ‘fatal vision’ that I’ve mentioned in posts before, first in post 4 here, which was that my now-ex-wife and I would separate, she would win an Emmy, I an Oscar, then we would get back together.

She would later be nominated for an Emmy this year, which I wrote about in this post, but didn’t win.

And to be honest, the part about winning the Emmy and Oscar, instead of us just being nominated for them has always been a bit fuzzy.

Actually, I have also always left something else out of the story of that vision in this Substack, too.

I only recently told my therapist this as well as a friend.

The only person who knew of the additional element in the vision is my now-ex-wife.

And it is that in between the separation, an Emmy nomination/win, Oscar nomination/win, and getting back together, I also envisioned that I would have some gay/queer years.

Though if you have been reading along this year this might come as that much of a surprise from posts like this or this.

My therapist, who I also mentioned the date with the trans woman, asked if I felt compelled to go on the date with this person in order to live out the vision.

What Jerry Garcia might perhaps call the question of:

The course of love must follow blind

If you have a ‘fatal vision’ of the future, what does it mean to follow it blindly?

Would living with belief in the vision mean you wouldn’t enjoy your life unless you received the outcome of your vision?

Or would living without believing in the vision mean you’d enjoy your life no matter the outcome of the vision?

The date with the trans woman was in certain ways perhaps the most interesting and enjoyable one of the few I’ve been on since the divorce.

Was that because LGBTQ+ dates are something I have categorically not experienced?

Or because this person was interesting and enjoyable herself?

Or both?

I don’t know?

But as Jerry sings: “I know my faith will lead me on.”

Okay, that’s the three hundred and twenty-ninth Shuffle Synchronicities.