| On Falling Things |
[Oct. 22nd, 2014|09:22 pm]
rejectomorph
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Tonight I can hear a single cicada buzzing. I don't even remember when the others fell silent, and I was a bit surprised to hear this one on such a chilly night. It won't be long before I start finding their cadavers on the back porch— although there are fewer now that I've realized that the porch light attracted them. Last year I left it off every night and found only a few dead or dying bugs through the whole season, instead of the half dozen or so who accumulated each night when the light was on.
About the only sound tonight, aside from the cicada and the occasional car passing on a nearby street, is the intermittent soft thwack of an acorn or walnut hitting the ground, or the loud crack when one hits the roof of a building. The loudest cracks come when one hits the metal roof of my shed, or the metal roofs of the garage and workshop beyond my back fence. I haven't heard any pine cones falling lately (they are much larger and louder than the acorns and walnuts) and so they must all (or almost all) have come down already. It might be safe for me to walk down the driveway once again to fetch the mail without fear of having my scalp opened by their hard little points.
But at least pine cones aren't coconuts. Thinking about pine cones falling on me made me think about coconuts and a song, probably from the 1930s or early 1940s, on a record my dad had long ago. The chorus (or was it the verse?) went:"Go and sit beneath a coconut tree
Let a coconut fall on your head.
You can have a dream the same as me
Better than the dreams you have in bed." Given that everything is on the Internets I went Googling for it, but to my surprise there were only a couple of links mentioning it. I can't remember the name of the person who sang the song, and apparently neither can anyone else. It isn't on YouTube, nor does the lyric appear on any of the myriad web sites devoted to song lyrics and spam. In truth, as a child I found the song's lyric more than a bit disturbing, but it had a nice beat and you could dance to it, so.... Maybe someday somebody who remembers more about the song than I do will put something about it on the Internets and then I'll know, too. For now it must remain one of life's mysteries. |
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