Single Repeat

A brilliant feature of digital technology is the “single repeat” function. I love to single repeat. In the bad old days before compact discs came along I would play and rewind a favorite track until the cassette was all but demagnetized. With compact discs or mp3s all you need to do is press the single repeat button and your music plays on forever.

But it’s not just songs I like to put on single repeat. I also single repeat movies and books and even food. When I was in college I ate garlic chicken everyday for an entire semester. I single repeat all three Godfather movies, The Great Gatsby (the book, not the movie. Parenthetical question: why do all film adaptations of this book suck? ), The Once And Future King, Somerset Maugham short stories, Tennessee Williams plays, PC Buyer’s Guide and Buy & Sell. Yeah and I single repeat mistakes too but that’s a different entry.

It’s compulsive behavior that’s sometimes triggered by a little innocent stream of consciousness thinking. Last night for instance, while I was chopping up olives for my spaghetti, I thought how fortunate it was that I found green olives instead of black; then the phrase “black and white ball” came to mind, which made me think of Truman Capote, which made me think of Holly Golightly, which reminded me of the line “I have this strange feeling that maybe the blueprints and my knitting instructions got switched. I mean it isn’t impossible that I’m knitting a ranch house.” Next thing I knew I was watching Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Again. For the millionth time.

Oftentimes it comes as a sudden craving. I crave books and music the way one would crave certain delicacies. It’s what compels me to drive to an internet café at one in the morning to download a remembered song. Or turn the house inside out to find a book just so I could re-read a certain passage. It’s fucking neurotic.

This afternoon, single repeat compelled me to drag down a biyahera bag full of books from the bodega-slash-bubong because I wanted to re-read this C.P. Cavafy poem, which I am posting here as an accessible digital copy so that I need never single repeat that stupid thing I just did.

(C. Day Lewis’ introduces the poem: “…And no less magical is this little poem called “The Afternoon Sun” by Constantine Cavafy. He was an Alexandrian Greek poet who lived on into this century. And in this poem he’s simply revisiting a room where he and his lover used to meet. But the poem is absolutely steeped in the deepest human loss and poetic feeling.”)

The Afternoon Sun

This room, how well I know it.

Now they are rented this one and the next

As business offices. The whole house has become

Offices for agents, and merchants, and Companies.

O how familiar it is, this room.

Near the door just here there was the sofa,

And in front of it a Turkish carpet;

Close by the shelf with two yellow vases.

On the right; no, opposite, a wardrobe with a mirror.

In the middle a table where he used to write;

And the three big wicker chairs.

At the side of the window was the bed

Where we made love so many times.

They must still be somewhere the poor old things.

At the side of the window was the bed;

The afternoon sun fell on it half-way up.

…One afternoon at four o’ clock, we parted

Only for a week…Alas,

That week became perpetual.