"Layers are the onion. There is no core. And onions don't ache. And if they did..."

Meade reads aloud from last night's post about the NYT "Planet Hillary" article...



... which ends with a transmogrification of the planet image to an onion image, with "something" at the center of that globular object (Hillary), that is "aching" for the peeling away of layers. Meade puts stress on the word that was a typo.

I correct it and say, "Layers of the Onion, wasn't that an Incredible String Band album?"



Oh, yeah, it sure was. It's in my iTunes now, not that I don't have the vinyl record from back in the 1960s in the house, with that cover that wriggled when we gazed into it. You see the onion and, above it, the eye (also globular), and, above that, the planet, and above that the 2-faced, male-and-female head.

It's easier to download the album now, and I need to be able to click on relevant songs when phrases come up in conversation around here. The first song I click on is "Painting Box," and Meade picks out the line "Fishes stop and ask me where I am bound." Such a hippie image!

Did Hillary listen to the Incredible String Band when she was a young girl, back in the 1960s?

"There was one fellow singing in those days/And he was quite good, and I mean to say that/His name was Bob Dylan, and I used to do gigs too/Before I made my first million," I say, reading the lyric to "Way Back in the 1960s," and Meade says, "What's that?" and I say "That's a verse of 'Way Back in the 1960s,' the song that was playing when you said okay, I've had enough."

Meade says, "They rhymed 'Dylan' with 'million.'"

Back in the 1960s, we thought we could sit forever in fun/but our chances really was a million to one, listening to Bob Dylan and the Incredible String Band, imagining fishes and other cute animals might wonder where we are going. Time passes slowly when you’re lost in a dream.

When I was 17... or maybe Meade was 17... or maybe Hillary was 17...

"Ah! Perfect! The stars are in alignment!" I exclaim as I use my calculator to add 1947 and 17. Hillary was 17 in 1964. 50 years ago. It was that election year. LBJ was fated to win, and Hillary Clinton was a Goldwater girl. Here in Meadhouse, we'd been talking about exactly that an hour earlier, fantasizing that Hillary Clinton — who is apparently destined to be the next President — might do just fine.

"I liked Senator Goldwater because he was a rugged individualist who swam against the political tide."

Swimming... fishes... we've come a long way in this stream of consciousness... this morning... still pre-sunrise.... peeling back the layers... trying to reach the aching center of something... wondering where we're bound... picturing some merger of that NYT Magazine cover and the Incredible String Band "Layers of the Onion" cover and a big globular Hillary head — 2-faced, male Daddy Party-and-female Mommy Party— looking backwards and forward....