Jeb Loy Nichols puts on Taj Mahal and dances around the room.

Satisfied ‘N Tickled Too
Taj Mahal
Columbia Records
1976

Can we be happy?  Can we do that?  Is that something that’s available to us?  Happiness?  And if not, why not?  And if so, why?  We pursue the proper channels; reliability, perseverance, discretion, and, up to a point, honesty.  Our houses are open, the doors unlocked, the carpets clean, the cupboards full.  We are dutiful.  And, within reason, attentive.  Our plates and spoons and forks and knives all match.  Except a few that were lost and replaced by close facsimiles.  What more are we expected to do?      

Taj Mahal is satisfied.  And tickled too.  Listen to Taj and learn.  I do this occasionally when I need to be reminded.  Put on Taj and dance around the room.  Taj is a teacher.

There’s a commotion outside.  I look out the open door and see two pheasants involved in some kind of confrontation.  A fight maybe or some kind of pheasant type dance.  Who knows what goes on with these birds?  They’re squared off and squawking at each other, making a terrible noise.  One steps forward and the other retreats; then the other flaps around and the first one cowers.  This goes on for twenty minutes; neither seeming to gain an advantage.  Perhaps it isn’t a question of advantage, perhaps it’s just a show that has to be gotten through and there’s no writable reason for it and there’s no big winners or losers either way.  It’s just a little dance that has to be done and soon it’ll be over and forgotten.

I consider my empty breakfast bowl, pleased with its emptiness, its humble shape, its usefulness.  I look at its base, its thin sides.  I consider its colour, its weight, its proportions.  All very well but it’s the space within the bowl that’s useful.  Usefulness comes from what’s not there rather than from what is.

The sunlight makes a white square on the floor, one corner of which nearly touches my chair.  The square of light is moving slowly away, across the room.  A ladybird crawls along the arm of the chair, a spot of red on the dark wood.  I drowse and have a dream in which I’m taking a bus journey and I’ve lost my ticket and I’m worried that the bus is travelling in the wrong direction.  I drop saliva onto my shirt.  I wake and a greenfinch is at the window.  The square of light is now over my desk, on which sit a pair of scissors, an empty cup, a jade frog, and two books: The Branch Will Not Break by James Wright and The Night Country by Loren Eisley.  Also Satisfied N’ Tickled Too by Taj Mahal.

Taj The Teacher.  I play the record again and hope he’ll explain: Can we be happy?  Can we do that?  Is that something that’s available to us?  And if not, why not?  

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