My Bob

"Bob Dylan," you said "don't you know who that is?"

I did not.  I had no idea.  He's great, you said.  He's a legend.

I listened to Bob Dylan all the way out to SF, seven groggy hours of his gravel voice on my tinny speakers.  I made a playlist in Spotify of all his songs, ever.  Duplicates of the Titanic song and the one about a big brass bed.  And Orphelia, and Hamlet and Scarborough Fair.

Her only sin was lifelessness.

Bob kept me company on my month out West.  He sang to me as I jogged out to Land's End.  My constant companion on the longish bike rides to work - up over the Presidio and then along the windy coast.  He set the rhythm that my fingers knit to on the 38, westward bound from Embarcadero to the rolling hills of Outer Richmond.

His playlist is still on my Spotify account, like a forgotten, dismembered limb.  When I hear from him now, I feel chilly.  Cold to the bone, a chill that no amount of fuzzy sweaters or space heaters can quite combat.  There's a hint of yeasty, slightly stale sourdough that dances around the corners of every exhale and inhale, like the kind I lived on for a few weeks, topped with spoonfuls of honeyed almond butter.