392. "Carey" Joni Mitchell

"Carey"
Joni Mitchell
Blue
1971

I think this song plays differently when you are in your twenties as opposed to when you are in your thirties.
If, like me, you are in your twenties when you first hear this tune about an expat wasting away in Spanish cafes and longing for home, it is impossibly romantic, and you look forward to the time, which is without a doubt just around the corner, when you too will be smoking cigarettes and drinking wine in a cafe in Europe somewhere, Mediterranean sea salt drying on your skin.
But when you listen to it in your thirties, avec kids and job and house payment, you realize a. that ain't never happening and b. probably just as well.
It's probably hard to find baseball games on TV in Spain, and I've heard they drink weird milk in Europe. Like, warm and lumpy or something?
And cigarettes cost like $100 a pack. And they call it a "packet", which is wrong on so many levels.
Joni knew. She missed her fresh white linens and her fancy French cologne. Which, um, not really the creature comforts of home that I would have gone with, but it was 1971. They didn't have Verizon Fios to miss.