How’s ya boids, Julio?
Those birds are getting big. They appear fully feathered, and resemble the parents in two aspects, the first being a little bit of yellow fluff is visible yet and the second that they won’t fly away.
Fearing a problem with the subletter, who is quite the little home botanist, Julie did a great job cleaning up a lot of bird poop-encrusted soil. The plant seems thankful and might just recover. We also endeavored to find a way to keep the young ones out of the neighboring flowerbox. With their new landlegs, they took to roaming into it–quite roughly at that during feeding. Sturdier sticks, along with the old wives’ method of rubbing strong soap on the edges of said box seem to do the trick for now.
A new suprise has appeared: bird mites. This was a bit of a shock when little critters went on the march during our little cleaning sessions. A little internet “research” has relieved our worst fears. They don’t burrow into the skin, they don’t tend to spread diseases, they can’t complete their life cycle without birds. It’s much easier to get rid of them than, say scabies or lice: get rid of the nests, they won’t be able to reproduce and die out in weeks. Meanwhile, it does seem a few have gotten in, and here at my desk right next to bird’s nest window I’ve found a couple on me while I work. The few bites I’ve gotten could just as well be mosquito bites, and Julie seems to have managed be pretty much free of any. As long as it stays like that, we’ll be just fine.
In other news, Terry has been listening to Paul Simon, and wants to know exactly what was it that me and Julio were doing that was so illegal down by the schoolyard. Below You’ll find a collection he has scoured from… somewhere online, which provides a number of different opinions as to what that song is about. Some thoughtful thinking, I think.
Myself, I have to go with the corny explanation that it is probably up to the listener to interpret. I draw this from interviews with Paul were he often says that about his songs, but also because I’ve written enough songs to understand how the creative songwriting process goes. I think that good songs always speak of some kind of truth, but songs that have all their symbolisms and metaphors worked out into a tight little system of meaning tend to be the work of amateurs.
i always thought this was a song about a homosexual relationship, that the writer’s parents figured out about, so they send him away.
i also thought maybe it could be that the writer is white and julio isnt, and maybe they are friends, so that causes him to be sent away.
Two boys getting caught masturbating by a teacher.
thats the winning answer
“It’s against the law”
Anyway, my interpretation is that it is a song about a sexual activity between the narrator (perhaps Paul himself) and Julio, e.g. as has been suggested, mutual masturbation, gay sex, a threesome etc.
I’m prepared to go even further and suggest that the line “and when the radical priest came to get me released” is actually a bit of a clever play on words – read “and when the radical priest came to get me release”, as in “sexual release” aka orgasm. Nice old innuendo there…
On a basic level, the writer is Romeo, Julio is Juliet, Rosie the Queen of Corona is Rosaline, and the Radical Priest is Friar Laurence. We know he is caught doing something bad, and we know he is “on his way” but he doesn’t know where he’s going – sounds a bit like exile. Romeo is exiled for murder, but I think that is irrelevant to this song. Paul has used this story to refer to other things that were relevant to him.
Firstly, Julio is a boy’s name. That suggests that he is talking about the illegality of homosexuality, and how society would not allow the chracter to be with his lover. The cheery nature of the music makes of mockery of this – possibly shows Paul’s disgust at homophobia. Goodbye to Rosie? Well, Romeo forgets about Rosaline when he sees Juliet – the character leaves women, when he realises that he is gay. Corona is, from what I hear, an area in NYC, which draws familiarity with the modern city/world, where a woman was an appropriate partner for a man, not another man.
And yes, it definitely is “Papa” and not Copper. (I’ve never actually heard that one debated before.)