Thursday, May 17, 2012

"Every Single Night" Fiona Apple

My relationship with sleep is the worst relationship in my life.  The tiptoeing around, the avoidance, the uneasiness that accompanies every engagement.  Will it be like last night's?  Will there be a sudden detail that springs up from the deeper parts of today's rehashing?  Will it be restorative?  Will I remember my dream?  Will it be enough?  Will the consecutive nights of deprivation further deepen these once indiscernible wrinkles?

Will I require a book for reading?  Or a piece of paper to write on?  Or exhuming an ancient experience--perhaps when I took a beautiful nap in that hammock in Montanita?  Or an imagining of a deeper level of protection:  curled up inside a killer whale, breathing in the warm viscosity of its jewel colored amniotic fluid, numbed to the pressures and stimuli of an outside world by a generous layer of blubber?

Perhaps a jungle and this song.  On an island.

The suddenness of appearing in this context introduces a mystery whose unraveling would otherwise be irresistible.  But I need to figure out my way out or just my way.  The rapid assessment of my vicinity under this moonlight.  The warmth and saltiness of the wind.

Thursday, April 12, 2012

"When I Was a Boy" Dar Williams

If below, then above.

I look back fondly at more youthful times.  I smooth out actual history with a romanticized one, tempering rigors and diminishing challenges and somehow rounding out the edges.  What I'm left with is a false memory of what it meant to be 26 having just begun working, 24 and traveling the world, 19 and the independence of college, 12 and taking walks at night around my neighborhood, 10 and eating cereal while watching the Jetsons.

What I seem to casually forget in these moments are the fighting, the uneasiness with being me, the car accidents, the knee injuries, the awkwardness of age 13, the hunger, the deprivation.

At age 45 I will look back at age 33 and remember only the promise of business school, the simplicity of working at a company with a gym, the relationships, the financial independence and good fortune.

But tonight, you are sleep deprived, with a broken Samsung TV, wondering if you're overweight at 154 lbs., having a room mate across the hallway, the ringer volume of your iPhone isn't loud enough, and you're wondering if you can get Dar Williams tickets at the Largo.