Soundtrack
I’m trying to listen to this world like I haven’t heard it for the last 24 years.
No, stay with me here.
I don’t mean for this to sound like a typical B-rate, bullshit, blow-out about how, oh! - woebegone, my life sucks.
Like hell it does.
Predisposed to extreme bouts of melancholy, sure - but I love too. And quite frankly, one doesn’t exist without the other anyway.
One of my favorite memories: Last year in early October.
I’ve come home from my medicine and literature class - wiped. In a few hours, I have a date with Rob; an ultimate fighter with 5% body fat who is constantly confused with Jean-Claude Van Dam every goddamned time we go out. This is only amusing the first 10 times it happens.
I put on the radio and collapse on the bed. Within a minute, I’m joined by all three kittens, who somehow manage to take up more room than me.
I wake slowly. All hazy and happy, the world is just this:
my favorite song on the radio and a brilliant, bruised 7pm sky and maybe, for once,
nothing else matters, cause I’m listening to the soundtrack of a four year love affair with myself.
So, this is now: I try to walk out onto the street without hearing the cars, the sizzle of street kids or the mindless and measured movements of my own feet taking me home, again (to a place I’ll never feel it).
I try not to think of these things. I’m trying to listen to the world like I did before I started asking so many questions.
Yes, I admit this: For a time I believed I stopped living when I started having to ask about it.
Of course, I don’t believe this now - quite the opposite. But sometimes I catch myself wishing for the conviction of opposites; especially in this limmenal space. Like when it’s Sunday night and I’m calling my best friend for a Disney movie because I want 20 years ago, my mother and nothing to sound as sweet as my own name.
My shoulders hunch up when I hear my name now. And I wake up most mornings feeling guilty and questioning the dietary benefits of bran.
The thing is, there’s nothing quite like those moments where you look outside your window at work and feel something new and familiar. The strength of dichotomy at once and for that moment, (maybe) you believe it’s not really out there, but in you.
It’s all too brief to ignore, regardless.
No, stay with me here.
I don’t mean for this to sound like a typical B-rate, bullshit, blow-out about how, oh! - woebegone, my life sucks.
Like hell it does.
Predisposed to extreme bouts of melancholy, sure - but I love too. And quite frankly, one doesn’t exist without the other anyway.
One of my favorite memories: Last year in early October.
I’ve come home from my medicine and literature class - wiped. In a few hours, I have a date with Rob; an ultimate fighter with 5% body fat who is constantly confused with Jean-Claude Van Dam every goddamned time we go out. This is only amusing the first 10 times it happens.
I put on the radio and collapse on the bed. Within a minute, I’m joined by all three kittens, who somehow manage to take up more room than me.
I wake slowly. All hazy and happy, the world is just this:
my favorite song on the radio and a brilliant, bruised 7pm sky and maybe, for once,
nothing else matters, cause I’m listening to the soundtrack of a four year love affair with myself.
So, this is now: I try to walk out onto the street without hearing the cars, the sizzle of street kids or the mindless and measured movements of my own feet taking me home, again (to a place I’ll never feel it).
I try not to think of these things. I’m trying to listen to the world like I did before I started asking so many questions.
Yes, I admit this: For a time I believed I stopped living when I started having to ask about it.
Of course, I don’t believe this now - quite the opposite. But sometimes I catch myself wishing for the conviction of opposites; especially in this limmenal space. Like when it’s Sunday night and I’m calling my best friend for a Disney movie because I want 20 years ago, my mother and nothing to sound as sweet as my own name.
My shoulders hunch up when I hear my name now. And I wake up most mornings feeling guilty and questioning the dietary benefits of bran.
The thing is, there’s nothing quite like those moments where you look outside your window at work and feel something new and familiar. The strength of dichotomy at once and for that moment, (maybe) you believe it’s not really out there, but in you.
It’s all too brief to ignore, regardless.