Unexpected...
22 February, 2003 :: 11:50 a.m.
Have you ever been out, just walking along and seen something that just struck you? You wanted so badly to share it with someone, but it was something so simple...I dunno...walking down an alley, and there's this old, painted wall with a faded logo...or just the pattern of the bricks in an old sidewalk...to you it just seems mystifying in that moment and you want someone there with you, someone who gets it too. Not that there is some deep meaning there...just you want whatever the feeling is that this ordinary object strikes in you to be ignited in someone else at that same moment.
That's what I want...someone who can get that moment with me...someone who doesn't think it means I'm just being space-y and odd. Someone who can understand why it's just the right time on just the right afternoon to lay beneath a tree in the fall and watch the leaves come flitting down toward you and around you without saying a word. Those moments are so few and far between because there's always "stuff" in the way of them...rarer still to be with someone who feels it with you and you don't have to speak, you just feel something, alive, connected...
I'm not falling into a relationship with someone that I can't have that with...that from now on is one of the things on my list. I knew I would never have a moment like that with Teri...that all of the things we had in common were more basic than that. I couldn't even play a song for her and have her just get it. I could do that with Char, I could do that with Emily...I could put a song on and not have to say a word more about it...it was understood that the song summed up something I was feeling in a way far more eloquent than I ever could.
If I can't have moments of driving along and just pulling over because something affects me and I have to and have someone share that, I have to at least be with someone who can understand why I would go through the trouble to walk over, grab a cd, put it on to a specific track and then either put a totally different cd in and play another specific track or just stop playing music for the moment. If music doesn't mean something to you, I don't have time for you... I don't care about having matching tastes in everything, as long as there can be mutual appreciation.
I finally found a song to bring tears to my eyes...happy tears...well, melancholy tears, but they are what I wanted so it's happy in that way...a song I never would have guessed. A song that had it not come to me from someone else (Erin), I probably never would have taken the time to listen to--"Sullivan Street" by Counting Crows. I'm far from someone who would consider himself a Counting Crows fan...I've had a long running dislike of them in fact. Not hatred and I mean I could at least listen to their stuff if it played...but to actually like a song of theirs? Wow.
"Goodnight Elisabeth" is good too...but "Sullivan Street" is one of those songs I can put headphones on, lay back and just let myself...exist in. Play it 20 times in a row and just let myself disappear inside of it. It's been a while since I've really felt that with a song...it feels good. I once wanted to live inside The Cure's Disintegration. I was sure there must be someway to detach mind from body and live inside of music...and I guess I came as close to that as possible...I used to just play it relentlessly--that and Wish. I'd program a specific number of songs from both albums and listen to them until they became more real than anything else to me. It was an amazing experience. This Counting Crows song isn't quite like that...it just...feels like home? If that makes any sense. Makes me envision a world to go with it...a world that feels right...one where it's never hotter than 75, most of the time in the 60's and almost perpetually Fall with golden and red colored leaves scattered all over. In a city that must be the size of Corning or thereabouts...cars, none of them shiny and new, but all nice...a couple of old Volkswagen Beetles and maybe a station wagon across the street...kids riding bikes...a van, an old full-size van, no minivans in this world...it's partly memory from childhood--hence the Beetles and the real van--but it's more than that too. Houses that are all beautiful, but none too new looking either. All brick or wood--no vinyl siding--and the paint is not perfect on any house...not peeling off all over the place, but in spots...everything feels worn and comfortable like your favorite shirt or pair of jeans...everything has that feel. H.O.M.E.
Other things bring this feeling of Home as well...and it can be anywhere at any time...times when I just feel like I'm in exactly the right spot at exactly the right moment. Other times I feel a pull toward home...and a lot of the time what I just described above isn't the same place that I see as home...most of the time the ocean is nearby. One consistency--there's always a good coffee shop within walking distance.