Time travel and revisionist history

Friday vibes

This picture is a triple exposure—three sunrise pictures over three consecutive days last weekend. Have a look, then I’ll explain the significance.

It’s not often that I apologize for what’s about to come, but there is a lot of activity going on above my shoulders and not a ton of time for me to get it out…but this is one of those days where I feel like I have to free as much of it as I can, to help me process and organize my thoughts. It’s like Marie Kondo’s life magic—tidying up. Only in my brain, not my closet.

And yes, it brings me joy.

But anyway…I have no idea what’s about to unfold here and I thank you for your patience if it turns out to be more of a sh-tshow than usual.

Last week, I urged you to watch the show One Day on Netflix, and now that I re-watched it in its entirety and have been listening to the soundtrack virtually on repeat all week, I really (reeeaaaallllly) (REEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLLY!) can’t stress this enough—watch it.

Anyway, the triple-exposure pic is symbolic of my experience listening to the soundtrack, particularly while on my favorite walk earlier this week. At first I was “just” listening to and enjoying the music. Then I found myself thinking about the show, layering my viewing experience over the tunes. And then I realized I was layering my lived experience during the same time period (give or take) as the show over both my viewing experience and the music.

Three layers, all separate…but all blended together for me in what can best be described in the title of this post—time travel and revisionist history. Time travel, kind of obvious. The music transported me back to days long forgotten, some deliberately so, others washed away and replaced by new layers of life and time. Revisionist in that I can focus on and appreciate those days not for what they were (a lot of that time kinda sucked if I’m being honest) but for what they gave me, how they shaped me, and how they are the reason why I can stand here today, at (relative) peace. I take some liberties in how I recall and remember them.

There were a number of songs that are clear anchor points for me, and some weighed heavier than others.

These are the soundtrack’s songs that connect me to times, places, people, and experiences in my life (in the order they appear as defining moments in my life, to the best of my recollection (thus the “circa” below), not in the order they appear on the soundtrack/in the show):

• “This is the Day” by The The, circa 1986. This song was introduced to me via a mixed tape I was gifted by an old friend/crush/other, and I will never hear it and not think of that. The tape could be in a box in my garage. Or attic. But as I type and think about it further, I’m pretty sure it’s in a landfill—with other related memories and “keepsakes” long forgotten and/or forsaken. Nothing further.

• “Love and Affection” and “Save Me” by Joan Armatrading, circa 1986-1988. I wish I could remember who introduced me to Joan Armatrading’s music…there are several people likely candidates. Either way, her music (and I’ll be honest, I have no conscious memory of having heard the latter track before the show, but her voice transports me more than the actual songs themselves), was often playing on Sony Walkman (at on point that gorgeous yellow Sports Walkman), and I’d walk around campus…shoulders slumped…head down…from dorm to dining to class to class to dining to dorm to basketball practice to dining to library to dorm…day after day..alone with my music, avoiding interaction and engagement, lost in my thoughts, lost in my life…

• “Temptation” by New Order and “Back to Life” by Soul II Soul, circa 1987-1989. These songs quickly recall two of my college friends, people that I am still friends with today. The first song reminds me of one of them and the second of the other. Listening to them now serves to reinforce my general gratitude to know them, it makes me proud that the relationships have survived, and it makes me appreciate that I have all kinds of friends and friendships that peacefully and pleasantly coexist in my adult life.

• “The Whole of the Moon” by The Waterboys, circa 1989-1990. That song was introduced to me by a colleague of mine at my first job, at a bank, working in the mortgage compliance department. That the first job for someone fresh out of one of “the best colleges in the country” was doing administrative work for a place that got shut down by the Feds should have been an early-warning sign that I needed to get my act together. And when it did get shut down it was sudden and ugly and we were all told we’d never work in mortgage banking again. That was fine by me as it wasn’t exactly my interest, but I did feel bad for some of my colleagues who were in it to win it. I wonder where they all ended up and what they are doing today. Life pre-social media was kind of compartmentalized, and it’s not easy to access those compartments now—I suppose I could stalk people on social if I cared enough to but the bottom line is I am still in touch with the people I’m meant to be in touch with. Now, though, it is easier to stay in touch with—and even maybe build lasting relationships with—people from the fringes. I’m also thinking that, as an English major with an Education minor, taking that job was beyond ill-advised. The economy was in the toilet at the time, so teaching was out, but taking that job out of necessity well may have been what put me on this working-lifetime career path of relative dissatisfaction and limited/little success.

• “Here Comes Your Man” by The Pixies, May 17, 1992. No “circa” needed here. This one takes my back to the original Boston Garden, St. Patrick’s Day, 1992, when The Pixies opened for U2. The memory is so vivid because none of us had tickets prior to the day of the show. The place I worked at the time had a bunch of young people, and we were very social. The morning of the show, a guy named Mongo from IT was running around the office, loudly repeating a telephone number, telling us that his friend told him it’s a back-door Ticketmaster phone number and a sure-fire way to get tickets for the show that night. He was right, we got through, and a bunch of us went. (Remember the olden days when you had to work for concert tickets, dialing until your fingers hurt, or sitting outside of a physical Ticketmaster outlet on a lawn chair all night?)

• “Iceblink Luck” by Cocteau Twins, circa 1992.5. I had this one friend I met at work who let me into her amazing and exotic (to me) life and friends, and the Heaven or Las Vegas album that this song comes from was often played during those years at assorted parties with assorted people people. “The Whole of the Moon” and this one remind me how “funny” it is that in life you can go deep with a bunch of people for a relatively short period of time and then come out of it with not even a handful of people you stay in touch with at all, and that’s only if you count the exchange of birthday greetings or other occasional trivialities on Facebook as staying in touch. People are like words in a book. All of them are important. Some become sentences. Others become paragraphs, while others become chapters, and others still appear throughout. Each one contributes something different but they share one important thing in common—each one is a part of the story.

• “Dreams” by The Cranberries, circa 1993. One of the major airlines at the time (maybe USAir? (remember them?)) published a round-trip fare from Boston to LA for $19 each way (should have been $119, I think) in The Boston Globe and honored it. Three of us went together and this tape accompanied us on our RT drive up to San Francisco and back down the PCH. Epic.

• “These Days” by Nico, circa right now. When the words, “Please don’t confront me with my failures. I had not forgotten them.” were suncg, it took me back to last week when I wrote, “And in case you’re wondering, yes I’m well aware of everything that is “wrong” with me and everything that I could and should do better, thanks.” It’s important to be aware of and work on our shortcomings—but over-focusing on them can become an annoying and inconvenient albatross around our necks, one that gets in the way of pretty much everything, not to mention is off-putting to others. (Note to self: pull yourself together.)

As it turns out, the estimated dates noted above give a nice timeline of some of the angst in my life that has led to this current existential crisis, and music to accompany those things always helps. 😂😂😂

Sometimes, songs hit me different. But on that day, because of that show, I experienced them completely differently. The first notes would sound…I’d drop emotional anchor, take a deep breath, and swim below the surface. Sometimes I’d stay close to the guideline, keeping the dive tight and tidy. Sometimes the memory allowed me to calm my breath and my soul to stay underwater like a freediving champion, gliding through each verse and chorus. Other times I forget how to both breathe and swim and the memories left me thrashing, panicked…kicking frantically to get back to the surface,…and when I finally broke it, I was panting, sputtering, and anxious/angsty/angry/bereft/some combo of those and other emotions.

(Apologies if the diving analogies don’t quite work—I’ve snorkeled like four times in my life and have gone scuba/any other kind of diving exactly never, so…they may be off…even so, they felt right to me. (Creative license‽ )

Anyway…back to the show itself, and without giving anything away (seriously, watch it before it gets spoiled for you), there’s a scene when this Dickens quote from Great Expectations comes up:

“Imagine one selected day struck out of (your life) and think how different its course would have been…think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on (that) memorable day."

This line, coupled with some personal experience that I spoke about a few weeks ago, is particularly relevant here given that my week involved unlikely friendships and unexpected paths—those long chains of iron, gold, thorns, and flowers—that lead me to feeling particularly good this particular Friday.

I sit here now, in deep appreciation and gratitude for the formation of first links in my life.

I think about how different its course would have been. I entertain the idea of life as choice vs chance, and consider that it’s some combination of both. I think about what happens when the two collide and how mere millimeters (literally and figuratively) can change the course of a life—as they sing in the song “For Good” from musical Wicked, “like a stream that meets a boulder, halfway through the wood.” Life is “funny” like that. We make countless choices to do or not do something (consciously, forced, by default, or otherwise) and we never know which ones will really matter.

I know this isn’t a “woo-hoo” Feel-Good Friday post, and that reminds me that there are different ways to feel good and different degrees of feeling good. You can feel good at the macro level and feel sh-tty in a specific moment. Today, there are a lot of things that have me annoyed/feeling blue/etc., but those are like pesky pebbles in my shoe and overall, I’m grateful to be limping through a life forged by many strong links.

Sigh.

Here are a few specific things I feel good about, in closing:

• Thanks to an elaborate ruse orchestrated by my weekend host (one of my besties, from the college days, see “New Order” above), I got a surprise pickup at O’Hare by another old college friend holding a sign that read “Taylor Not-so-Swift.” He shuttled (chauffeured?) me to a fave dive bar in the ‘burbs, Stormy’s, to meet up for some food, drink, and laughs. It was a great way to start the weekend.

• Last night, thanks to some commuting kismet for Kerri, we ended up at Denly’s for pizza with my sis, bro-in-law, nephew/gf, and niece. It was a very unexpected treat, one I didn’t know I needed. I hadn’t seen my sis and b-i-l in about a month which is unusual for us…and the “kids,” well, their youthful energy and perspective always invigorates me. Also the restaurant was pretty empty, a very pleasant surprise—so we got seated fast, had outstanding service, and ate fantastic pizza.

• I’m not a gratuitous hugger. Nothing more annoying than a one-arm, half-assed, quarter-hearted hug that probably could have been a handshake…or nothing. But I will hug with intention, if appropriate. It was recently brought to my attention (I have not fact checked it) that a hug needs to be three seconds to be meaningful. So if I hug you, it’s because you are a person I want to hug. And if the “three-second rule” makes you feel uncomfortable, maybe our relationship doesn’t mean as much to you as it does to me. Don’t bother with a hug if you don’t have three seconds to make it count.

• This weekend we Spring Ahead. No pain, no gain, as they say, and to get that extra sunlight in the evening, we need to give up an hour of sleep…inevitably leaving us feeling for a few days as if we’ve been jumped in a back alley and beaten about the body with lock in a sock…but otherwise great. 🤣 (Also remember to check your smoke and carbon monoxide alarm batteries, replace the units if they’re expired, and do the same for relatives and neighbors who may not think or be able to do it themselves.)

Happiest of Fridays to you. I hope you’ve had a good week, are staring into the eyes of a great weekend, and that you can find some things to feel good about today.

Another thing I feel good about is your presence here with me. I appreciate your support, commitment, and engagement. So much.

Love you too.