Notice
Things that mean more to me than I'd realized
1)Headphones. Music is different over headphones.
2)It's all-encompassing, and that means other things don't matter.
3)I bought a discman while I was working at Camp Hell, and maybe it kept me from quitting.
4)Meatloaf has a song that says, "You're never alone, cause you can put on the 'phones and let the drummer tell your heart what to do"
5)Another awesome pick-me-up is Savage Garden's song "Affirmation".
6)I've always liked it, and of course over headphones it makes the whole world go away.
7)But I was listening to it tonight and it's just... inspiring, I guess. Comforting, uplifting--affirming; that's probably the word they were going for.
8)It has many good statements to make, among them "I believe you can't control or choose your sexuality, I believe that trust is more important than monogamy"
9)At the opposite end of the spectrum is my home state, New Hampshire.
10)Saying it's at the opposite end of the spectrum is probably unfair, because even though it's arguably the most conservative northeastern state, hello, the south.
11)But seriously, I think Buchannan won an election here once, and that's just frightening.
12)That notwithstanding, I recently realized that I actually agree with our state motto, "live free or die".
13)I remember seeing a guy on the news a long time ago who kept getting arrested for cutting those words off of or covering them up on his license plate.
14)He was so against it that he let the state fine and arrest him repeatedly for defacing his own license plates.
15)At the time I was like, "Well, I don't think it's true either, but it's not a battle I'd take on." I support a lot of untrue things, after all.
16)But I was in Naples with some friends from Camp Hell one night--amazing how much came out of that incredibly traumatic experience--and we were practicing being Sarah by asking each other random deep questions.
17)Mine was, "If other people are going to associate only one word with you, what would you want it to be?"
18)"Caring", "loyal", and I forget what Bilen said. I said "free".*
*That was several years ago. I'm not sure what I'd say now. Maybe "true".
19)Only a little while ago did I make the connection to our state motto, which I don't think is literally true so much as metaphorically.
20)And speaking of random hometown connections, the Old Man of the Mountain is our state symbol and it sort of fell down a couple of weekends ago.
21)Lynn remarks, "Personally, I think that when the symbol of the state's head explodes, that should be a sign to all of us."
22)While there is no doubt some validity to her implication, I have to admit that the idea of a face in the mountain that can only be seen from a certain location is a way cool state symbol.
23)It's not a thing so much as a perception, and I stand with most state residents when I say we should NOT replace the Old Man just because he's "facing a different direction" now.
24)Also, change. Change means more to me than I'd realized before, but I forget what the heck I meant by that when I thought of it earlier.
25)Awareness. I was walking along the side of the road, with my headphones on, and the song ended. I pulled my headphones off.
26)The peepers were out, the moon was coming through the clouds, damp leaves were rustling in the wind, and I crouched down on the dirt to put my hands in a puddle.
27)Before I had been this kid in her rolled up carpenter jeans, grey t-shirt and blue flannel, discman and pop music playing over the headphones.
28)Now I was this piece of the night, white hands in shimmery water with the frogs and the trees and the sand between my toes.
29)Which reminds me, I really want to go bodysurfing tonight, and winter needs to go find something else to do for a season or ten.
30)But my point is that we really do choose our awareness, our selves, our beliefs and philosophies and perceptions.
31)Individuality can't end when you die because it doesn't really exist. We're only what we choose to be from one moment to the next.
32)You can't turn that awareness off after you've realized it. Joko Beck said that about her zen center in California, that once you've discovered something new or understood another idea you never stop knowing it.
33)At Ferry Beach we said "A mind once stretched by a new idea can never return to its original dimensions."
34)I was like, "Right. You've never met my mind, obviously; the definition of a metaphorical steel sieve."
35)But then I was talking to Melissa on the way to New York a few months ago--another person from Camp Hell! Creepy--and she was talking about humans and reincarnation and learning and solving our historical worldly dramas, and I was like, "So you think people who are reborn on Earth repeatedly are bound to it in some way?"
36)She was like, "What?"
37)"Bound to Earth, experiencing it and each other again to the exclusion of all the other worlds and lives in the universe."
38)She was like, "I guess I don't really think about other worlds," only she said it more eloquently and I don't mean to sell her short because she has some amazing insight.
39)So I had to explain that to me it's not a matter of thinking about it, it's just this thing that I take for granted. Like, I get up in the morning and turn off my alarm clock and I just in the back of my mind know that I'm doing this one thing while uncountable other things are happening across the entire universe.
40)I don't lie awake at night pondering it, I just know it. Like some people wake up and turn off their alarm clock and know in the back of their mind that god is watching them do it and either judging or helping or whatever god does in her copious spare time.
41)What was I talking about? I feel like I should be going to bed about half an hour ago.
42)Oh, you can't turn awareness off. Joko Beck was actually talking about knowing what the cafeteria was serving for lunch before she left her room, or something like that.
43)And now I remember what I meant about change, because I had thought of something new and cool at the beginning of my walk and by the time the walk was over that thought seemed so old and obvious that I was like, "I don't want to go back there."
44)Which made me understand what Merrick might be thinking about while he's lying out on Cole and Alyssa's porch not sleeping, which was funny because this morning someone asked me where I get my ideas.
45)Actually they asked me a long time ago, but I didn't answer them until this morning. At least I think I did. I said, "My life."
46)And I'm reading Timequake, by Kurt Vonnegut, right now, and he's such an entertaining author. In this book particularly, but Slaughterhouse 5 and Cat's Cradle were cool too.
47)Timequake is relevant because he talks about reliving parts of your life and free will and the place art has in a culture that no longer needs an imagination to entertain itself.
48)I am *so* rambling right now. Like you can't tell. Did I have a point, here?
53)If I did, I deleted it. Cause I could be more random tonight, but I don't know how.
Run Away