I like my life.
Sometimes, I say that to myself. I mean it, too, and I love that the criterium that prompts such a pure and honest statement to well up within me, is so simple.
When the sun comes out after two days of rain - or - when it rains after a week solid of hot, penetrating, debilitating heat and humidity...I get happy. When I realize that after a difficult week of mishaps, bad luck and depression, there always follows a sense of strength. I trip out sometimes, on the nature of my meandering path through life and how it criss-crosses the straight and determined path of others, but yet I manage to delight in my wayward journeys. I may be the perpetual child humming to herself, out in a field picking wildflowers while others are planning their retirements, but I really am singing to myself: I like my life.
The movie Singles was on TV last night. Coincidence? I don't think so. What a way to pull me back fifteen years!! This was a film that documented the lives of young twenty-somethings in Seattle during the mid-90's, when grunge was the movement in music. My friends and I, we had our own movement here in NH that mirrored the one on the West coast. We didn't emulate it as much as we appreciated the similarities. We just loved the music, and we all happened to be young, single twenty-somethings, asking the same questions as the characters in that movie.
Did we want careers or motherhood? Did we all want to get real and stop playing the dating games? Did we want relationships that transcended the constrictive ideals of past decades...easy-going and pure and enlightened human connections punctuated with passionate experiences out at dingy clubs where our favorite bands played?
It was all so heavy and thoughtful. Dropping tabs of acid, having intense conversations about aliens and government conspiracy. Getting drunk and laughing ecstatically with friends who were all so cool. Gatherings of people who were one part poet, one part anarchist and one part to-be-determined...so much potential in us all. It was palpable - I felt lucky.
I loved my life then, even with the difficulties and the embarrassing stumbling through an awakening of my Self....at least it was happening. It was happening all around us and we were intelligent young people with talent and depth, who wrote songs and played instruments and spoke volumes.
We will always be those people. Fifteen years have passed and so much as changed - some of us have spiraled off into explorations of other sub-culture, other forms of artistic expression. There are marriages, and babies, and mortgages now, for some. We go to clubs to see bands play, but when we do our backs hurt a little bit more; we wonder if we will get enough sleep, if the babies will sleep for the babysitter. But we are still those people.
Maybe my mood today is the simple result of a refreshing blast of youth. I don't feel old, but there are more mature sensibilities at play these days, and those can be cumbersome. How do I clean up my credit? Will I ever own my own home? Will I ever get a job that is fulfilling and worthy, the kind that I dreamed of ten years ago? Those relationship questions....have I learned anything?
I suppose I have learned alot. And even if I haven't, I like my life. I like the simple pleasures of interacting with my fantastic friends, when we drink and laugh and converse, and listen to music.
Friend: When you get married, will we still go out dancing?
Linda (at club, dancing): We will always go out dancing!!
Or, how about:
Cliff: Do you think this happens to all couples?
Janet: No. Just us.
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2 comments:
I caught Singles last night, too, though I only saw a portion of it. A pivotal movie in our lives, to be sure. The soundtrack was essential; I bought it before seeing the movie.
That Chris Cornell track killed. I wrote and recorded a song around that time that borrowed heavily from it."Would" was a monster AIC track, and the Pearl Jam track reinforced my belief that they were the new titans of rock. And to this day, every time I hear Mother Love Bone's Chloe Dancer, a note deep within me is struck. And in that note is something I've never been able to articulate very well, mostly because in that one song is contained my feelings about a myriad things I was experiencing back then.
I miss those days with all of you.Whatever else happens in my life, I can count myself lucky to have been a part of a group of friends that functioned well together.
Sometimes I get startled when I think back to those days and realize that they're further behind me than I believe they are. And I'm a little saddened that we keep moving forward, forever away from those days, which more and more take on the flavor of a fragmented dream, not easily remembered.
But the key, and the way to get out of this life alive, is to stay rooted in the present while not dishonoring the past. Not always a simple thing to manage, I've found.
Yes, we are not as young as we once were, to be sure. Wasn't it Jung who said, and I'm paraphrasing here, that a person in their thirties should begin readying themselves for death? But that is not such a bad thing, is it?
And the range of possibilities, which were in abundance back then, have narrowed and will continue to narrow. But the limitation of possibilities, the notion of it, is rooted in our minds and can be abolished if we say so. I try to keep that in mind when I think I'm all washed up. I've used up some fuel, but there's still plenty in the tank. Life still has it's riches.
Back to Singles. I always likened you to the Bridgett Fonda character. In a good way, mind you.
I am Bridgett Fonda in that movie, for sure.
And yes, Chris Cornell is and always will be The Man!
I guess there is great importance in the statement, "live every moment to it's fullest". When you're sad, be sad...when you are happy, be very happy, and live that moment so deeply and completely that you can remember it always.
When I woke up this morning, I had the faint strains of Chloe Dancer and Would running through my mind. I was able to feel just like I felt 15 years ago.....when I saw Alice in Chains at the Channel with Karen...having those night-long conversations with Pat and Sandy and Kevin....crab walking with you at Dinsmore Street.
We are so lucky!!! We have so many great memories from that decade!! Best part is, when I spent time with you last winter in Lowell, I felt just as happy as during the Dinsmore days.....last week at Tracy and Ray's house, we laughed just like we did ten years ago. I have no doubts that we will all still be close for another fifteen years, and for that reason alone I like my life. I'm so glad you are in it with me!!
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