current musical selection: The Cult - Beyond Good and Evil [album]

It feels good to dig up some old [or just merely forgotten] records and cd's and just blare them at 11/10 notches doesn't it? With no one else home today, I did just that... so if my neighbors are reading this: thanks for not calling the police.

Nothing better than hearing something coming out of the speakers, other than Brittney, Nu-metal or some sappy 3-chord "R&B" [read: Rap without Balls] rip off [read: sampled] from some lame ass 70s funk band... finally I get to hear some real, descent, hard rock and roll... plenty of Stones, the Cult, GnR [as always] and Deep Purple... no crap. Today, although I had nothing else better to do... I had no time for the usual air[over]play of crap.

Hearing some of those parts made me think about some of the good old times... memories attach themselves in the oddest circumstances. Sometimes I hear just a chorus or maybe even only a small snippet of song, and it brings back so much... not only the music, but also what was going on the last time I remember it. Memories aren't so bad, even if the times were... I guess I see the memories as good; and the bad memories as just baggage. Baggage is heavy, its cumbersome, its a loaded term... and generally its not something you want to carry with you... you'd give it a nicer term. You'd call it 'luggage' or 'essentials'; not baggage. No, baggage is the bulk rate shit-sack of every bad, resentful and unpleasant thing that creeps back into your psyche under the auspices of a memory.

You never see it coming. Hell its all got the same postmarkings, right? I mean, you cant tell what it is until you open it all up, and there it is... right in your mind; and its there and its not going away. And you just dread the time it takes before it vanishes, because your stuck remembering and watching and just reliving experiences that you've wanted to forget... but the baggage system doesn't work quite like that I've found. Your baggage has your address. Your baggage always finds its way back to you. And sometimes, other people will even help bring it to you... you didn't want to forget anything anyway, did you?

Random thoughts on thoughts today I guess. A lot of times I catch myself doing that. Hanging up on the past. Memories do attach to the oddest of places. I can remember quite vividly once, probably when I was about 9 years old... somewhere on vacation, in the middle of nowhere.. It was hot, dry, humid.. The kind of days you go swimming on, or eat ice cream. But we're not. We're in this, stinking, wooden collapsing structure; crammed to the gunwales full of crap... old crap, assorted crap, pictures of crap. That's what it all looks like when your 9. You just want to stop looking at it. So instead you run through the place, looking at everything as fast as you can, thinking maybe that when your done looking, you'll get to leave. All the while, my parents aren't paying attention. For whatever reason, my mom is talking shop with this hag of an old woman... the woman must be 90, long gray stringy hair down to her waist, with glasses and wrinkled skin; but still could weigh more than 100 pounds, even in her white flannel night-gown, which she's wearing at mid afternoon still. No, no one is watching, not even me. Then I run into it. Literally. The first time I really ever remembered a casket. I can remember looking at it, and wondering why you'd build a table with hinges... then I get to walking around and looking at it, and I realize what it was. It creeped me out just a bit. But I kept exploring it, eventually climbing on it partway, and realizing there is a glass pane in the lid. That's when I lost it. I could look into see a rotting corpse, I ran down isle, which threaded its self back and around the store to find my dad. They all laughed. Later I did too. Just the sheer madness of why some old antique collector [a bit antiquated herself] would have a casket with a window in it... but I remember it; although I'm sure she wouldn't. And probably not my parents either. But people do help with your baggage too.

I also remember talking with an ex-girl friend on the phone, late one night. All beyond the hate and anger stage, id prepared myself and was striving for the 'friendship' stage that would inevitably develop, due to my infatuation with her. She started talking about nothing. Well, it to her was something, but to me was nothing. She talked about how she hated her roommate, how much she drank the night before; she talked about how she was found half unconscious, vomiting all over herself, clearly from alcohol poisoning. All of it to her was something. It was fun, it was a game, and it was enjoyable to share with me. She giggled, and laughed. And I thought it was nothing. Nothing at all to be proud about, or brag about, with the bravado of 'yeah it was soooo cool' to me it was the kind of incident that might make a seasoned alcoholic work for sobriety. But not to her. To her this was something. So I listened. Appalled, and terrified for her and at her; but I only listened. Even as she tells me how she wakes up the next morning without any clothes on, in some guys bed. Apparently they freaked out when they found her, and just decided the paramedics and campus security would ruin the party, so they treated her. Jocks treated her. She was apparently thrown in a cold shower, stripped, and thrown into bed to sober up. But the giggling re-emerges when she tells me, that when she wakes up, she realizes that she's not even wearing underwear, and some random guy gets embarrassed when he has to create a reason for taking them off her. But she giggles when telling me about it. Maybe even when it was happening too, I'm not sure. I wasn't listening real well; I was sitting on the floor, in the dark, trying to imagine how she could find this all humorous, let alone worth telling me. She wasn't using it as a crutch, or as a coping strategy to relate this to me; no she was in fact, genuinely amused by her story and predicament. I remember then, looking up as the music in the changer switched cd's, its loud, heavy clunk seemed to last for minutes, until it started. Then I heard the song start.

There are a lot of times you can remember things... remembering seems to be the neutral gear of it all. It pre-curses 1st, with throws you headlong into some good memories... or it jams your teeth together, when it rips you straight into reverse, straight back to reclaim the baggage that you lost.

ain't it fun~
s.