Have you ever had a future memory? Last night, while rushing around all nimbly-bimbly, getting things together for Doug’s wedding this weekend, I was stopped at a light, facing West, sun setting in my eyes and Bloc Party’s song ‘Like Eating Glass’ playing on the mobile unit. Now I wasn’t paying much attention to the song at first. No, I was daydreaming that, if I live another 40 years, I’ll truly deserve to be called an old man. I imagined how much the world might change given another 40 spins around the sun. Then the song invaded my headspace:
It’s so cold in this house
Open mouth swallowing us
The children staying home from school
Will not stop crying
And I know that you’re busy too
I know that you care
You got your finger on the pulse
You got your eyes everywhere
And it hurts all the time when you don’t return my calls
And you haven’t got the time to remember how it was
It’s so cold in this house
It’s so cold in this house
I can’t eat, I can’t sleep
I can’t sleep, I can’t dream
An aversion to light
Got a fear of the ocean
Like drinking poison, like eating glass
It’s so cold in this house
Come and show me how it was
We’ve got crosses on our eyes
Been walking into the walls again
We’ve got crosses on our eyes
Been walking into the furniture
We’ve got crosses on our eyes
For richer, for poorer, for better, for worse
We’ve got crosses on our eyes
We’ve been walking into the furniture
Now, the song seems to be about a couple who’ve grown apart and are kind of stuck in a stagnant pattern, unable to reconnect and unwilling to break it off (or vice versa)…but last night, thinking of the future, I imagined me or my wife singing this song to ourselves when the other is dead and gone. And it made me sad, as it always does, when I stop to reflect how the happy times seem to pass by so quickly…and the sad times seem to be temporally multiplied. And how, happy or sad, everything you love or hate will come and pass before you really know what to do with it.
Then I hopped on the highway, and flipped on the Buzz to hear Lazlo play Fugazi’s ‘Waiting Room’, which sent me into a memory of times past – of Pat, Court, and I driving up to Java Gaia on SW Boulevard (great coffee shop that got flooded in ’93), listening to 13 Songs, ordering Italian sodas, smoking clove cigarettes, talking, talking, talking. I was a socializing fool in those days, longing for conversation – phone calls, even – never an extrovert, not really, just willing to talk with and listen to anyone. And I’m listening to Fugazi, thinking of Patty today – married 3 years, child on the way – and thinking about how your friends, especially the long-term ones, pop in and out of your life. I sort of lost my connection with Pat when we all moved to Springfield in ’99. He got into competitive bike riding and I got really into my school work and, although we lived together, we didn’t see much of one another. And as the song was wrapping up, rhythm pounding out, my head bobbing, I’m remembering drinking coffee with Pat and his girlfriend at Java Gaia, the first non-diner coffee shop I’d ever been to, watching and listening to hipsters (Early 90s’ hipsters, people! Smashing Pumpkins’ Siamese Dream wasn’t even out yet! KLZR was a relevant radio station!), those hipsters in their Dinosaur Jr. and Mudhoney shirts, they smoke their smokes and talk about literature and art and politics, they toss I Ching yarrow stalks, they smoke and they smoke and they smoke…and I’m hoping Pat’s doing well. I hope his wife and unborn baby are too. And I’m hoping the next time Pat hears ‘Waiting Room’ it brings back smoky memories from long ago.
“O” Face Pumpkin

Courtesy Mike Sullivan
Comments
I really just enjoyed going on that trip down memory lane with you.
Posted by: Bean
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