Learn.

There are so many drafts saved here, behind the scenes of this blog.

They are full of my confused heart.

They span my stories and end with questions.

Sarcastic lines reference deep conflict and all is misplaced.

So they get pushed to drafts-- hidden, unfinished.

But I have something to say today! Wanna listen? Here it is.

* * * * * 

Today I am walkin home from campus to the sounds of Amos Lee.

Behold, the wonders of putting your ancient ipod on shuffle.

I love this man because he just pounds away at that piano and sings himself out.

Slow soul amos lee.

I am thinkin of a time when I sat in a small cafe.

It was at least 1 in the morning,

There were paintings on the wall. Not by Van Gogh or Rembrandt, but by some guy down the street. He could have been sitting next to me for all I knew. These paintings were wild, the kind where brushstrokes make little mountains of unabashed texture, unrefined emotion. There were a few mismatched tables, with creaky wooden and rod-iron and plastery chairs. There some couches from the thrift store of mustard yellow and faded floral prints. Nothing matched but it all belonged, and everywhere, everywhere was this late-night golden glowing. That's why we all fit there. We were not the same, but we had some golden around us.

In the corner was a piano. In it's silence, it seemed to have come from a forsaken life. It landed in that cafe as a refugee, and was making a new home. Half-way through my vegan sandwich, this piano was found by a scrubby guy in faded green pants. You know the kind, he was a stranger full of earth tones and handmade beanies. He sat at that piano and played Amos Lee. And I knew the words! There were only about 7 people in that cafe, and we all sang or hummed along. It was a phenomenon of belonging.

Then it's Dave Matthews in my ears. This song is called #41. My last two years of high school I had a friend who loved Dave Matthews. We used to listen to this on the way home from school in her grandma's convertible. We would sing with the top down and talk about it was very peculiar of Dave to name a song after a number. That's what she called him anyway, Dave. Oh strange, strange Dave. On one of those convertible afternoons we stopped the car to run and jump through sprinklers. And let me tell you, in the 3 houses I lived in during that time, all from different parts of a blending suburbia, the sprinklers are what kept me alive. Because every once in a while in these neighborhoods, the stars align. Newly installed sprinkler systems pop up from under the grass at exactly the moment when you're seeking a spectacular, spontaneous freedom. Later that night, we jumped in the lake with a boy I loved. Actually, I think that's when I started to love him.And me and that boy-- we would sing Dave Matthews like our hearts depended on him. Crash into me. I do know, where you go, is where I want to be.

These people have left my life now.

But don't you see? That's not the point!

This is life. 

The pages of my confusion and uncertainty?

I can sing home inside them.

This is what it's like to be alive.

I am skippin home in my baseball hat, elated to be taken down these avenues of my own experience,

all by unexpected music.

But is it just the music?

Perhaps the shotgun immediacy of my euphoria is due to some chemical imbalance that fuels the hereditary instability of the emotional women in my family. (So I've been told.)

Maybe it's the February sun today and how my arms shiver in anticipation of spring.

Maybe we don't need a reason people.

I just love Amos and Dave.

Thanks for the remembering.

Let's be alive.