Some people say that the moment you meet that person, the rest of your life begins.  The second you shake hands, or awkwardly nod to each other over the roar of a Saturday night party.  In that second, according to some, the direction of everything shifts; you are Alice falling through the rabbit hole.  They say it can only happen once. 

They must have met in September.  It was a communications class, a requirement for a degree in business; a common enough goal.  Any combination of two thousand students in business could have been in that class.  Out of those two thousand, any one of three hundred could have chosen the seat beside her.  

She sat with the notebook resolutely before her, a pen cradled loose in her palm.  

He looked at her with a hidden smile and dark, round eyes, saying nothing as one thousand thoughts whirred blindly through his brain.   (Kettering from Hospice)

The Antlers

1:33 am  •  5 May 2011

Alone, the scrap of paper sat beside the telephone.  A pen rested upon it, slanted in such a way that the scrawling writing was obscured just so.  He hadn’t noticed it before he left in the early morning such was his hurry.  Absently, with the milk still heavy in one hand, he shifted the pen aside.  You’re a goddamn fool, it said, and I love you.  (Wolves At The Door from Kut Radio Recordings)

Of David Bazan

12:52 am  •  23 April 2011

He hadn’t seen the sun stretch across the trees since that day in early November.  It had been a long winter, through working and living and endless nights of wild thoughts.  They hadn’t talked since December, when he called her after several drinks on a Tuesday night.  On the first ring a man’s voice had answered, his breath throwing static into the receiver.  

Once, sometime near the end of March, he thought he saw her walking along the pathway that hugged the pacific cliffs.  Entranced, it was not until she turned her head to call to her companion that he realized it was a stranger.  With this last warped victory lost he wound his way down the wooden steps to the lookout, enchanted and pulled fiercely away by the ocean.  (I’m Losing Myself from a free Robin Pecknold EP)

Let’s Say Fleet Foxes

1:13 pm  •  18 April 2011

“Kathy,” He said as they boarded the old greyhound, “Michigan feels like a dream to me now.”  

She did not reply, but instead sat, letting her head fall against the window as she absently scanned the passing fields.  Hours later his quiet laughter woke her, “Look at that man in the suit,” he whispered with a grin, “he must be a spy.”

 She offered him a cooperative smile, and shifted in her seat.  ”Toss me a cigarette,”  she sighed, running a hand through her undone hair, “I think there’s one in my raincoat.”  

“We smoked the last one an hour ago.”

Silent, she rustled in the leather bag for her magazine.  She flipped through articles she had read twice already until the sunlight faded and the moon rose above them over the wide fields.  Her head came to rest against the window, then his shoulder when the glass became too uncomfortable to bare.

“Kathy, I’m lost” He whispered into the darkness.  (America from The Best of Simon and Garfunkel)

Well, Simon and Garfunkel 

12:56 am  •  13 April 2011

I went down among the dust and pollen

To the old stone fountain in the morning after dawn

Underneath were all these pennies fallen from the hands of the children

They were there and then were gone

And I wonder what became of them

What became of them

Sunlight over me no matter what I do

Apples in the summer are golden sweet

Everyday a passing complete

I’m not one to ever pray for mercy

Or to wish on pennies in the fountain or the shrine

But that day you know I left my money

And I thought of you only

All that copper glowing fine

And I wonder what became of you

What became of you 

Sunlight over me no matter what I do

Apples in the summer are golden sweet

Everyday a passing complete

Apples in the summer are golden sweet

Everyday a passing complete

In the morning waking up to terrible sunlight

All diffuse like skin abuse the sun is half its size

When you talk you hardly even look in my eyes

In the morning, in the morning

In the doorway holding every letter that I wrote 

In the driveway pulling away putting on your coat

In the ocean washing off my name from your throat

In the morning, in the morning

Green apples hang from my tree

They belong only to me

Green apples hang from my green apple tree

They belong only to, only to me

And if I just stay a while here staring at the sea

And the waves break ever closer, ever near to me

I will lay down in the sand and let the ocean leave

Carry me to Innisfree like pollen on the breeze 

I have a sunken love for this song, especially the last verse.  It begins quietly, Robin Pecknold’s vocals whispering a morning scene that drifts across your memory.  The melody is a lost love, tugging at the sleeve of your heart.  Sunlight over me no matter what I do, he cries, hopeless.  Then it turns in a soft crash, a wave breaking on the shore.  He is lost in a memory. Carry me to Innisfree like pollen on the breeze.  (The Shrine/An Argument from Helplessness Blues)

More Fleet Foxes

1:00 am  •  12 April 2011

I’d rather be a sparrow than a snail.
Yes I would.
If I could,
I surely would.

The fence runs along the cliffside.  You walk alongside it in veiled sunlight, runners passing by along the narrow paved trail.  The smell of ocean rushes past in a gust of wind from the shoreline below.  Turn at the familiar trail, along a row of grasping bushes which stand bare from the winter.  Your bench sits alone on the small cliff, waiting as always.  (El Condor Pasa from Bridge Over Troubled Waters)

An old Simon and Garfunkel record, loved by our two generations.  

12:05 am  •  11 April 2011

On a strange island an old woman and a dog live, far away from the world.  In her life she was free, and traveled to distant, vibrant worlds that many only read in National Geographic magazines.  She wrote the articles that would fill magazines such as this, of people and buildings and their lives and deaths and sometimes things in between.  This is fondly remembered by the old woman, though the memories are faded now.  

The woman was married in early February along the raging coastline.   The vibrant worlds were pushed heavily aside.  She slept in the same bed for months at a time, in a house with a low porch and failing drainpipes.  The first year the basement flooded, the slides that had captured her travels were lost.  By the eighth year, she too was lost.  These memories are faded as well.  

Her children grew, and her husband trickled away.  Alone, she lived in the old house until its creaks became strange conversation.  The woman bought a german shepherd puppy in the summer.  When it outgrew the small back yard she sold the house, leaving her old conversation behind.  

With her savings she bought a small piece of land surrounded by water and the house that stood on its west side.  Gradually various seashells and other curiosities the tide revealed were collected and placed about the house.  As the dog grew accustomed to the chill of the salty ocean, the woman grew to be contented by the loving tide and what it brought.  They carefully comb the beach every morning.  The woman is happy.  The dog is happy.  (The Shrine/An Argument from Helplessness Blues)

Perfectly Fleet Foxes

2:36 am  •  4 April 2011

The room is warm and smells like laundry on a spring day.  Once empty, the room is now filled with memories in the form of scraps of paper and photographs.  It is comfortable here, familiar, but temporary.  

10:11 pm  •  24 March 2011

I can tell that you’re scared of turning into your mother,

and I can feel myself turn into my father.

So we can lie to ourselves like they do and say we’re still happy.  

I guess it’s easy when you’re young and you still want it so badly. 

On a cold day in April she sat on the cliffs that met the Pacific Ocean.  Her mother had an angry face and a sad heart.  Frustrated with her incomplete life, she remembered when her mother would leave sometimes, or turn to her room and lock the door.  Lately she found herself desperately doing the same.  How long would it be until her face, too, grew long and lonely.  How many years until she stayed too long with someone she did not love, both of them still wandering in search of the one they waited for.  She seemed to almost embrace it as she pushed the image away.  I can tell that you’re scared of turning into your mother.   (All I Ever Wanted from All I Ever Wanted Live EP)

And Airborne Toxic Event  

8:32 pm  •  24 March 2011

Coincidence, noun: a striking occurrence of two or more events at one time by mere chance.  

They met, as many do, on a sunny day in April, forty seven days after Valentine’s Day (if that sort of thing is considered important).  

She had walked along the beach, as she did on most Thursday afternoons, and was dutifully reading a book that had secretly been put off since January.  The cup beside her sat untouched, the spring breeze cooling it as it passed (she did not really want it, but could not sit outside the cafe without some sort of monetary offering).

 He had mud on his shoes that day (the shoes were new and it seemed to be important at the time, whereas the story of the mud is not) and was somewhat self conscious because of it, which may sound strange.  If you knew him it would be perfectly normal.

It could be said that at the time they were two very different people.  It could be called a coincidence that they even crossed paths that day, so different were their lives.  She was a student, or had been (she had decided the year before to take a year off, and now she seemed to drift along where she wished).  He was an anthropology major, with a strict view of humanity that bordered on the mechanical.  

He was walking down the sidewalk of the small cluster of shops in the hope of finding something, though he can never remember what (it doesn’t seem to be important, in retrospect).  She was waiting for her friend, who would be late that day but would happen to fall into step a few feet back from a dark haired boy with mud on his shoes.  

Though he cannot recall the time of day it was or the name of the cafe, he emphatically remembers the girl that sat outside the coffee shop, leaning into a book passively.  At the same time that he happened to glance her way, she looked up and waved (in reality, at the friend who walked behind him).  What happened next will happen to everyone at least once in their life, by unfortunate fault of human eyesight.  He hesitated for a moment, but waved with an awkward half movement.  

She almost laughed before looking firmly past him apologetically, to clear up any misunderstanding.  He passed by, then, looking once again at his muddy shoes.  (Can’t Go Back Now from Hideaway)

Well, it’s The Weepies

2:16 am  •  24 March 2011