I have cultivated many seemingly useless talents. I have taught myself how to gloss over pain and to pick myself up from heartbreak. I have an extraordinarily keen sense of impermanence. I understand my mortality. I know all too well how to appreciate the people in my life and the things that I see, love and do beyond the capabilities that most people can possibly logically comprehend. I understand beauty, love, blood, pain, death, life, faith, fear, exhilaration, and passion on a manic poet’s level. This is my blessing / This is my curse. It propels me recklessly forward; all day, every day. It causes me to crack under the pressure sometimes. It finds me only being able to relate to dead poets and rock stars; hiding in my bed for days when it all gets too overwhelming. It also brings me to tears when I am too full of love for things most people ignore; a beautiful bird on an otherwise ordinary tree, witnessing kindnesses between strangers, the right note in the right song, being at the right place at the right time, the sunrise/the sunset, itching the right spot, meeting the right person, childrens' faces, ice cream cones and ladybugs. There is so much that the majority of most humans take for granted, that i have somehow convinced myself Someone has to Appreciate it or it will all be for nothing. I believe I have taught myself how to be overwhelmed with beauty. I have taught myself how to not filter out the majesty and velocity of my little lifetime. How lucky I am! Lucky me, lucky mud!
Sometimes I find myself replaying seemingly insignificant experiences that wouldn’t make it into a single paragraph of my life’s story because there literally was no meaning, it was just a beautiful moment; it happened, I appreciated being alive to experience it, the experience stayed with me. these memories come and go; the way a certain shadow fell across the sidewalk one morning as I was walking in to work one day and I never saw it again – where did it come from? A beautiful mystery. Trying on a dress in the Kmart changing room with my mother when I was 6 years old – I do not remember the dress, I remember the feeling of the terry cloth on my stomach and the perfume my mother was wearing; White Shoulders… there are certain moments I can remember very consciously saying to myself “I am alive. No one on earth has ever had this experience and I got lucky enough to be the one to feel it and best of all, acknowledge the gift of being able to recognize how lucky I am to be here.” …Standing on the lawn front of my Granny’s house the day of her funeral and seeing the first few snowflakes fall; holding my best friend’s child for the first time; lying on my back in the grass and watching the clouds roll by – anytime, ever. I relive them, I replay them, I relish them, I appreciate them.
Oscar said: “Things are because we see them, and what we see, and how we see it, depends on the arts that have influenced us. To look at a thing is very different from seeing a thing. One does not see anything until one sees its beauty.”
One such memory that is slightly significant but is not, is somehow backhandedly related to this song. For my 30th birthday in 2007, I was given the gift of travel by my parents. I went to France (Paris, specifically) for an extended solo soul search. It was the greatest and most beautiful experience of my life. There are many moments that meant nothing which mean everything, that I replay over and over; Taking the wrong metro stop exit and coming out of the tube into a department store. Sitting in front of a café in the Pigalle whilst sipping a Franziskaner and listening to a man sing Cat Stevens with a thick French accent, watching graffiti roll by on the train from the 18th to the 7th arrondissements, bread, the sound of a car with its stereo blasting rolling down my little Rue Blanche in the middle of the night…
I, at the time of my travel, did not have an ipod. I knew music was going to play a very significant part of this experience, as I would be alone. I scavenged what I could and had a debacle of ipod buying drama back and forth on ebay. I tried purchasing an ipod 3 different times, all 3 were worthless and had to be returned, until 2 days before I was to leave, I convinced my friend to let me borrow his 6GB ipod to take with. I very specifically remember my dad picking my up at my apartment to take me to the airport and I was still trying to load just the right songs onto it. He was standing at the door, hollering for me to come on and I was still syncing…
Very specific albums and artists went on that trip with me to Paris; I spent a day in the Pere Lachaise with Debussy, he kept watch while I cried over Oscar’s grave. Tom Waits and I had a lovely evening on the Pont Neuf, watching lovers and rollerbladers by streetlight. Aimee Mann and I rekindled our romance in the Tuileries and traded lighters with a homeless man. Mel Tormé and I had a lovely lunch with Dave Eggers by the Louvre… Kate Bush and I went to Normandy on a pilgrimage.
I spent the entire time I was in France, basically in the city, except for one day when I fulfilled a lifelong-ish dream to visit the Mont St Michel. I left my room at 5am and got to the tour group office and climbed on the bus. It took us 4 hours or so to get from the City to Avranches. Along the way, somewhere around Caen we stopped at a truck stop type location for everyone to stretch and fuel up. I listened to Aerial over and over on the way up. The ethereal simplicity and descriptiveness of the ordinary turned extraordinary; it fit this dream day for me so well. I was listening to "King of the Mountain" the first moment I could see the abbey, it was breathtaking and filled me in a way little has before or since.
The truck stop, which could have been in Alabama or Maryland - it was that non-descript, sold amazing French coffees and tshirts and was like a travel mecca. I remember buying some kit-kat bar-esque candy bar and a coke. I went outside to wait for the rest of my group and have a smoke. I was sitting on a picnic table, my feet on the bench, shivering a little, staring at nothing; feeling lucky to be alive. Another bus pulls into the lot and a flood of children fly into the truck stop. There is a group of chaperones with the group, most likely on a field trip. A man, probably in his early 40s and probably a teacher, follows to the door and stops at the picnic table with me. He was wearing a tweed jacket with suede elbow patches. He had a red plaid thermos. He climbs onto the picnic table with me and lights a smoke. He opens the thermos and takes two small plastic cups out of his jacket pocket and fills them both, handing me one. I didn't think twice and took it from his hands. Why not? He turns to me and says (in French) “You are a student?” and I said “I am a pilgrim.” (I swear I did. Paris turned me into an idiot/poetry junky) and he said “let us drink to that!” and he handed me one of the cups. He said something like “this is the best coffee I have ever brewed in my life. How lucky I get to share it with someone on a spiritual quest.” And we sipped our coffee and watched the traffic roll by for a few minutes until my group began to load onto the bus. I handed his cup back to him and said thank you for the coffee. We shook hands I got onto the bus.
Later that day I climbed the 900 steps to the top of the abbey and stood on stones 2000 years old and let myself be completely overwhelmed with beauty and luck as I stared out into the ancient sea.
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