It's always a funny experience to realize that the songs that you hold so dear are known by everyone, and they'll sing along to them at a concert. It's like you're being outed or something. This comes about thanks to Radiohead videos on Youtube.com. I look up a song I like and it gets played not only at almost every show, but gets a huge pop from the crowd. And they all sing. Somehow it seems a little less special to me now, like everyone knows. They all have their own silly associations with it: first kisses, car wrecks, being punched in the face. Everyone's different, but the same. Makes you think a bit.

There is an old poem about not fitting in anywhere, and how when you die you won't fit in heaven. You just won't accept it. Then there's this idea that the French have of not being comfortable in your own skin. I often think about that. What a damning situation to be in. You can cover your skin with all sorts of things, but it'll always be there. You'll be haunted to your grave by yourself, always trying to feel normal, but never really knowing that you're there. I wonder if we're all still growing into our skins, and whether we'll ever fill out our birthday suits. Confidence in ones self. That's a trait that I often find myself angered by.

It's not that I don't like when people know what they want, quite the contrary. I like people who know who they are, and are cool with that. People who are comfortable in their skin. Nothing is better. It's when that confidence becomes the end, and all encounters are just a means to it. When you have a conversation to show how cool you are, or this crazy thing that you did, that's when I start to get angry, or upset, or just despondent. After all, these are the kinds of people that run the world, that claim to be "Alphas", natural leaders. Not true, says I.

To me, there is a distinct beauty in the recognition of the outlandish as normal. When something really odd happens to me, something that is strange, I tend to just treat it as another thing. There's something I love about that. Life will go on with or without us, and any event is only as important as you make it out to be. I've been trapped by forest fires, in a car chase or two, in a plane that's come really close to crashing. These are things. They don't control or define me. If people want to know about them, I'll give them all the details. I just won't bring it up unless prompted. Maybe this is why I have trouble writing fiction.

The glaring contradiction is this little space though. It serves as my soapbox to talk about things, yet it isn't for anyone, but it is. I've been through this before. I feel slightly dirty about writing things here, but it's so damn enjoyable to actually write words. They're my first love and my greatest love. I should have been an English major then, but in spite of this, they hold a sway over my life. Someday soon I'll write something I can be proud of. In the meantime, I'm going to keep plucking away at this until I feel warmed up enough to take the plunge.

Until I get something meaningful back into my routine,

-ccmas

It feels like winter, but it should be spring.

There is something inspirational to the soul about enjoying something that's always there. Living in New England for most of my life I all but ignore the "color". The trees change their clothes, drop trou, and the winter comes. Driving tonight, I learned to enjoy it again.

The Magnetic Fields album "69 Love Songs, Volume 2" was on the 'pod. I was wearing my old Old Navy jacket and just taking in the night, driving much slower than normal. Not a single other car was on the road, and for once I could cruise at a relaxing 35 in a 40, enjoying to often somber sounds of the band. Love is all they sing about on that album, obviously, putting me into that romantic mood I sometimes let peek out. Then I heard something sounding like static. Then I heard more of it. I checked the radio to see if the ipod dock was getting a bad signal, but nothing. Then it hit me.

I was driving over leaves. Hundreds of dried up leaves. They were coming down like snow.

Suddenly the air hit me, cool and moist. Getting home didn't matter much at all anymore. I just wanted to drive and see these amazing things falling from the trees. All I could think of was being a kid again and jumping in leaf piles, and the little bits of broken leaves that would stick to your socks. Twigs in my hair, leaves on my socks. A kids as close to an adult as a bush. Something innocent came back into my life, and I really don't want to lose it, but I know I will. I know that I'll wake up tomorrow and be the same person I was this morning. I know that I won't be able to share this with anyone, not the experience at least. There is something perfect in the complete privacy of the moment, but the knowledge that other know it too. It's like this shared unconsciousness that we all have, at least the ones that grew up in this region, where the air would go cold before school started and the balmy 60 degrees of the spring seemed like 90.

There is this shame that I feel in moments like this. It's that knowledge that years ago I could dwell on nights like these for weeks, revelling in the wonder of it. Now I cannot. Even if I try to, I'm faking it. I'm forcing sincerity. These moments are like water on a duck's back, and while I try and hold on, they just slip away. If I could meet me now I don't think I would like me much. I'd have a much better time of things, but I think that cynical little tumor in my life grew into something bigger, and that there's no way to remove it or even tone it down. Maybe it's growing up. Maybe that innocence being lost is a shared experience, like broken leaves, one that we all have but never talk about. I hope so. I don't want to be the only one that's broken their own heart.

Until the next time we speak, until I figure things out and feel like talking more, until something happens that is of note,

-Chris