this has been a week I have depended on the rhythms and tempos of others to give me activity/physicality. if i hadn’t encountered others being, i think i could have convinced myself i was an android dreaming or in the limbo of cryogenics.

walking to campus i had the memory of a family trip to chicago in 2004. one evening my mom and brother were ready to retire to the hotel room after dinner while my dad and i wandered. we tried getting into a jazz club but were turned away for our casual dress and my obvious 17 year old appearance. we went instead to virgin records, wherein my local rock of ages could have fit one hundred times over. this was my first experience with shopping for music–looking at album art, getting to listen to tracks in store with headphones that made my own discman pair seem so juvenile. i picked up the postal service’s “give up” because i heard my indie friends talk about the band. my dad and i listened. it was bright, earnest, melancholic. it felt like the bittersweet existence of me. my dad described it “noisy, but hopeful”. we continued to walk the city streets a few more hours, now with the CD in a bag he carried.

i just looked for the CD but could not find it. i listened to that album so much that i like to think it is settled, fossilizing under the seat of my old dodge neon. waiting for someone to excavate bittersweet feelings and dreaming of.

noisy, but hopeful was what i needed to feel this week. i have played “natural anthem” no less than 20 times while moving. thinking of my dad, of discovery, of smiling up at the sky or at the horizon because hope leaks in.