[soundscape] so much for so long

photo: ‘party crashers’

song: 13th floor elevators – “may the circle remain unbroken” [stream only] (buy)

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‘we don’t see things as they are; we see them as we are.’ – anais nin

pain is an amazing thing, really. obviously it’s terrible in a lot of ways; it’s difficult and it’s too close for comfort and its long-term effects take too long to process. some pain is fresh and some residual and some — more than we like to acknowledge — lasts forever. pain is a beautiful thing, however, because it indicates that something is wrong. when you’re sick, you know you need more vitamin c because your throat is sore. when you drink too much whiskey, your head hurts and cigarettes sound like the worst thing ever and usually induce some/more vomiting. you hydrate yourself and avoid any activity. you rest and eat left-over chinese food and spend $2.00 on a Gatorade. only sometimes do you postpone the inevitable with a hair-of-the-dog bloody mary or irish coffee. in the end, though, pain is beautiful because if you didn’t have the headache, you would never fix the problem.

other types of pain are more difficult to fix. you know something is wrong because your heart is broken, but you don’t want to fix the problem because part of the solution is realizing that someone has left your life — sometimes for forever — and you don’t know how to live with the fact that from now on, you’ll only have a ghost in your life.

the ghost consists of your memories of them. your memories with them. their favorite song and the way their clothes smelled and how they took their coffee. the way they smiled at you, the funny way they bit their lip when they were nervous.

their laugh.

it’s hard and it’s sad to think about. this ghost in your life, following you around forever like a balloon waiting to be released. and after we’ve accumulated a few, it becomes an odd sight, this collection of balloons. we grasp so tightly to each string, desperate not to forget. desperate to preserve each detail, each line on their face. each joke and laugh and experience. each blade of grass from each walk through each city. we play it back like a movie and we know every line.

we know the whole soundtrack.

but i like to think that at the end of our lives we look around at all the ghosts who have walked with us — some much longer than others, some since the very beginning — and i like to think that we are grateful for them. grateful that they’re there and they have been the whole time. smiling at us. always unchanging, staying exactly the same — in the same clothes and with the same hairstyle that we remember or liked best. the old, faded shirt that always had a coffee stain down the front. some somber, some spiteful, some rude, some with the same shit-eating grin they always wore. the one you liked best. some tangible — almost like they’re actually there — and some transparent, only a brief memory. and i like to think that we smile at them one last time and then we let them go. our hands untether each little string, and the balloons go floating off. and we realize that they were never actually missing, we were just holding them in the wrong place. we were holding them tightly — too tightly — in our tiny, clenched fists instead of in our hearts, where they belonged.

and the pain was caused because we misplaced them — such a simple mistake, but one that took a lifetime to realize. and once we do, the pain goes away and we are finally grateful for it; everything is where it should be because it hurt so much for so long.

photo by bari sowa more

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