My recent dreams come with vivid background music. A few weeks back I dreamt that my friend Kari and I were on our way to meet B at the movies, and Ani DiFranco’s “32 Flavors” was playing on the car stereo. We both sang along for the whole song, in real-time. The other night Mike Doughty’s “Rising Sign”* was playing in the background while something or other dreamlike happened, I can’t remember what. But the song was very real.
Two days ago someone wrote me an e-mail that contained the following sentence: “Nostalgia, for me, is as deadly as heroin.” When I read this, I knew exactly what it meant. Too often I become so mired in my own past that nothing happening presently is as good/bad as what happened before. It’s dangerous in the sense that it prevents me from enjoying what’s happening presently, and renders me unable to view what happened before in an accurate light.
When I am thus mired (or mired in any swamp of negative thought as I’ve been lately), it becomes important to remember the following things:
I am not what my friends think of me.
I am not what I think my friends might think of me.
I am not my friends.
I am not my ex-boyfriends.
I am not my boyfriend.
I am not what anyone I used to know used to think of me or thinks of me now.
I am not anyone I used to know.
I am not the way I look.
I am not how much I weigh.
I am not what anyone says about me.
*Which I’m now playing on repeat, and I don’t know why.
This is a good mantra. But an exception must be made when you have friends who think you are
wickedly smart
foxy
talented
HIlariOUS
skilled
comforting
passtionate
gentle
and totally adorable.
if that was me, i hope we were on our way to see a good movie. or at least a movie so bad it was good. and i would totally sing along with pretty much anything.
also, what cinnamon said.
word.
Thanks, Cinnamon and Kari! You’re the best!
And Kari, yeah, it was you. In the dream we were both from the suburb where I grew up, and you were having a hard time driving through it because all the stop signs had been moved to different intersections. I have no idea what movie it was; I don’t think the dream got that far.
It’s too bad you’re not what your friends think of you since I think you’re pretty swell. :)
(I know what you meant though…I’m just funnin’ on ya.)
P.S. Check your snail mail.
I like those lines where you say you are not different things. They are assertive, refreshing, funny, serious, and metaphysical all at once.
I think it would be neat to do a painting where you paint at the very top, in large cursive letters, “I am not my ex-boyfriends,” and below that there would be a bunch of guys that look like dark silhouettes sinking into a pit of tar and their arms would be waving up at you like tentacles and you would be standing at the edge of the pit watching them sink.