and she said.. "how you interpret the dream is probably more important than the dream itself"

The iTunes is attempting to drown out the obnoxious grind of the sad, tired, and old ball-bearings of my desktop computer that somehow are able to continue to make noise year after year after year. It's the same computer case as the one I got my freshman year of college, the same one that was revamped in '99 with something crazy like a PIII 450 and given to my pops as his shooter. Another (*gasp*) SIX years later it's still going, still cranking away but somehow managing to do it much more loudly. damn. At the same time, the wind is whipping around in the parking lot behind my apartment sounding like arguing teenagers and the ball-bearings keep getting into the conversation and it's a back-and-forth on either side of me, complaining, and in the middle - iTunes - trying it's best to drown those mother-fuckers out, yah know?

I'm working on an iTunes collection. Not the "big" collection. Not the entire collection. I'm working on a specifically unique collection - no more than 200 songs - and I'm not going to call these classics here, because really - what is a classic really? - but it's sort of a collection of my life, given the last few years, and maybe someday I'll burn those fuckers to a few CDs and they'll make something. They'll mark a passage of time. They'll be me in a little tiny way. Me and a few other folks who have been around to insert their two cents, folks who had some say in my left-right-north-west-sout-down-left-sideways shifting meandering wandering life. Not that it's going anywhere fast. But at least I'll have some sort of musical record for it, right?

In a different world I'd do all the dumb things I gotta do. I'd do a heck of a lotta the things I don't have to do, too, because ultimately those are the things that really make a man - doing the things you don't have to do. I'd play guitar more, convinced that practice can make perfect even though I'm lacking in the music talent gene. I'd finish more projects. I'd take more pictures.. pictures of people, too. Friends. Acquaintances. Random people on the street. Interesting faces that have stories to tell and maybe, somewhere, I'd print them all out and hang them up. Not in any obvious place like my bedroom or living room but somewhere in an old rotting barn out in the country. I'd visit every once in awhile. Maybe, just maybe, someone else would visit too.

The saddest part of life, it sometimes seems, is the fading of memories, and the older I get the more there are to fade. The more time they have to fade. The more I notice fluttering away into the dark recesses of my mind. Friends. Faces. One day, in high school, I took my camera to school for no apparent reason. I just had some film and wanted to cart it around, use it up, and by the end of the day I'd snapped photos of a number of random people and - surprise - I still have that roll of film somewhere. On occasion I happen upon in when re-arranging shit or trying to clean up and I'll flip through it and, despite the fact that I still see many of the people in those photos, they captured more than just the people but they captured the time, captured the feeling, the emotion, the energy in the air, the twinkle in the smile, the flash in the eyes. A picture is worth a thousand words.

Of all the girls I've truly loved there is only one that remains with me in photographic form. Sadly, the rest are fluttering memories, floudering in the deep waters of my memory, fading into the darkness. I remember I asked one of them once for a photo. It was early on in the relationship, too, but I knew deep down in my heart that things weren't going to tip in my favour on this one. She was restless and wanting and I was an insignificant bump in the road so I knew that I needed a picture or this one would, soon enough, be truly gone. Not just in my life but in my mind and in my soul and all that would be left would be a calcification, a fossil, a plaster mold of a memory of a faded face.

The process is in the works and, like a fossil, once it is found and removed it will leave hole in the middle of me.

So in the meantime I've been working on a collection of music that attempts to define my collective experiences over those years and, not that I think it can be done perfectly, I do think music can provide a pretty good tool in recollecting memories and feelings and emotions of long-time pasts, if you're into that sort of thing. I'm into that sort of thing. So I'll keep the iTunes going, keep putting those songs in the collection that spark the brain in a special way when I hear the first few notes, the songs that carry me up a big stairway, across mountain ranges, over hills and far away, the songs that define once in a lifetime, the one that is always on my mind. Memories are made of this.