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

For five months now I've had the same one message stored on my voicemail. I never understood the message saving feature before.. I mean, you hear a message and.. that's it. Why do you need to hear it again? But this message.. this message changed everything. A revelation of a voicemail message.

It went something along the lines of the fact that one girl far far away was happy that i had sent her a birthday present. It was the happiness, somehow, that was important. Not whether or not she missed me but whether she was happy. I dunno, I'm going crazy here but I care about someone more then myself. I know that sounds like 9th grade but gosh if it's not true. First time. yah. I swear. No joke.

So the message was sort of little kid kicking kicking their feet around and staring at the ground, sort of shy like. Not a shy like regular shy, but a shy like they just busted your window with a baseball shy. She sort sung a sweet story about really liking the present that I had sent her. Then she whispered that she would really like to talk to me.

Okay so call me a sucker. Call me a blowhard. call me whatever you will but I am hooked. I've always said that I'm no habitual person, not me. I break habits like cheap chopsticks. But this voicemail message has become a bit of a ritual with me. Not once a week, or anything as scheduled as that.. but just when I need a pick me up. A reminder.

And every time I listen to this message I learn one more lesson about the human condition. There are levels to this voicemail like there are layers of an onion. The first time I listened to it I was just a bit blown over that there was a message at all, because I honestly didn't expect to hear from her ever again other than maybe an email every once in a while. But here it was, this voicemail. on my phone. yah. I swear. No joke.

The second time I listened to this voicemail, well. I'll be honest, it was right after the first time I listened to the message. The second run I was a little more composed. The little girl in me had stopped jumped up and down and clapping and had crocked her head in interest.

Um. She said um a lot. It was in that cute sort of pouting way and I think it was because she was having a hard time leaving the message. I think it's gotta be the hardest speech you ever have to give, that you're amazed by someone but you're just not interested. Worse then your first interview. Fer sure. No doubt.

That third time, that was the first dark one. Since then it's mostly green pastures. Like part of the sun in your cellphone, in a voicemail. But every once in awhile.. on a particularly bad week, well, it's dark. But it's the dark where you learn about yourself, sort of sparring with your own demons.

So it's a good voicemail. It's sort of an epic, in it's own right, considering how many times i've listened to it and how much I've gotten out of it. Sort of like a little fountain of youth. A bit of patience bottled up.