This Is A Call

He tells everyone a story,
because he feels his life is boring,
and he fights so you won't ignore him,
because that's his biggest fear;

and he cries, but you'll rarely see him do it.
He loves, but he's scared to use it.
So he hides behind the music,
'cause he likes it that way.

He knows he's so much more than worthless,
he needs to find the surface,
because he's starting to get nervous.

--From "This Is A Call" by Thousand Foot Krutch

I love this band. Best Christian rock band in the cosmos. I heard them twice on the radio today, and it's hard for a Christian rock band to get airtime, mostly 'cause most of them suck ass. But these guys are great. This song in particular meant something to me. Touched a chord, hit a little close to home, or some other little cliché designed to cover exactly what I mean. Really, though, I'm far too much of a collection of cliché and random memes, albeit in eccentric combination. That's part of the reason I've made a tad of an effort recently to at the very least appear to enlighten myself, to use language that much more exhaustively.

My mind, when it has the increasingly rare opportunity to wander without my usual careful boundaries, goes places I wish it wouldn't. It summons uncalled-for and potentially untrue images of my first love, of the girl she was, of the woman she could have become, and may have, for all I know. It conjures up all kinds of painful alternative pasts and presents, in which I wasn't a coward, or lazy, or poor, or so emotionally crippled, or afflicted with this damned apnea.

I saw the Pacific ocean today. I have now had my hands and feet in each of the oceans bordering this country which I've only on this trip come to know is truly as beautiful as it is sick. For some reason as of yet unknown to me, my first instinct when I reached the water, which I'm glad to admit I obeyed, was to put my hand in the water and raise it to my waiting tongue. Which is to say I've also tasted both of our oceans. My hand fell away, and I can't imagine why, but I was almost surprised at its saltiness. I think I expected it to somehow taste different from the water I tasted in North Carolina that summer.

We're taking a longer, and therefore potentially more dangerous way back to Cornell considering the condition of our adventuring vehicle. I have been a major supporter of this new route, as it takes us through more parts of America that I've yet to explore. I'm beginning to question the wisdom of our detour, not for the potential of breaking down and being stranded in the desert, but for the very personal reason that it'll give me more time to think before my consciousness is reabsorbed by the bustle of daily life on the Hilltop. The more time I spend among these guys, the more I'm lost to the morays of my memory and the other pitfalls of unrestrained imagination.