YOU AND ME

MEET TACTICAL - WELL THAT WAS SURPRISINGLY PAINLESS

Since the meet was the source of such increased agitation that I felt that in the spirit of FAIR PLAY that I should mention that we had a nice time together.  We met at the Old Chicago Tavern in the Old Market after she got off work.  It was the kind of meet and conversation that you would expect from two good friends.  We did not discuss that “me and you”, and that may have been the key to us getting on as well as we did.

In our heated email conversations, I felt that we were only confirming the negative aspects about our personalities.  Finally sitting down face-to-face, we gave ourselves something that our electronic conversations never had… a context for our relationship  We did not really talk about “us” and so no real understanding of the different expectations that we were looking forward to once I arrived in Omaha, or any comprehension of what being close to one another was discussed.

“We cool”.  I had begun to include those words in my response to HER response to MY response via email.  That was where I was at Tuesday evening.  While I will temper my enthusiasm to what this signals for what is ahead for us, it definitely seems to be a nice place to begin from.

YOU AND ME

I like music.  There have been innumerable articles written about its amazing powers in aiding Alzheimer patients among other groups of people dealing with issues surrounding their emotional and intellectual capacities.  Though my early love for musical sounds did not extend to my being able to create any music, I have always been aware of how keenly music attaches itself to memories and moments in my life, which is why, especially early in my blog, so many of my entries had music as a key element of my writing.  I want to believe that there has been a decrease in my entries with a soundtrack attached, and that has been a good thing for me.

By not having to use music to my writing, least not the way that I did earlier in my blogging, is a good sign for me and something that I have been working toward.  Music, particularly for those  who fall under the class of those who have cognitive impairments, simply are brought back to life, brought to classic “moments of clarity”, where what they are dealing with in the moment falls away and they are transported back to when they were so much more than what they are in the here and now.  But what music has meant to me kind of what it has meant to a Stephen King than it does to an older senior… but I digress, and that is what music does most of all for me.  It brings me back to where I am going and that is what it is doing here.

Not being sure of the grammar rules that surrounds the differences between Marcellus Wallace’s use of “me and you” and that of The Walkmen’s “You and Me”.  For me, the difference in connotation is very strong and is indicative of the detente between Nebraska and myself.  We don’t have the “me and you” that involves a loss of privileged status that Butch has lost, but maybe we are moving towards the kind of “you and me” that I believe is evoked in Bill Watterson’s final “Calvin and Hobbes” where Calvin, almost as if to dare his old buddy, takes to his sled and is joined by his friend as he tells him, “...let’s go exploring.”  Maybe Nebraska and I will make like the comic’s main character and we’ll “go exploring” together.

Maybe.

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It was called “The Record Collector” (the used music shop in Ferndale) when I was finally able to find the CD “Everyone Who Pretended To Like Me Are Gone”.  I had read several super glowing reviews of 2002’s “IT” band.  Taking it back to my place in Green Acres, I was still surprised to find that I still had the“new CD” giddiness with me, which could have been owed to the small box of goodies I had on me from Astoria in Royal Oak!  But it also could have been to the good fortune of having gotten paid, picked up my weekend junk food package, AND found this CD with its super-evocative title.

The CD itself was a little underwhelming.  I mean, it is a good album and all, but I was hoping for a “London Calling” or “Psalm 69” kind of feel as I listening to it, but the Walkmen simply aren’t that kind of band.  Smart without being pretentious, self-aware without being self-absorbed, they make the kind of good music that is likely to be on the soundtrack of many an indie-hipster internal rom-com.  So I had to bear down and give it a go.           

It wasn’t until I gave the CD a go a few times that I before I appreciated it in its entirety.  But the third song, the one from which the album derived its title, just blew me away.  It sounded like nothing else on the album and it sounded just like I NEEDED IT TO SOUND LIKE.  Up until that point of my life, that is how I felt about the people who were around me and took up room in my life.   By then, you see, the pattern was well entrenched that I was not going to have the kind of people around me that is going to to keep up with me, at least none with the intention to maintain a deep and meaningful relationship.  And I that did not, does not, and it will not bother me.  That said, my mentioning things like “literally putting my life on the line”, or my having stopped boxing when I was young enough to have maybe be something in the sport… those aren’t things said to set the expectations of what I want from a person.  I have mentioned things like that to inform people of what they will get from ME, not what I expect to get from them.  After all, it would not be unconditional good will if I was looking for something back now?

So the song comes on… softly and quietly on synth melodies, the drums in the back being slowly brought up to set the tempo and then Hamilton’s voice floats over it all.  “I made the best of it… I made the best of it… I made the best of it…”.  That, that was ME.  Because no matter what my final outcome is, no one will ever be able to convince me that I didn’t make the best of what I had.