Anticipation

I always think of Carly Simon when I think of anticipation - and it wasn't till just yesterday that I found out that song was about waiting for her first date with Cat Stevens. The song has always spoken right to the heart of me, despite the fact that the lyrics are a bit cliched and that it makes many people of my generation think of Heinz ketchup. I wrote a composition in high school about how anticipating Stevie Nicks' The Other Side of the Mirror was making me late - in that case, it made me late for school the day I bought it. I thought it was clever at the time. Looking back, it was kind of lame. I wish I could find it. If I could, I would probably post it, lameness and all.

I'm one of those people that is incredibly anticipatory, both for good things and for bad. Reflecting on anticipation is kind of a requirement for me, as I'm approximately 34 minutes from the end of my 5 day fall vacation (or mini-break as Bridget Jones might say) - invariably, I'm going to look back a little bit on it. In the weeks leading up to it, I was anticipating so many things - lunch with Matt & Bess, the podcast, the potential to get all sorts of stuff done around the house, and a nice anniversary weekend. Although none of those things listed disappointed in any way, the trouble is that in many instances, the actual execution of all the things I anticipate can never hope to live up to how much I have built them up in my head. When things fail to live up to what I have built them up to be, I have not only lost the present I spent anticipating them, but also the present that I'm currently in.

The converse is also true, only in that case, anticipation becomes anxiety which can be crippling at times but something that I'm learning to handle. There is no simpler thing for me to do than to start a loop in my head that feeds on itself, dragging me away from the here and now and into a future that likely won't ever be. I don't pretend for a minute that I'm unique in this situation, however, it's my damn life and of course, the experience I have with it will be unique to me. Additionally, I know of many people whose anxiety keeps them from even the fundamental activities of life, and certainly I am nowhere near that. But to say that it does not affect me at all is not only not being honest with the people around me, but it's a big fat lie to myself.

As I mentioned, the problem with anticipation is that while I am anticipating things, for better or for worse, I have a pronounced tendency to lose the only thing that I really have - the present. As Carly sings, "we can never know about the days to come/but we think about them anyway." I compound my trouble with ruminating over past events, which are things I REALLY don't have any control over, whereas with future events you can hope to exert at least a little influence on them. Getting whipped up into the emotional frenzy of anxiety is ultimately not very helpful because rarely does anything concrete and rational come out of it. When you are speaking from a purely emotional standpoint, logic pretty much goes out the window. It takes an amazing person to speak from both perspectives at the same time. I find that I pretty much have to jettison emotion if I want to be rational at all - the jettisoning of which, as many people know, does not come easy for me.

In the end, another line in Carly's song really cuts through the crap with all this anticipation stuff. "Stay right here, 'cause these are the good old days." In high school, I listened to those lines with a bit of sadness, kind of already chalking up the "good old days" to being 16 and angry, unnecessarily melancholy and really not all that good. In college, I heard that thought echoed in 10,000 Maniacs' "These Are Days" and felt similarly bad. But if adulthood has taught me anything, even in the face of my chronic anticipation, it's that THESE are the good old days. The present. It's what you have. It may be all I have because I might get creamed by a truck on my way to work.

It's all we've got. So I'm staying right here.

The limit of our sight

A bit of a new look tonight. Not really new, but it is blue and chilly and very winterlike, no? I also updated the blogroll and alphabetized everybody so no one can accuse me of playing favorites. Of course, Heidi is still at the top of the list because, well, that's just how it is.

Tonight, I had this huge hankering to listen to an album that I have not pulled off the shelf in probably 10 years. It's so strange when things like that happen, and it happens very frequently to me. Perhaps I should think about therapy. Or perhaps it's just an attractive little quirk. I prefer to think that it's the latter.

Anyway, the album in question was Carly Simon's Have You Seen Me Lately? It's from 1990, my first year of college and it was her pop/adult contemporary/soft rock follow-up to Coming Around Again, an album that is widely regarded as her comeback. I run very hot and cold on Carly Simon. She has an aggravatingly uneven track record when it comes to her music. Her albums are either completely aces or complete duds. There really is no in between for me. Coming Around Again falls in the former category, as does Letters Never Sent and Have You Seen Me Lately? Carly Simon albums in the latter category include My Romance, The Bedroom Tapes, and Spoiled Girl (double yuck to that last one.) So I'm hardly a dyed-in-the-wool Carly Simon fan. Mostly, I appreciate her.

But Have You Seen Me Lately? crept back into my consciousness for reasons I can't fully elucidate. I think, for whatever reason, I was thinking of one of my favorite lines in the last song on the album, "We Just Got Here." In the song, Carly writes that "Hugo is twisting his way up the coast." I've always liked the picture that lyric gives me. It calms Hurricane Hugo, which at the time was the costliest hurricane in U.S. history. Instead of the fury of a category 5 hurricane, I get this image of a slow, almost lazy rotation. Kind of a strange thing to think about when thinking of an album, but what can I say?

Listening to the album now, I really had forgotten how good it was, even though I distinctly recall not liking it as much as I had Coming Around Again when I first got it. I remember my friend Kelly mocking the album cover, teasing me about how Carly had definitely hired a personal trainer (probably true.) It has a very "midlife" vibe to it and considering she was 45 at the time of its release, there is probably some validity to that theory.

There are some really good songs on here, notably "Waiting At The Gate" and "Holding Me Tonight." But the song that really got me tonight was "Life Is Eternal." I remember this being one of those songs that I didn't really get at age 18, but now, at age 35, I am starting to see it. The chorus sums it up.

Life is eternal, love is immortal
And death is only the horizon.
And the horizon is nothing
Save the limit of our sight.

This is something that's important for me to bear in mind, especially in light of the events of the last few days. Not that there have been earthquakes here or anything, but let's just say that I had a figurative wake-up call from the universe today - a few of you know what I'm speaking of. Many would accuse me of reading too much into it, but the universe has odd ways of getting your attention when the conventional ways fail. I'm very fond of wiping the slate clean and starting fresh with a reboot, only to descend back into old patterns 35 years in the making. So tonight is another of those points of reboot. I'm prepared to be back here in a day or a week or a month saying exactly the same thing, but the thing is to keep on getting back on the horse.

This 18 year old Carly Simon album was a perfect companion for this. What an unexpected pleasure.