Down the Rabbit Hole

There Goes the Wondertruck

This morning my oddly fitting soundtrack, courtesy of Pandora, is Mary's Danish. This is the music of my college afternoons, the music I rocked through my frustration and angst through. The loosely chaotic sound, somewhere between garage-born alternative rock and 80's-era punk, coupled with it's cold, biting lyrics always seemed the best antidote for whatever ailed me. I see that even today, it still has the same soothing effect. The tunes transport me back to a time when the problems and challenges were, in hindsight, so trivial. They take me back to a time when I was delicate and naive, when the heartaches were about silly little loves and losses and my dreams were still colored by the gullibility of youth. If I had only known then the things I would face in the years that followed; the dark days, the doubt, the real losses I would shoulder.. That's the way the world works though, we always think we will never hurt worse, love harder, break more - and then we do. In retrospect, not having the person I loved love me back, wasn't really so terrible. I survived to learn that there are far harder lessons born of love and longing. Back then, the fear of failure was so overwhelming, but it was nothing compared to the crushing wave my future failed ambitions left in their wake. If I had known these things and more, I would have embraced those small challenges, those little aches and pains. I would have cranked those tunes, would have sung the words loudly and with abandon. I would have celebrated more.