Remembrance, And Shaking The Darkness
2006-10-31, 11:34

Sufjan Stevens floated gracefully out of my car speakers on my way to work, accenting a perfect fall morning. A soft breeze tossed crumbling leaves through the air, and a thin layer of gray cloud that bespoke of rain in the afternoon filtered the sunrise light, casting an even, muted tone over everything.

As I entered the home stretch of the drive, 'Chicago' was playing. I was feeling the album during the whole drive, the organic innocence of the music, the wonderful, utter wordiness of it ('Come On! Feel the Illinoise!' is a particular favorite), and it hit me how truly, deeply American the music is, bubbling up from the earth itself and ignoring all pretense to any auditory 'fashion sense'. It sings an America that admits its faults and tries to own up to them, an America that still listens to its people and the beautiful little song each has to sing. It really made me understand just how lost our society has become on the whole, steeped in advertising and patriotism and apathy and materialism and self-serving morality. But it also told me that hope, that goodness, still exists here, waking up from some drug-induced slumber to find things in horrible disarray and beginning to set things right again. I found myself tearing up at the prospect that maybe, just maybe, I could again be proud of the country that I live in.

And then I began to wonder whether it was America I was remembering, or myself. Not unlike this nation, I've been through a very dark period in my life, starting back in '02, when I was laid off and, later, found out about my infertility. And while I've been recovering in increments, suffering setbacks, it was only very recently that I truly realized just how lost I'd been, how disconnected from myself, my wife, my family, the world, I'd become. It's only now that I feel like I'm in the shallows of a dark strait, looking back at the opposite shore and wondering how long it took, how long I'd really been under, wondering whether I'll fall backward into the depths again some day. I also find myself wondering if this isn't the same shore I started at, that I got turned around somewhere, and that there's something on the other side I need to reach, something I have to brave the waters again to get to.

But right now (and I may be invoking The Curse for saying it), for the first time in a long time, I feel truly good, deep in my chest. Maybe it's the season, maybe it's that I've been making more of an effort to take care of myself physically, maybe I've been sleeping better, maybe it's something neurochemical, maybe it's astrological; whatever it is, I'll take it.

-- End Transmission --