Admittedly, my original blog post plan was something like 1-2 photo blogs per written blog. Mostly because it's a LOT easier to wander around town with a camera than it is to think through saying something mildly intelligent, structure it, write it, edit it and then wonder if you've inadvertantly plagarized anyone/anything. That said, my camera broke on the very horrible, no good, shitty bad day two weeks ago. And then on the Sunday following I dropped my phone (which also had a camera) so there are no more pictures. At least for a while. As a direct result of there being no more pictures, there will also be no more picture blogs for a bit. Meaning that I'll be posting blogs sort of based on whenever it is during the week/month that I feel sufficiently self absorbed enough to sit down and write 500ish to 700ish words about Callie and Callie being in Cambridge.
Apparently today is one of those days.
One of the things that I am learning about myself by being in Cambridge, and really just outside of the United States of A as a whole is that I am utterly and completely "American." And not just in the sense that yes, I am one of 953.7 million people born into one of 35 countries sitting squarely on either the North or South American continent. No. I am American in that 1950's, blonde, blue-eyed, stoked about the space program sort of way. I am an apologist for the biggest war machine the world has ever seen, and simultaneously confused--on an emotional, not intellectual level--as to why people hate 'us.' Yup. From "Leave it to Beaver" all the way up to "Breaking Bad" I am a fan. American Camelot all the way through to dystopian dream.
That said, one of my solidly American habits is an obsession with Johnny Cash. I do not use the word "obsession" lightly. I. Love. Johnny. Cash.
And by "I, Love. Johnny. Cash." What I mean is that I FREAKING LOVE JOHNNY CASH AND ALMOST ALL THE MUSIC HE EVER WROTE AND/OR PERFORMED.
As an artist--just to clarify.
Johnny Cash is in many ways an emblematic icon of America and everything she stands for. He struggled his entire life with the darker side of himself. Sometimes turning to drugs, sometimes to alcohol and sometimes to God to quell his inner demons. Despite never serving a prison sentence himself, Johnny Cash identified strongly with men who would never walk free. Singing concert after concert in prison cafeterias and writing or covering songs such as "Mercy Seat" and "Folsom Prison Blues" Cash walked a line (pun intended) between the socially acceptable, what he should say, what he would say, and those inner demons that never slept.
For a person who likes to anthropomorphize her desk, it's not a hard leap for me to decide that Cash's music is so powerful precisely because he struggled so deeply. It's that struggle that I think echoes through "God's Gonna Cut You Down" "Sunday Morning Coming Down" and Cash's last recorded song--a cover of Nine Inch Nail's "Hurt." Normally, I can listen to Johnny Cash songs (on youtube, because I'm just that good at maintaining a library of music) with limited negative impact.
However. "Sunday Morning Coming Down" listened to first thing on a Sunday morning is the best way I can think of to blow a whole day. Just gone. From the first stanza where Cash infers the view of an alcoholic (beer for breakfast, and one more for desert) I'm stuck. Wondering and thinking about what it is that we're all up to on this comfortably warm rock hurtling through space. From there I'll usually start wondering what significance anything has--if not social--and how it is we manage to assign value to anything. And then I start to think about what makes me really happy--being around friends whom I can trust implicitly. Then I realizing I chose to move away from a very solid group of such friends, maybe the first group of such friends whom I hope to know for life. Friends who are currently chilling out on the other side of the comfortably warm rock we call home that is hurtling through space at speeds that the human mind can barely comprehend.
Then I think about the scale of the earth in comparison to the sun.
Then I think about the scale of the sun in comparison to the galaxy.
Then I'm toast. Like at that point I've broken my brain for the day. Just done. Usually I lie in bed and stare at the ceiling. Because it seems as interesting and meaningful as anything else if all context is taken into consideration. It's certainly more meaningful than my homework, and decidedly more meaningful than my problems. Which when compared to the cosmic time scale of the universe, have no meaning at all. At some point the sheer scale of the EVERYTHING is the most unutterably overwhelming sensation I think people can experience. Particularly when held in context with Johnny Cash soulfully singing about heroin addiction and the regret of a life not lived well.
That's usually when I revert to watching YouTube videos of Mr. Rogers neighborhood to remind myself that the shit we care about matters.
Even if it only matters because we have decided it does. And maybe it matters even more, because it's what we've decided matters.
Either way, it makes the headcold that I'm rapidly developing seem suddenly far less impactful on life, the universe and everything in general, than I would normally--had I not listened to "Sunday Morning Coming Down."
It's a great song. Listen to that and then "Hurt." And yes. It's okay to cry.
I promise in my next blog to be more descriptive about Cambridge :)
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