March 16, 2012

Five Years

42 minutes

So it is spring break and that means I have enough of a moment to put together a couple tracks. Somehow I am able to put together fewer songs each time and still come up against the barrier of space constraints - but so be it.

This last leg of time has seen much puttering around in a confused and exhausted daze, and the track by Okkervil River has been in heavy rotation as a result of said puttering. The unfortunate side effect of that burnt out husk level of life is that two momentous things have occurred directly to me (and two terrifying things have occurred to those close to me, namely heart events and cancer) - that is 1) I realized this year marks the fifth year of this audio time capsule/journal.

This certainly gives me pause as I think back over what has transpired in those five years and, holy shit, a lot of my life seems to have been terribley recent in vintage. Do you ever have those fears that your longterm self is a fabrication of some nefarious conspiracy constructing a world that never was in order to convince you that the world is other than it REALLY is? I don't actually think that because that is insane (and if I hint that I know the truth then I'll have only forced their hand to take swift action against me) - but sometimes I know the feel.

The second big thing is I got engaged to my longtime life partner Ana. Do you want to hear about ornate conspiracies of minds vastly more intelligent than your own arrayed against you? Nah - it is actually good (and terrifying).

Last thing, me - my future self - you, you reader - five years ago almost nothing which happens to you now on a daily basis was part of what you expected. It isn't just that the future is hard to predict - it is also that you have really crappy expectations.