my first post

i've been listening to a song recently, a rap song, actually (is that right?  are raps actually songs?  i mean, they're usually set to some kind of music...but does that make it a song?  or is it just poetry, albeit rather angry poetry, set to music...beat-poet style?  i doubt that any rapper would appreciate that connection...oops.) called "live your life" by t.i. and rhianna.  it samples from the "numa numa song" (you know...the one that poor white boy made famous on youtube by dancing like a fool in front of a webcam), which is maybe why i like it.  it's not a brilliant song, but i like the premise.  "live your life."

sometimes i miss the things i used to have.  i know everyone feels that way, or i'm sure that most do, but i wonder if the things that i remember are remembered the same by the people i shared them with.  for example: i remember one night in bloomington, a friend of mine invited me to his friend's band's gig.  they played dave matthew's "two step" and i remember dancing and laughing.  i remember the way the beer tasted (warm and fuzzy) and the way the band sounded (loud and bright) and the way i felt (wild, like i could do anything).  sometimes i wonder if he remembers it the way i do, or even if he remembers it at all.  it wasn't an important night, or even all that special.  but i remember it.

i remember my freedom, too.  i think i miss that more than anything else.  staying up all night with friends, going where i wanted, doing what i felt like.  i miss living on 2nd street with annie, and the house on bryan.  i miss the feeling that we would take over the world.  i miss knowing that we were unstoppable, that there was nothing we couldn't do.  and i miss the bliss of ignorance of myself.  i mean, i knew who i was, what i wanted, who i wanted to be.  but sometimes i wish i could go back and remember what it was like to not have to watch every mood, every urge to go shopping, every patch of super-productivity.  every depression.

and again, i wonder if the annies and cass and jess and everyone else remembers these things the way i do.  i wonder if annie remembers smoking hookah until the early hours, or that summer where our days were backwards: we went to bed after our summer school class and woke up after dark.  i wonder if she misses them the way i do.  and i wonder if ross remembers hanging out in the dorm lounge with the rest of us crazies, or how every single girl (except for alyss) had a crush on him.  i wonder if anne remembers her poor beta fish (all named after characters from "the neverending story") who kept committing fish-i-cide, and how we all dressed up as batman villainesses for halloween.  and the halloween she went as a troll.  and if cass remembers our midnight trips to kroger and our love for homemade popcorn.  if jess and cass remember our hungover breakfasts at the runcible spoon.

at the time, i resented bloomington.  it was too small for me, not the kind of city i craved.  but looking back, there was nowhere else i'd rather have been.  no one else i'd have wanted to be with.  and i know that i can be a bad friend, terrible at phone calls and keeping in touch, but i love them all.  and i miss them.  i miss you.  you are all the best parts of myself.