Great sleep. Disturbing dreams. That's new. They are also so mundane. So real-world. Sometimes I am working at a company I hate. Or I am engaged in conversation with people I don't like. Or I'm taking a test (damn, I'm always taking a test), and missing something important, like the location of where the test is being held, or, hilariously, I can't find a pen, or, well, of course, I don't possess any of the knowledge needed to actually pass the test. A mission of failure.
Still waters run deep. I think I'm doing fine. That all is well with the world, but my mind is a warring, whirling, disturbing thing. Yeah, and then making the coffee this morning, I think, well of course, the message is crystal clear: You Just Can't Pass the Test.
Seems so damn pessimistic. I mean, I think I have decided that that is a "lie in my space." Fuck that. I don't need to live up to anyone else's conception of what my life is supposed to be, or what my life means, or adds up to. Even if these doubts, slings and arrows are coming from my own overheated mind, my own consciousness. My own "judgement." WTF?
I decide to choose a alternate narrative. At least in my waking hours.
The a.m. soundtrack - U2's "All That You Can't Leave Behind." (2000). I play this one this morning as an affirmative act of defiance. I actually play the first track twice. Loud. In the kitchen. Feel the adrenaline rush. "It's a Beautiful Day." ! Exclamation point. This record looms as a major statement. It didn't seem like that when it first came out. But today, 20 years later, it looms as some grand opus of optimism, hope, grace. It acknowledges loss, death, pain, separation, but still the sound, the intensity, the passion in the grooves carries you, lifts you up. Recorded before 9/11, before the Iraq Debacle, before the Torture Regime, before "hatred of the other" became a national pastime, before the Economic Meltdown, before Obama, the Toxic Clown and the Raging Global Pandemic. Like they say, a more "innocent time." Although of course, no one was innocent then either. It's a beautiful day, you got a problem with that? Beautiful, yes, test, or no damn test...
