Lost Cause

I heard Beck's song "Lost Cause" this week, off Sea Change, and it threw me back to my twenties.  It's fair to say that everything throws me back to my twenties lately.  It's a little embarrassing. 

I think it has something to do with feeling comfortable in my life, and trying to reclaim the times when I wasn't so comfortable. 

Memory is a funny thing.  When I think of the three years I lived in New York in my early twenties, I was both tough and tender, both floundering and completely plugged in. 

It is funny, too, how my mind wants to cast judgement over specific years and call them one final thing.  The truth is, at all times we are both brilliant and stubborn. There are few years that can be bottled so easily.  Most honest labels would read something like:

Rooftop - 7th Street - Letters - Italians
Woods - Bears - Roommates - Wasps
Hurricanes - Surfers - Bricks - Timothy

In fact, it is an impossible mission, the labeling instinct, which is why I prefer stories and their many-limbed truth.

When I first heard Sea Change, I was newly standing on my own two legs, poking about the reeds of my life.  Certain things came slowly, like cooking, and steady employment.  Other things were always there, like optimism, and the belief that I would find love. 

For whatever reason, I have always believed that everyone in the world deserves a partner they are crazy about.  But while I was confident about the riches my future would hold, I was also wildly uninterested in the things that made a relationship work. 

I was dating myself, in certain ways, and perhaps this is what a young woman should do.  Even when I was in a relationship, I spent lots of time with the being inside me who loved walking for hours, gazing in store-windows, eating muffins from food carts, and treading her way slowly through the world. 

There are Q&As in magazines: What would you say to a younger version of yourself?  Believe in yourself, Go for it, are some wholly valid answers. 

But when I think of younger versions of myself, I do not think of pep talks.  Lately, I do not find many regrets at all.  Mostly I see a dreamy girl wandering along sidewalks, stopping to examine what interests her.  I feel proud to watch this drifting spirit.  I trust her and find her lovely. 

I want to say, Yes, girl. Stray.   

In honor of the heart's sacred catacombs, I give you:

* A warm, fuzzy, animals-on-the-internet link
* An awesome video by one of my faves, MGMT, who keeps it real in the weirdest of ways
* The latest Rabbit Hat Fix, in which Lukis and I fall down a worm hole of compassion

From the belly of August, I send you big dreams and bigger swaths of wilderness.  Get out there and roam, wherever you are called.

With love,
Kara