In the last month(s) a past-present-future slideshow has been throwing images into my hipp-to the-ocampus brain space in ways much different than I’ve experienced previously. Where in the not-so-different past, meaning a year ago, I held an idea of myself as a New Yorker transplanted from California who stepped into the music business by way of journalism and had great adventures throughout. I still think that but the difference is that when I’d reflect, as I’ve been doing on the regular on these here pages, those moments didn’t feel too helluva long way back. They felt like an oh-yeah, that just happened kinda thing. Though maybe because I have been writing about them, the distance between here and there now feels both longer and surreally yesterday as I recreate them on the page, You know how as a kid you’d make grand pronouncements that you wouldn’t ever as a grown-up do something you thought was icky? I swore I would never swear. It seemed, er, icky. Fast forward thirty years to now and I intersperse words within sentences that my ten-year-old self would be mad at. Those words have almost lost their power, which is a little my point here. How held-fast beliefs twist and turn with time and lose a bit of their muscle.

I’m not feeling that as a bad thing, more as a fascinating one. The muscle I flexed inside my lived experiences in a world where some of the most influential musicians of the time moved and grooved and I alongside was thrilling. It was a fast-burn existence that even then I’d think of as something I’d always have to hold and reflect on. I would literally envision myself on a porch in a rocking chair staring at a distant maple (or some kind of biggie) tree ruminating. Pushing backward with an Ah, the Eddie Vedder and I talking about reproductive rights on the tour bus and tipping forward on a David Grohl and I on the roof of a Boston hotel in the rain at night the day Nevermind was released, then getting rousted by a security guard since apparently there were cameras and we were somewhere we weren’t supposed to be. I would envision these memories as a nubby quilt pulled around me to keep me warm. I would be alone on the porch. That’s not to say there might not have been someone else around, inside the house for instance, it was just that in thinking these thoughts, that would be my solitary moment of reliving them.

Who knows? That all may still be true. Hanging out with my dad and seeing how memory works, the twisty connectors that lead to past moments are intact while everything from say six months ago until now falls away. I appreciate thinking back on the highs and lows of all parts of life so far. Yet it does occur how no matter where you think the path you’re on is going to end up, it really doesn’t. I mean, intellectually I’ve always known that—or at least told myself that I did. I’ve shrugged and thought, Who knows? Except inside that shrug would be a vision of the older woman in the rocking chair wearing some kicky outfit moving and grooving inside a certain edgy arty world. Sure, I’ve still got closets and drawers of kicky outfits complete with matching socks, but currently, as I drive past the many strip malls this area has to offer I sometimes wonder How did I get here? That’s quickly followed by an inner scold to not be a city snob. I have my preferences for the walkable city or even, as Dennis and I talk about, the bit of isolated land and house somewhere close to a town and a train ride away from the city. That’s the someday bit. The now bit is still here, driving past another Chick-Fil-A determined not to become the person who lives only in the memories in order to avoid the now. Like the young me who swore she wouldn’t swear, the twenty-thirty-something me decided I wouldn’t be someone who said things like “back in my day, the [music, fashion, lifestyle, fill-in-generational-blank] was better.” No, I would not be that limited and solipsistic. I would be one of those oldster people welcoming the new. Well, I haven’t been curious about new music in ages (truth be, there may be some deeper reasons for that still being explored given I don’t listen to my old favorites either). I am a big fan of the movements of youth, activism, and such, but really have to stay on point to not fall into lethargy around supporting causes as I can. The biggest takeaway from my day-to-day is just the sheer realization that you never know. Never. Know. Almost. Anything. This isn’t necessarily thrilling even as I once envisioned myself as someone who would think it was.

Choose your adventure becomestrue to me insofar as I can choose whether to accept it or not. How’m I going to sit with something, act on something, twist with it, and turn with it. As Dennis takes off on the road again for a month, our boy-cat, Desi, gets over a little infection that has him often going into the dark closet for alone time, and my dad Mr. Magoo‘s it into his late nineties, and I get rid of the last of this bronchitis badness, I’m eyeing that damn rocking chair and aiming for a good tip forward and back.