cutting great neck

fade into you mazzy star.



i remember driving around in the mountains in the desert somewhere, east of san diego, perhaps driving back from death valley or utah or big bear. a long black valley expands forward as you drive on the edges of its bulky red mountain borders, the road like some kind of ribbon that seems to slide into the mountain valley and the car just an infinitesimal speck riding on it.

it was sunset and the wavering maroon shadows of the sky pooled across the valley. we were alone on the road, the solitary witnesses of the purple dying fizzle of the sun. sometimes a car curved out into the road ahead of us from beyond a mountain; white orbs danced from behind us once in a while.

i love the desert, the mountains, the valleys for that reason. the pine trees glowed like embers. streaks of orange light corralled along the cliffs and died down into a blue obscurity.



and fade into you comes up on my zune.

--how can i say it? listen to the song for a moment: torched strings that peel away in the rural night, when only the cowboys hear 'em--the way they seem to fade infinitely away into the melody, into the clattering bells and into the hounding voice, the one that seems so, so resolved, so resigned, and yet it persists, it sings, it--it reverberates and echoes.

it's beautiful.

and the combination of me in the car, from this polarized window, all alone with the music looking out into the dying rays of the sun in this lonesome, empty green valley, with the haunting solitariness of this song...



---

i remember this because my zune broke apart very recently and i was just reminded of it after the song came up on itunes. and this memory has remained with me for no reason at all, one of those insignificant details of life that accidentally leaves a mark.

when old songs revisit me, so do old feelings, feelings that rise up in me and crash inside like a great big blue wave.



i am writing this at 12 am on saturday, june 13, 2010; classical gas by vannessa-mae is on itunes; i’m about to read the nytimes mag and atlas shrugged; on a word document because my internet’s down, i have no plans to revive it till i wake up.

i wait incessantly for the right darkness to settle into this room.

i already miss the winter. my first real snowy winter. i miss waking up in the night and letting the raw cold fill up the room, filtered by this window and kept away at arm's length by these walls. i miss the piano songs that ring in the ice. the way the blackness seemed to swallow one small yellow streetlight that blinked in the distance from my window like a star and made me miss summer.

i am isolated and insulated all at once. maybe this is why the words sound so similar?

these green trees greenest than green pour around my house like an insulating blanket. they're one solid dark green color that packs into this window like a thick liquid grime.




---



an old french song comes up on my itunes.

i miss a world i forget. i miss being five, traveling through europe with my family, those auburn stone-laden alleys, the blue july noons, so clear and distinctly airy, light.



i miss what i would never be able to do and be and have again. i miss those moments that seemed to wash away from me like water. i miss old friends, old houses, old lives; and the new ones that never came to be.

i'm lost in the wood.

this black world fills up like an empty jar in the rain.