I'm Going Your Way, Anyway.

All the other girls here are stars; you are the northern lights
They try to shine in through your curtain: you're too close and too bright
They try and they try, but everything that they do is the ghost of a trace of a
Pale imitation of you
I'll be the one to drive you back home, Kathleen

This party was made with the night air and the chance that a smile
Will wind its way from your face to one of the boys in your line
You act like you're hip to their tricks and you're strong
But a virgin Wurlitzer heart never once had a song
I'll be the one to drive you back home, Kathleen

I know you are waiting, and I know that it is not for me
But I'm here and I'm ready, and I saved you the passenger seat
And I won't be your last dance, just your last good night
Every heart is a package
Tangled up in knots someone else tied
I'll be the one to drive you back home, Kathleen

Crawl up your trellis quietly back up into your room
And I'll coast down the lane of your drive by the light of the moon
And the next time we meet's a new kind of hello; both our hearts have a secret:
Only both of us know about the night that I drove you back home, Kathleen

I've always found the Old Testament to be thrilling and rather scandalous, if a bit barbaric -- biblical bodice-rippers abound, and decimation's a mandate from on high (oh, those pesky Moabites!) -- but inapplicable, for the most part, to my life and times. My fingers seem to find Ecclesiastes and its melancholic Preacher more readily than they do Deuteronomy; I don't know, but "Shibohiah begat Slibohia who begat Slidomiah begat Shibohiath, and there was much feasting in heaven, amen, at which appointed time the angel of the LORD did come down from on high and decree that there should be weeping and gnashing of teeth; wherefore, if a woman dost bleed in her time, do not go in unto her, neither shall you touch her, for she is an unclean thing, but bring unto the house of the Lord seven albino three-winged doves. Selah," just doesn't have the same ring as God espousing the Democratic Party through the prophet Isaiah: "But the liberal deviseth liberal things, and by liberal things shall he stand." (That's Isaiah 32:8, for those of you convinced I've taken that out of context. Fie, I'd never--!) The battlefields of the ancient peoples, the halls of Ahaseurus, blood feuds and stolen birthrights, murderous jealousy and women warriors -- these were stories from my childhood, as much a part of my literary history and as real to me as Narnia or Middle Earth; enlightening, perhaps, but not necessarily relevant.

But lately, that's been changing; I find myself turning most quickly to the stories I know so well. This makes sense, I think; we all have our own inner clocks guiding the applicability and pull of certain works of art, certain authors, entire cultures: to borrow an example from Sarah Brown, you read Catcher in the Rye differently at 16 than you do at 30 (Sarah: "At 16, I might have loved Holden Caulfield...at 20, I'd already dated him several times and was sick of his sh*t." ) Do I care that I haven't read Moby Dick? Eh, I'll get around to it. Am I concerned that Asia bottoms out on my list of Top Five Places to Visit? Eh, that's for the next five years after this next five years. Are we looking for a point in all of this? Maybe. As usual, the moral of my story involves things you can eat, namely salt. In my reading lately, I've been thinking about Lot's wife.

I always felt her punishment was disproportionate to the crime of looking back to Sodom; doubtless she was thinking of friends and family members still left behind. I'd look back, too. It'd be hard not to. It's not every day the heavens unleash cans of whoop-fire and whoop-brimstone, right? I, frankly, never saw a problem with her turning around; it seemed human of her. And while my diligent Sunday school teachers always stressed that one shouldn't look back to the dangers from which one had been miraculously saved, I wonder if that's not a rather limited reading of the passage. It seems to me that there's no harm in looking back occasionally; there may be harm in not doing so, in not realizing you've already loved like this, or felt like that, or tested fate by hopping down the stairs while eating toast and putting your pants on. No, the real harm comes from not being able to turn back again, in not being able to say, "Well, that was interesting. Moving on!"

It's just that I have a wee problem with the moving on, with the "in my head" goodbyes. Like dates--particularly those that may or may not involve grilling your own meats, or lunches on Thayer Street, or the entire hairdresser debacle-- I tend to think they never really happen in my life. I don't generally enjoy cutting ties, even when the ties I'm cutting just involve shutting off the "What if and why not?" switch in my head; and a bad habit of mine involves rewriting my own history so that I never get left and I never leave. But this time...I don't know. I'm honestly confused about the appropriate course of action. I can't seem to tear my eyes away from the city, you know?

Writing things here somehow makes letting go more bearable (since the two people who've made it this far will hold me to this), more of a conscious act in which I willingly participate rather than have forced upon me -- like Lot's wife. You become entrapped in your own imagined past if you're not careful, recreating moments and conversations that exist only in your head; even if what's in your head is an accurate transcription, that matters little if only you remember it happening that way. The past can consume, can close of all roads but those leading back to itself --certainly it has its own flavor and its own allure, but it ever remains the same. Nothing grows in salt. It is what it is, and what it is is very good unless you're over 50, overweight, a smoker with poor blood pressure, or Jessica L. Curtis -- in the latter case, you've just had too, too much of a good past thing. Poor Lot's wife. Poor me, by default! Can we pretend I'm pitiable? Thank you. Moment over.

Apologies to those who didn't realize they were stumbling upon a self-help book today. I know I can't ever be specific here, and I know people read to see their own names, glean any gossip, find links to Mario Brothers theme songs, and the like. But sometimes I write just for me; this is one of those days. I've journaled much on this matter privately, but that hasn't done the trick. I don't mind if you stopped reading; in fact, I've somewhat counted on that fact. The thing is that it's important to me that I get this down. If I feel like it's on public record, I have to turn back around now, leave the city, concede ontological defeat -- it's a matter of pride now, and pride has a funny way of making one act more quickly than memory. What do the Armenians say, Derek? My soul loves your soul. But at this particular moment, my soul's gotta get the heck out of Dodge if it's going to have a chance of escaping becoming a large, JC-shaped salt lick. I mean, I like deer...but they ruin the garden. And this summer, I am all about a garden.