On Every Street

Dire Straits again (for the educated).

There are a few other songs that describe one aspect of the multilayered and complex emotion expressed in "On Every Street": there's a line in a really annoying song by The Fray (I think), along the lines of, "She's on your mind, she's on your mind"; there's another song that's a little older and even more annoying ("Can't Get You Out of My Head", by Kylie Minogue), which goes, "I just can't get you out of my head," at one point during the torture. Regardless of the poor musical quality, I heard the second song while skating today in that building next to the Mullins Center, which reminded me of the first, the combination of which brought the third to my head. It was an enlightening experience, having these songs flung at me. It caused me to stop, take a step back, look at myself, I guess, and realize what I was doing. I wasn't aware of it at all. I don't mind it; I'm just curious as to why I didn't see it before. Normally I can look at myself fairly objectively, and I do, naturally. This time I was too caught up, too concentrated, too happy. Strange, these things. I'm not sure I want to read this paragraph over to make sure it's coherent. I hope I passed the message on. Actually, it doesn't matter. I commented on something.

I have at least a one-person audience; is it safe now to write about everything I'm thinking? Can I strip myself (figuratively) naked, and rest in peace? I have a place for safe secrets on my laptop. I have three freewrites there. Maybe it's time to put a fourth one in that encrypted box. I usually do that when I want to use names, or at least make obvious references, but I'm afraid the mentioned person will read it, or someone else I know who knows the mentioned person might read it, in certain cases. It's not like you can take information back, either—once you've said something to someone, you've said it. I tend to get lucky because people don't listen to me or don't hear me most of the time, so they say, "What?" and I take it back. That happened at the rink today with Meghan. Nate still heard me, but I don't think he shared. I said that Chris and Madeline should be separated, since Chris keeps touching her (not to sound weird; it's just like general physical contact), and I suspect that it's intended and that she puts up with it (i.e., doesn't appreciate it). Should I tell him? That's a wild tangent, a far cry from what I was going to write, but if I write something down, people don't wonder, "What was he going to write that he wasn't going to tell us, that he was going to put in that deep, dark box of secrecy?" Actually, no one wonders that, because what I have to say is rarely interesting and never important. It's important to me that I write it, but its content is of no significance to anyone else. That's why I write, I suppose: for myself. Colons are fun, except when they get cancer. I wish I could make a math analogy like Ashish.

Speaking of Ashish's math analogy, I think I'll mention it, since it was very creative. He was comparing life to the sine wave: the sine of zero is zero, and the sine of pi is zero, but the integral of the sine function over that interval is two. "So although you sometimes end up where you began, does it necessarily mean that you gained nothing along the way?" I apologize to the aspiring mathematicians out there who have not yet encountered the calculus (and this is a perfect example of the calculus, if you review the definition).

I'm going to, indeed, release my deepest, darkest secret of the moment into an interminable and secure digital vault. Just remember one thing, person whose name I will mention in a private freewrite: it's your face I'm looking for on every street (listen to the song, or this will make no sense).

Peace out, with Mark Knopfler's guitar solo.