back to hrvatska

and yet it rains...

am i a person overly obsessed with symbols and the repetition of things in this world, or is it just that my mind is obsessed?

back here in croatia. tried to make it albania. the ferries are booked full until august 16th. the day after my birthday.

i've been wondering about music lyrics while i have been here. i have been hearing quite a few songs that have meant a lot to me over the years. now, hearing music all the time, one is going to hear a lot of the songs that have meant something or another to them when they heard them. however, and sad to say, music hasn't been all that big a part of my life. reading, writing, traveling, yes. music...more an desert than a main course. and yet i have heard many songs that have meant a lot to me. that take me back to a time where those memories would, if you were a sort of neural archivist, would say they were lost. where you would fail at rediscovery, the music proves to be an adept excavater.

i just heard james blunt's High the other day, which took me to damn near the beginning of this particular journey, to a bar in Bologna, where Amanda (who is leaving the continent tomorrow) and I went to go dancing. It was a Wednesday night, I believe, or was it Tuesday. The journal has it recorded, but the actual day of the week fails me. Not fully excavated, I see. However, the music didn't worry about that. It was a moment of serendipity that was of note. Bologna is a large city in the north of Italy. The fact that this was the second bar/club that we went to and found Bobby there (Bobby is known to both of us. I know him through the Bloomington Playwrights Project and she through Theatre at IU) was something completely unexpected. At the back of the club, he saw Amanda and then there I was. It was great. He, his friends, and the two of us mingled. He's down in the center of Italy teaching English, as far as I know. Of course, many more details about that bar, and everything, float through my head. The surface of my mind has been brushed and all sorts of memory floats around and back into visibility.

There are many other songs. I can't seem to think of them right now. Not enough excavation...