Still

I was listening to Tom Waits' Alice this morning--an amazing swirl of songs that tug at your feelings, drawing you into the misty cyclone of your memories. You're a willing victim, a captive of nostalgia--for things that were, for moments lost, even for things that perhaps never were. "Poetry is like a memory," my daughter once said. And who is to say that we are not allowed to reinvent our memories? Coloring them with shades of how we would write the play or play the scene. . .

"And I must be insane
To go skating on your name
And by tracing it twice
I fell through the ice
Of Alice."

Music conjures up feelings we usually come short of being able to fully explain, but we go on trying anyway. The missing notes or lyrics are like the missing elements in a line drawing, where we recognize the image in its totality--a result of magic that the brain is trained to perform. A kind of "connect the dots."

So I listen to Alice, full of love and longing for someone who is no longer there or even for someone who is still there, but out of reach.

And I think of Peter.

"You haven't looked at me that way in years
You dreamed me up and left me here
How long was I dreaming for
What was it you wanted me for

You haven't looked at me that way in years
Your watch has stopped and the pond is clear
Someone turn the lights back off
I'll love you til all time is gone

You haven't looked at me that way in years
But I'm still here."