This time last year I was just settling into some good brooding; such is the reward of thwarted efforts to fall madly in love with one of your best friends. Anyway, I stewed, I introspected and I got better. More important is that in the meantime I churned out some of the best writing of my nascent professional life.
Sometimes I want nothing more than to go back there and indulge in some good, old-fashioned, earnest heartbreak—the kind that comes with mistakes worth learning from, the kind that clears the soul and sharpens the mind. I want to listen to Blood on the Tracks, or maybe Age of Adz plus a little "Wolf Like Me." Because being happy is great and great for you, but if you really want to see how vivid colors can be, you're at your clearest in your melancholy and the looming threat of infinite sadness.
So, I'm drinking a bottle of Charles Shaw and watching the "dead dad" episode of Californication just to let myself really feel it. It is my girlfriend's birthday today, and when I go to pick her up from work, give her a present and think about spending our lives together whether it lasts the next 60 years or the next 60 minutes, it is just bound to cheer me up again and everything will be rosy and fuzzy for as long as it lasts.
