Events of the past few days have kept me from ripping CDs until this morning. The days have been filled with a mixture of things – anniversaries and adversaries, bugs external and internal, comfort, family and smoking melted combs. It is also the end of a quarter and the beginning of spring (break). My friend Christina suggested we ‘smudge’ the house with a sage burning to begin again – get rid of the evils of the past few months and start fresh. The idea is appealing, but as I was discussing with my friend Jill the other day, even the bad has its purpose and I feel like with all that has been going on with us here at the Parmura household, me, Tamiko, Celia and Mira have learned and are figuring out quite a bit. These past months have been pretty rough in different ways for all four of us. When it comes down to it I wouldn’t get rid of the crap we have had to deal with. I know we are growing because of it. But I have also found myself with music from my ‘angry young man’ days running through my head off and on. So today I ripped a good chunk of my R.E.M. CDs (‘Life’s Rich Pageant’, ‘Document’, ‘Green’, ‘Out of Time’ and ‘Monster’). If all is calm after tonight’s class listening session, I may try to work in the first couple Violent Femmes albums as well, maybe some early Cure. While I did have a good amount of Ministry and Nine Inch Nails that I played during my senior year of high school, I am glad that the mostly melodic and ‘angry’ alternative 90s staples mentioned above are what I still listen to when I feel a little agro and need to get some energy out. I’m more comfortable with my masculinity now then I was in 1992.

I have ‘Life’s Rich Pageant’ on at the moment, but earlier I had ‘Green’ on with the girls. Mira (who is recovering from a stomach bug, as well as a hard night at the urgent care to make sure she didn’t have a bladder infection) started to dance in my arms when ‘Pop Song ’89’ came on. I actually hadn’t even listened to ‘Green’ or ‘Out of Time’ for awhile. Then main exception is my yearly mix-disc ritual where I rip ‘Losing My Religion’ as part of the first round of cuts for that years disc (only to have it weeded out as the music is cut down to the 80 minutes needed for a blank CD). It’s a great song, but too obvious to just have thrown onto a mix disc without carefully leading into and out of it. Maybe this year. Probably not

For the most part now I tend to put on ‘Life’s Rich Pageant’, ‘Document’ and ‘Automatic For The People’ now when I listen to R.E.M. Yes, I know which one doesn’t belong with the others but I will unapologetically say that it is a great album, And I think you can be a good R.E.M. fan and like songs like ‘Drive’ and ‘The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight’. Along with the first Violent Femmes album, one of the Cure greatest hits albums and the Pixies ‘Trompe Le Monde’, this album was part of the soundtrack for a getaway weekend with some high school friends to Fort Bragg.  Tamiko and I were going through our ‘He’s still in high school and a loser and being WAAAAY to immature for his college girlfriend’ break-up (complete with my purple hair) and a few good friends (Josh, Cheryl and Molly) decided we needed to head to Molly’s families beach house in Fort Bragg. And we all (just friends) spent a good chunk of time jumping off sand dune cliffs, hiking around and relaxing on the beach between figuring out what we could find at the grocery store to eat. Later in the year, some tension was created among the four of us because of someone else I dated and the other three, as well as other teenage tensions among the four of us towards each other. The four of us, by the end of the school year pretty much weren’t talking much to each other (and looking back now, I imagine uncertainty about where we would be ending up after high school was probably a big part of the problem). But for that weekend and a couple months afterwards, we had lots of fun together just hanging out.

One thing that is hard about the ‘soundtrack’ for this weekend in Fort Bragg though is the fact that, for me, lots of things sucked. Tamiko and I were breaking up and it was really hard (though we obviously get back together and I think we both see that time now as a great period of growing up for both of us – though especially me – and I also think that we were a much stronger couple afterwards). If I ever tell Celia this story, she would probably say – ‘Dad, this sounds like a horrible time for you! Would you want to remember it? No!’. (Celia has begun to rhetorically answer her own questions) But the fact of the matter is, these three friends really kept me together that weekend and, while they may not know it, I am very grateful for this. And while the break-up sucked, lots of good came from it eventually.

Like almost any real thing that happens in life, it is difficult for there to be clear-cut good times and bad times. I remember times when I was a kid and really sick (especially one very scary trip to an ER because of a severe asthma attack when I was 4 or 5, another time when I had a finger nail ripped off of my finger). And I have a feeling that Celia will remember when she is older about the time Mira seemed really sick and we needed to take her to urgent care. Celia was terribly worried about Mira last night, and very sad that she couldn’t go with us… but for now (and maybe in 20 years?) I have the image of a slightly feverish Mira in my arms dancing to R.E.M. with Celia smiling at the table while she is eating jammy toast. Celia knows her sister is feeling better. Maybe R.E.M. will subconsciously trigger this memory for her.