Pictures of You:

Heard this on satellite radio tonight, and it struck me cold:



Seems like any time the world has something to say to me, it does so in a song. Could be a tune I've heard 100 times and glossed over, but for some reason at that moment in time, it resonates, gets my attention, and turns out there's a lesson in it that relates to something I've been trying to figure out. Strange.

This song was released in 1989, the exact year I inexplicably picked up and left my life behind and never looked back...

Only to discover years later that a portion of my head is still stuck back there, trying to make sense of why I went away and filter through the effect it had on the people and places I left behind. But I'm finding now that this process of remembering, looking back, trying to recall: "why did this happen?", "how did this all come together?", is hard to do on your own.

Over the past few months (years, really) I've spent a great deal of mental energy trying to put all the pictures in my head together, figure it out, over and over again... and I've finally come to realize that it's beyond my reach; my memory is too spotty, it's all too far away. But now, with the acknowledgment that there's a whole community of people outside my head who have in their possession *exactly* what I'm missing, I've determined:

What I need is a reunion of my very own, comprised of all the people within our large, yet fairly contained assemblage of misfits to come together, bearing photos, memories and stories to help bring it all full circle. From my new perspective, it's amazing to see the connections; those who were linked directly, those in the periphery, all connected, each with a story to tell.... from the suburbanite preppy guy with the new wave hairdo to the grungiest of the punk scene, there's a link somehow.

I'm not completely sure how it would come together, a party of sorts. Rent a warehouse, set it up with a conversation room, a crazy dancefloor a la Medusas, photos scanned and projected on the walls (have I been to too many raves? Maybe..)? But for me, hearing it, feeling it, being in the moment for just a few hours in contact with the people I knew when my world was being formed would be just what I need to feel that it actually meant something... something worth remembering, that strangely continues to make its presence known all these many years later.