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11 January 1999 Past/Present Is This Love ... The carpet is slate blue, scratchy against the small of her back. Above her the ceiling is pure white, capturing the slanting rays of the afternoon sun. She sighs softly as the music begins and she rolls over to punch "record" on the stolid cassette deck. The strains of the song wash into the room and she falls back onto the carpet, closing her eyes, letting it carry her into an excess of teenage emotion ... ... The headphones are clasped tightly to her ears. The CD spins more rapidly than the eye can see in the slim black casing clasped loosely in her hands. Her eyes are far away as dreams of another time and place haunt her memory, juxtaposing themselves with the winter scenery flying by outside the plastic windows of the train. The sun is intensely bright, as it can only be in the dead of winter, reflecting off of snow and barren landscape devoid of leafy green for protection. Her finger moves over the volume slide and moves it up a notch. The music floods her brain and she is no longer really here, but there ... ... Lying on the floor, with tears streaming down her cheeks as the song comes to an end. She makes herself get up and hit stop. Rewinds the tape and checks to make sure that the recording is as clean as her parents' ancient tape deck can make it. She has no idea, in this time and this place that in a few years she will calmly listen to the same song, on a crystal clear day, on a crystal clear compact disc recording in a train, commuting to downtown Washington D.C. Today she hears only the music, thinks of her best friend, coming over in a few minutes, and how they will spend the afternoon, curled up in her sun-drenched room drawing and writing ... ... I hit the back button on the Discman again. It will play through one more time before the train pulls into my stop. I lean back in my seat and close my eyes, watching the winter sunlight get swallowed by the darkness of the sudden tunnel. The sound bursts into my ears, exactly as it did on a beautiful day over ten years ago and though I do not cry, I am as moved now as I was then. |