I am backpedaling from my decision to return to Spotify. I am just not jazzed up to create playlists anymore, something that once was a mainstay of this website.

I figure I'll just listen to AccuRadio, something like its Decade: '90s. I appreciate it as I listen to Hey Jealousy.

Man, I miss people.

Of course, there's always Idagio, something that a minute ago, I realized that I listened to the last time I was in my 190's.

And the radio shifts to Shiny Happy People...then How Can We Be Lovers.

Yeah, I miss folks who are just long gone. It's a Saturday night, the evening I become the most wistfully nostalgic. I don't feel 46. Don't Go Chasing Waterfalls.

I don't need Spotify. It's such a lonely place anyway. I'd rather spend that $13.13/month on a cologne sample or two, or in the case of my '90s Michael Jordan, most of that 3.4 oz bottle.

...or buy habanero powder to get set for my 180s.

I know I haven't changed...I mean, I'm not as reckless as I once was...I even don't smoke the cigars I once did, in fact, it's almost 12 years to the day since I smoked my last one. I was back living on campus having just earned my MA upon my return from the Czech Republic, my last night there, a July 27th, being the opening ceremony of the London Olympics. I stood on my balcony and listened to Duran Duran playing live at the Botanical Garden, specifically their song Save a Prayer.

My 2020 post Jan Hammer - Crockett's Theme '84 captures what that time meant to me.

These days, I feel younger than that 34-year-old. I hear AccuRadio playing Be My Lover and I forget this beard of mine is of a gray wolf's.

Shouldn't I be embarking on my old Bolton-to-Beale route, that fabled drive through the night I would do before there was a 385? A drive out to my school, then down Hwy 14 to ride north 240 to Riverside Drive, then circle on back with the southern loop.

It has been 30 years, but I still see the time clock, the breakroom—even the parking lot at Kroger. As we were pushing carts back under the moonlight, the prettiest girl there told me that although she had been asked out by another guy that very same night, she was more interested in going out with someone "smart"—her words, not mine*. She heavily hinted that she meant me. So I asked.

Funny how that sort of thing happened again to me at another grocery store a little bit over a year from then. But, I drew the prom wild card. Eh, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

Who knows life at 17?

To be fair, I did have a busted chin, a scar that remains to this day. Some things never change.

And Runaway Train plays, the song that along with Don't Cry will forever remind me of her, someone who saw something in me that I couldn't see, long before girls were emboldened toward me. Her photo never ages.

I set those memories aside.

And the air outside, so soft
Is saying everything
Everything

All I want is to feel this way
To be this close, feel the same
All I want is to feel this way
The evening speaks, feel it say

-Toad the Wet Sprocket (1992)