09.11.09

After receiving my SECOND mix CD from Shananigans during work today, I could not wait to finish my shift, run up to my room, and listen to the song selection. I'm obsessed. Yes, a premature obsession that only grew with each song and listen. Ah, music for my soul!

So to test out the new mix, I grabbed my freshly loaded iPod and went for a run despite the near freezing temperature and snow weather warning. And about five minutes after I found my happy pace, the rain started to fall. I almost turned back, but really, what harm can there be in getting caught in nighttime drizzle? And I bet you're now expecting some great story about how it started pouring and I got soaked and lost and confused and everything was a total mess. But nope, not this time. The droplets continued to fall lightly, painting the tar beneath my feet a darker shade of black. And I kept running, feeling the cold air in my lungs and the raindrops on my face.

And you know those moments when a song starts playing and paired with your thoughts and actions it somehow saturates your entire being? Your awareness of self and life and the moment fuse together, leaving you with an almost altered sense of reality. Or maybe, what you feel is so pure and so real, suddenly untainted by the excess that rules our minds at any given moment, that we barely know what to do with ourselves. Alive. That's what you feel. Completely alive. You are and in that tiny isolated moment, you and the stars and the universe make utter and complete sense.

The song I was listening to doesn't even matter. This time, it just served as the force to get me to that magical place. Perhaps I'll call it "temporary enlightenment." And now, back in my room, I listen to the rain still falling outside and linger on the evening's quiet festivities. Usually, it is the simplest things that bring us joy. A red holiday Starbucks cup. A ten minute conversation with a loved one. A card with a giraffe on the cover. Or maybe, just maybe, we have that joy with us all the time. And occasionally, at the most unexpected moments, it reveals itself to us. We let everything go but ourselves and life shows us how beautiful it always is, even when we think we're too busy to look at it.

Photo taken at St. Victoire near Aix-en-Provence during my semester abroad. Alyssa on the left and me and the right. If this doesn't scream joy and hope and life, I don't know what does.