Well, my “randomness” meme has sent me cruising down too-many-memories lane. Ah, well.
I actually had to dig out this CD — a CD, people! — and listen to it again. And again. Need to load it on my iPod.
Some context for my lingering fondness of this album:
I’d just graduated from college in Seattle. I’d moved home to Southern California, but I’d left my heart — and my whole life at the time — up in the Pacific Northwest, in that rainy, moody city that had seeped into my heart. My parents had always declared, “Oh, you’re a Southern California girl; you’re gonna hate it up there. All that rain.”
But I just fell in love with that place. Literally. You know what I mean? How you just fall in love with a certain place? How you feel that this place is you? How you feel that God made this place because He made you or He made you because He made this place? That you two were meant to meet? Well, that was Seattle for me. And it still is — even though I don’t live there. It’s MY place. MY town. Other people have lived there; other people live there now, but it’s MINE. I love that place. It is me.
Anyway, I’d come home to the sun and the tans and I was miserable. I needed my rain and my pale-skinned friends. I was home for two months and I couldn’t take it. I called my boyfriend in Seattle.
“I just can’t stay here. I feel like I’m dying. I don’t know what to do, but I think I have to come home.”
So he came and got me. I didn’t have to pack much; I’d never allowed myself to really unpack. How could I? I was upside down. I was backwards. I was unglued and restless. So I took my ugly suitcases and my ugly car and we drove north for 24 hours in that crappy Toyota, feasting on music and junk food and invincibility, I suppose.
“Netherlands” was our soundtrack.
I’ll never forget driving through the moist, sheltering greenness of Northern California and Oregon, listening to these songs and feeling my heart just swell, grow bigger, feel different inside my body. I was so swept away, I felt as if each tree was standing there just to greet me, welcome me back.
I was going back to me — to freedom — to adulthood.
So, see, you can come with me. Listen to the excerpt and imagine you are 21 and driving through the mist and the pines and the mountains. You are sure you’re in love. Your life is calling you. You gaze out the window, wide-eyed, open-mouthed, and you see GOD in everything as it speeds past you. God is there and you are there and you’re so young, that you don’t see a dividing line between the two.
(Go here to listen to the excerpt. It’s far too short, but you’ll get a feel for it.)
“Netherlands”
High on this mountain
The clouds down below
I’m feeling so strong and alive
From this rocky perch
I’ll continue to search
For the wind and the snow and the sky
I want a lover
And I want some friends
And I want to live in the sun
And I want to do all the things
That I never have done.
Sunny bright mornings
And pale moonlit nights
Keep me from feeling alone
Now I’m learning to fly
And this freedom is like
Nothing that I’ve ever known
I’ve seen the bottom
And I’ve been on top
But mostly I’ve lived in between
And where do you go
When you get to the end of
Your dream?
Off in the nether lands
I heard a sound
Like the beating of heavenly wings
And deep in my brain
I can hear a refrain
Of my soul as she rises and sings
Anthems to glory and anthems to love
And hymns filled with early delight
Like the songs that the darkness
Composes to worship the light.
Once in a vision
I came on some woods
And stood at a fork in the road
My choices were clear
Yet I froze with the fear
Of not knowing which way to go
One road was simple acceptance of life
The other road offered sweet peace
When I made my decision
My vision became my release.