{"id":1330,"date":"2018-03-28T03:18:42","date_gmt":"2018-03-28T03:18:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/redpincushion.us\/blog\/?p=1330"},"modified":"2018-03-28T03:39:23","modified_gmt":"2018-03-28T03:39:23","slug":"this-is-the-song-when-the-sun-sets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/redpincushion.us\/blog\/i-cant-categorize-this\/this-is-the-song-when-the-sun-sets\/","title":{"rendered":"This is the song when the sun sets"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3><a href=\"http:\/\/redpincushion.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/IMG_0004.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-1331\" src=\"http:\/\/redpincushion.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/IMG_0004-1024x768.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"960\" height=\"720\" srcset=\"https:\/\/redpincushion.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/IMG_0004-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/redpincushion.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/IMG_0004-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/redpincushion.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/IMG_0004-768x576.jpg 768w, https:\/\/redpincushion.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/IMG_0004-1200x900.jpg 1200w, https:\/\/redpincushion.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/IMG_0004-960x720.jpg 960w, https:\/\/redpincushion.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/IMG_0004-600x450.jpg 600w, https:\/\/redpincushion.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/IMG_0004.jpg 2016w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 960px) 100vw, 960px\" \/><\/a><\/h3>\n<h3><strong>I. Song<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>Every morning as I\u2019m waking up, my brain picks a song and turns it up to 11.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s annoying.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s like the radio clock in Groundhog Day, except that it\u2019s a different song most days.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"giphy-embed\" src=\"https:\/\/giphy.com\/embed\/13faXmhYqywNMY\" width=\"480\" height=\"360\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/giphy.com\/gifs\/13faXmhYqywNMY\">via GIPHY<\/a><\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s usually either a Jazzercise song or a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.punchbrothers.com\/\">Punch Brothers<\/a> song.<\/p>\n<p>Today it was the latter. As I woke, the gentle strums of <strong>This is the Song (Good Luck)<\/strong> creeped into my head.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/xfbzkp3dVB4\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The song followed me through the day. That&#8217;s not unusual. Most days, you could stop me in the middle of something and I would tell you the song playing in my head at that moment.<\/p>\n<p>It can be disconcerting to always have a song playing in your head. <em>Why is it there? Why that song?<\/em><\/p>\n<p>It can be <strong>more<\/strong> disconcerting when there\u2019s silence. I guess I choose to have a song.<\/p>\n<h3><strong>II. Pacific<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>I\u2019m perched on a rock atop a cliff overlooking the Pacific Sea. I\u2019m in Monterey for the week and one of my students here told me about a little hidden path by the sea, just south of Carmel. So I found the path. It\u2019s chillier than I\u2019d like but I am enjoying the sun\u2019s setting into the busy waves.<\/p>\n<p>I pull out of my purse the bottle of cheap wine I bought at Target on my way here and I unscrew the top.<\/p>\n<p>A toast. To Mi Madre.<\/p>\n<p>The sun set on her life today. I don\u2019t know how to process this. Busy waves keep the silence away.<\/p>\n<h3><strong>III. Madre<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>Mi Madre was not my biological mother, but she was the mother of one of my best friends from my late high school and college\/post-college years. When I moved to the States at 16&#8211;and away from my own family&#8211;Mi Madre took me under her wing. I didn&#8217;t live with them, but spent countless nights sleeping on the floor in my friend&#8217;s bedroom, too in need someone&#8217;s care to return to the place where I was living.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cShe loved you so much, Sally,\u201d my friend said earlier today on the phone.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cShe was my second mother,\u201d I answered as I started to cry.<\/p>\n<h3><strong>IV. Woman<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>It\u2019s not even that we were close anymore. It had been years since we last talked.<\/p>\n<p>But years ago, Mi Madre gave me something I never felt I had up to that point\u2014permission to make mistakes. Permission to not be perfect. Permission to be my own woman. Hell, she dared me to become my own woman.<\/p>\n<p>She gave me my first drink of alcohol. We talked about it&#8212;honestly, with no judgement, no fear of reprisals.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI loved her so much, Mike.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI know, Sally. She was so proud of you. She was in awe of what you have accomplished.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I forget that there was a time in my life when the idea of accomplishing something with my life seemed pretty uncertain.<\/p>\n<p>I ache to be home right now, where I could open the box of old photographs from that period of my life. Her wake up calls when I slept over (&#8220;Buenos dias, mijitas! Es la hora de wake-up-ar!&#8221;). The way she\u2019d grumble at \u201cthe bubbas\u201d about things they were or weren&#8217;t doing. Her comforting hand on my stomach when I busted my neck in her front yard and had the breath knocked out of me. The times she visited us in our college dorm and we played, and sang, and talked &#8217;til the start of the next day.<\/p>\n<h3><strong>V. Antifogmatic<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>I wouldn\u2019t be who I am today without her love. Her help. Her belief.<\/p>\n<p>I face challenges stronger because of her. <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Antifogmatic\">My antifogmatic.<\/a><\/p>\n<h3><strong>VI. Sunset<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>The car is unbearably quiet as I drive away from the beach, the sea still in my nostrils but the warmth of the sun now below the horizon.<\/p>\n<p><em>This is the song where I listen<br \/>\nThis is the song where I sit still<br \/>\nUntil our heartbeats drown out the clock ticking<br \/>\nAnd the song is just I love you and always will<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>G<\/em><em>ood luck, good luck, good luck these are tough times.<\/em><br \/>\n<em> But we\u2019ll get by. Good luck.<\/em><\/p>\n<div class=\"yj6qo\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"adL\"><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I. Song Every morning as I\u2019m waking up, my brain picks a song and turns it up to&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1331,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[115],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1330","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-i-cant-categorize-this","content-wrap"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redpincushion.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1330","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redpincushion.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redpincushion.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redpincushion.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redpincushion.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1330"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/redpincushion.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1330\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1338,"href":"https:\/\/redpincushion.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1330\/revisions\/1338"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redpincushion.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1331"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redpincushion.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redpincushion.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redpincushion.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}