Remember E.T.? And why isn't it going to be Hotel California?

Leaving work on a Saturday.

The sun was spinning slowly Westward out of sight behind early evening yellow orange cloud banks. Still bright out, my skin shrank back against the waves of sidewalk radiation as I push through the large brushed aluminum and glass doors that secure our building.  Just as my skin seemed to relax from the shock of the transition from 74 to 116 degrees, I reached my car. It's black. Thankfully, since it was the weekend, I was able to find a covered spot but at this point I think the benefit is only slightly more than psychological. 

I opened the door to let the etherial wisps slither out of my car. Despite the heat, inside the car is closer to 250 degrees. Opening the door causes an exchange of atmospheres; the latter of which I am in no rush to enter. While I wait for the temperature to stabilize, I look down at the pavement and witness the shadowy movement cast by heat abhoritions as they let loose from my vehicle. They slide past my legs in long fluid rivulets and break to be replaced by a dozen more within seconds. I forget the heat and think this is what it must have felt like to be present during the opening of the Arc of the Covenant. I am in awe; something I can't see leaves a shadow on the ground! I must actually be standing over air that is rising so that I am in the center of a mirage.  Would I appear to be walking on an ocean of water if viewed from a distance? Would my face and eyes melt away within seconds as I was unable to look away? No such luck. Eventually the smoky wisps stop slipping by and it is time to move again. In, or out?  I've never had the opportunity to walk on hot coals, but this was that endless Arizona summer moment.

Despite this exchange, it's still 10's of degrees hotter in the car. I feel my face becoming even more rigid and flushed as I squirm around on the leather seat like a lizard trying to balance. First on one check then the next till I can get moving. I should have fished my keys out of my jeans before I sat down.  

The vents whine to push out conditioned air so fast my hair is blown about. It's not any cooler yet, but the anticipation helps.  It's not unlike sticking your head out the window at 40 miles an hour in 110 degrees. By the time I started following the sun down Greenway, it started to cool. I could only thank my glasses for keeping my eyes from drying out to raisins before turning it down a notch.

Autopilot engaged. I'm on the regular route home and my mind wanders. Trying not to think about all the work ahead of me. When I arrive, I will need to wade through the past twenty years helping to clear out the 50 moving boxes of our accumulated lives when I get home. I just wanted to keep watching the clouds and the setting sun. That's when I spotted an odd face-down lump in the center turn lane. My initial reaction was to look away. I'd be past it momentarily, but something familiar nudged at my brain.  I couldn't quite look away as I manage with most road kill. Instead, I squint to focus it quickly and was instantly transported back to my eight year old self.

An E.T. in the middle of the road? Who would do that?  Why did they leave a perfectly good E.T. behind. Isn't that the saddest thing you've ever heard? I mean, seriously, wasn't that the whole point of the movie? You don't leave E.T. behind man. If I was on foot, I would have stopped to pick him up.  I was two lanes over in traffic going about 45; to stop and rescue him now was not an option.  I thought about him the rest of the ride home.  

I was supposed to get home, kiss the family and finish getting rid of the past so that I can move forward with my life. It's about getting rid of the burdens that hold me back, right? And I feel so emotionally connected to a doll that isn't even mine! I wanted to stop the car and get it; brush it off, and put it some place safe for later. That's the stuff of HGTV hoarding shows and other people's lives with psychologically stunting obsessive compulsive disorders. Sure.  Sigh.  I'm pretty sure I'm one of them. Not that I really believe that, but you can know something is true and still deny it. How else can I explain my irrational attachment? Okay, yes, I used to have an E.T. doll when I was eight.  I had E.T. curtains, a bed set with sheets and pillow cases and even an E.T. sleeping bag. My favorite sweater was a red zip up hoodie like Elliot had. So it's not THAT strange. I kept driving feeling like part of me was laying abandoned in the road back there.  Silence, and as I breathe in how much I was missing E.T., I missed the way my mom used to pet my head and run her fingers through my curly hair. I missed being read stories to and tucked in at night. I turned on the radio to keep from crying about it and Don Henly was singing about Hotel California. Push it back. I don't want to be that guy you see bawling and driving at the same time with that wide mouth, eyes gushing and spit hanging down from the bottom lip made all the creepier because you can't hear his purple red faced sobs through the window. Just white knuckled hands gripping the wheel hunched forward trying to see through a torrent of pain.  I've seen that guy. I don't want to be him. I always think he must have had his heart broken from being dumped.

As Don sings I calm down and it occurs to me that all the stuff of my life like that E.T. doll is something like a song. The way a song makes you feel for a few minutes is the same way I feel when I pick up an odd long forgotten object.  The song of that memory plays, and I am instantly transported for a short time. When the memory fades, the song is over and the object is once again a space and life cluttering thing. Sometimes the thing has value beyond the memory, sometimes it doesn't, but it always has a memory. Too bad they don't fit on CD's like real songs. That would be so much more in tune with my IKEA soul.  

For those of you who say it's all for the better, then ponder this before I get back to my regularly scheduled existence. Imagine that Hotel California was one of your favorite songs; it's certainly one of mine. Now, throw it away. Give it away. Donate it to the universe forever. Imagine never being able to hear or experience it again. Just when you next feel like listening to a song you haven't heard in a long time, imagine that you can't. You might be able to remember it for a while, but a year or two? How much of the lyrics will you remember then? 10 years? 20? How about the feeling you had singing at that concert?  If you say, oh, well, there are a lot of good songs out there. Go listen to some new songs, right?  Sure, who doesn't like discovering new music? You can do that all you want, but unless you put it in a cardboard moving box and carry it around the country with you, it's never going to be Hotel California. 

Comments

[Vito Paine]

And there is the beauty of songs and photos over "physical" things. Portability ... portable memory collectors.

[Miki]

So true. Music is portable and does carry memories well. While I like music, it never had the same ability to imprint for me the way objects do. For instance, I can remember specific conversations while holding objects, but not as easily from listening to music. Music translates into images for me, but more a mash of emotions than specific experiences beyond the thing I was doing when I heard it, if I'm lucky. I got into popular music in high school. Prior to that it was primarily classical because family wouldn't listen to much else. Maybe there is something in that? It wasn't until maybe 5 years ago that I started to concisely seek out music I haven't heard before.