wanderings (an homage)

Life is sometimes what you wander into.
~ Joe Bednar

Got into the car this morning and fired up my trusty iPod. Just like that, up comes the title track off Steely Dan’s third studio album, Pretzel Logic. The tour supporting this album was once termed the “tour of disillusionment.” I forget who coined the phrase; and I’m not sure if he or she was referring to the audience –- who were somewhat befuddled by the more complex nature of this new material –- or to the band itself. Probably both. Either way, lukewarm tour reception prompted Walter Becker and Donald Fagen to retreat into the studio and abandon live touring for decades.

I would love to tour the southland, in a traveling minstrel show
Yes I'd love to tour the southland, in a traveling minstrel show ...

Something I read recently stirred up nostalgia for my old college days -- when, ironically, I was into lots of classic rock tunes like this one. The “something” was a very poignant, thought-provoking blog post by Joe, an old college friend of my husband’s. The memory that it conjured up was that of my own freshman year on a different campus. Specifically, the day –- no, the actual moment –- I suddenly felt at home ... at college, in school, in my own skin. I was walking toward my dorm at dusk, backpack slung over one shoulder, hand in my pocket, crossing the business quad. Everything about that instant stands out vividly: the angle of the light, the scent of the pine trees, the sweater I was wearing. I had the simple thought, this is going to be okay. It just clicked comfortably into my head, the way a phonograph needle settles into the groove of a familiar old 45. My life stretched out before me like a bright white six-lane highway.

I have never met Napoleon, but I plan to find the time
I have never met Napoleon, but I plan to find the time ...

In his blog, Joe describes a college friendship that was, and then it wasn’t, before eventually coming around again. He alludes to the fears and plans of his own teenage self; the companions that came alongside him for the first leg of the trip; the unexpected and occasionally unwelcome turns that occurred down the road. Many of us might recognize in his description a person we ourselves haven’t seen in the mirror for some time: a hesitant, hopeful, headstrong version of the grown-up skin we somehow wandered into; an increasingly pragmatic, pensive traveler who’s navigated that ever-narrowing highway across the years and into the jurisdiction of the lives we lead today.

And what would happen if we introduced those two selves right here and now? How much would they still have to talk about, to compare, to admire in one another? And would they still share that buoyant conviction that things were going to be okay?

“Friends,” observed Stephen King in Stand By Me, “can come in and out of your life like busboys in a restaurant.” So it is, I find. And maybe, in the end, the real ones are meant to do more than help us navigate our own detours and disillusionments. Maybe they’re meant to bear witness; to preserve continuity; to help us stay true to the best and brightest and most worthwhile parts of the person we are and the person we’d once hoped to be. Even when those days are gone forever; over a long time ago.

Oh yeah.

All that is gold does not glitter,
not all those who wander are lost;
the old that is strong does not wither,
deep roots are not reached by the frost.
~ J.R.R. Tolkien