poisonfrog0

[poisonfrog0]

on chance encounters

this summer, two strangers within a week approached me and told me that we had met in a past life. there are a few explanations for this: maybe i seem like the type of person - wearing colorful rings, kajal on my lower waterline, jesus sandals - who wants to hear that. maybe i attract a certain type of person. maybe i seem like the perfect mix of optimistic and naïve to believe in such things. i know i shouldn’t care about how i am perceived, but naïvety in the derogatory sense is the most insulting of them all. if only, i think to myself, they knew of the circumstances and situations in which i have clawed myself out of. but then i interrupt myself because a victim complex isn’t very sexy to me anymore. i am still trying to file down the chip on my shoulder. i have tried to regain an almost childlike sense of innocence as it relates to the world, not despite its violence, but because of it. it is far harder to be optimistic, i think, than pessimistic. imagine being pitied for a trait that you have consciously cultivated.

there is no singular religion that i subscribe to, but i do believe in the cycles of death and rebirth. (to a degree, i believe we can eventually be freed from these cycles. i use the term “freed” loosely. i don’t want to think living is something we need to be freed from). but i digress. two strangers told me that they recognized me. that they recognized my eyes.

do i think i’ve met these men in past lives? i’m not sure. one of them had the same name as my brother - which i learned at the end of our conversation. they share an extremely uncommon name. that was spooky. after speaking to him for a few hours, sitting closely together, and politely accepting his forward compliments, i saw a gold band on his ring finger. i was disgusted by his behavior considering this omission. i began to pry and he opened up about his marriage: they married six months ago, they moved too fast, they are too young, he does not want to have a child with her. this went on for an hour. while he was kind and charming to me; if we knew each other in a past life, i had no interest in knowing him in this one.

the second person who shared this sentiment with me, someone i met outside of a bar in a rural farming town, was largely benevolent. he told me about his dreams of becoming an artist and creating his own clothing. i was not drunk enough to be monologued to, but i listened anyway. and this is a pattern i am not unfamiliar to: being spoken to but not spoken with. i am maybe too sympathetic to those who want to be heard. i do love learning a stranger’s stories in these settings, on an airplane or on a street corner, but it also comes with a morbid curiosity of why someone would need to be listened to so desperately. and i keep listening because i want to know the answer.

in the deeply spiritual household in which i grew up, these occurrences would have been discussed for weeks. my father, while working as an english teacher in japan in the 1990s, walked by a bulletin board in a plaza one afternoon. he saw a picture of my mother who was attending graduate school in that small town. to this day, he swears on his life that he recognized her in the photograph. he asked the faculty for her phone number and they married eight years later.

that’s not to say, though, that all past life connections are romantic. i believe the majority of them aren’t. i think these people genuinely believed that we had met before. i have made peace with the fact that i will never know.

[poisonfrog0]

on songs about graceland

graceland: a sprawling 1930s estate in memphis, tennessee; the resting place of elvis presley.

graceland: faded red velour, antique wood, wrought iron and dust.

graceland: a final destination. a tourist attraction covered in a feeling of absolution.

i had no idea what graceland was until about a year ago.

paul simon won the grammy record of the year in 1987 for his song “graceland”, the title track of his seventh album. i believe this award was well deserved. i have not knowingly listened to any other songs from 1987.

simon sings about a road trip to tennessee with his nine year old son sitting in the passenger seat. he reflects upon his failed marriage: “she comes back to tell me she’s gone / as if i didn’t know that / as if i didn’t know my own bed / as if i’d never noticed the way she’d brush her hair from her forehead.” loss of love is compared to being “blown apart”, metaphorically comparing heartbreak to windows during a storm. the repeating chorus line “i’ve reason to believe / we all will be received in graceland,” is sung as a prayer rather than a lyric.

when i listen to this song, as well as “graceland too” by phoebe bridgers, and “morning elvis” by florence and the machine, i am overcome by the feeling of optimism - a kind of self-sacrificing optimism that occurs during a last resort. the kind of bittersweet you feel when things get better, even though you know the end of the story is tragic (or, at best, sad). but it seems like the composers of these songs know how the story ends. despite this, they are going to graceland. they’ve always wanted to see graceland.

for every artist to depict the same yearning, melancholic (yet hopeful) feeling that shrouds graceland is fascinating. this phenomenon spans multiple decades and genres. in the way that disneyland represents the quintessential american nuclear family and commercialism, graceland has morphed into a sum greater than its parts.

it has turned into an almost mythical destination; a place worshipped and revered for more than it is at face value. but what’s interesting about this to me is: it doesn’t have much to do with honoring elvis or his accomplishments. at least, that’s what i’ve gathered from listening to these songs about graceland. it’s always about - making it - to graceland. i need to make it to graceland. i wish i made it to graceland. what is waiting in graceland?

i can name a few gracelands for myself. i think it is human nature to search for yourself, to search for healing and belonging in other people and places. when i get there i will be okay. when i make it to the next chapter in my life i will be okay. when i am with this person i will be okay. i have experienced mixed success with this mindset - one of the many mindsets i’ve tried on to cope with living - but i do not see anything inherently wrong with this concept. it’s tricky but not wrong. for a long time, my mother country was my graceland. it does make me feel complete and healed, but every time i leave i am inconsolable for weeks. i decided to reclassify it as home. it feels better to miss it that way. a small tourist town on the northwest coast was graceland for many years - while the town itself is lackluster and unimpressive to visit, that specific stretch of the pacific ocean is special to me.

someone from my hometown used to be my graceland. we were not meant to be but i tried long and hard to challenge fate. i have since learned not to make anyone i loved my graceland.

to go to graceland is to be saved. it is a beautiful idea. in some ways i have been saved by these people and places.

graceland - graceland - people sing about graceland as if it’s a castle in the sky. even better than a castle in the sky. it is solace; a place for pilgrims and weariness.

how has a 1930s mansion become such an emotionally significant destination? graceland has transcended its reality: a barely historic building south of memphis, tennessee, with the corpses of a long-dead singer and his family buried somewhere in the lawn. i hope i can visit someday.