Black CD player

I had to grab a cd player to put in my room this evening. I got the old black one from the guest bedroom. Now I'm sitting here listening to my Loreena McKennett "Nights from the Alhambra" CD. But as I put the cd in and started to turn it on, something took me back...

I didn't know that a piece of plastic and electronics could hold a key to my past like this, but as I turned it on, I was almost magically transported back in time, way back to an earlier version of myself, circa 1991 - 1994, driving on those dark roads out 2222 to 360 and then up Shepherd's Mountain again. Back to sit in my dark office, in the dark quiet high-tech interior of my Tivoli office. Hacking away at some sort of code or build in the dark, listening to Pink Floyd, Tish Hinojosa or Todd Rundgren while I tried to help make a crazy dream of success around distributed systems management company come true.

I don't know exactly what it was about flipping the switch past FM and AM and then to CD, or perhaps the little high-pitched almost screech that the cd makes as it starts to turn, but it was an immediate feeling, "I've been here before; I can smell the carpet and the office furniture, I can see the world in it's sleeping darkness outside of the window in front of me as I stare at the bright-lit text on the screen in front of me."

I remember that feeling, being outside in the summer air and staring up at the stars outside of the Shepherd's Mountain building. I would usually head back to the office around 10:00, after getting Kelson down to sleep and telling Patty goodnight. Then it was work alone and in the dark until one, two, three or sometimes even later. Sometimes I listened to Larry Monroe on KUT; on Saturdays it used to be Howie Ritchey's "Alternative Wave" (after "The Hearts of Space" finished at midnight) in a KUT program schedule that is at least 17 years gone...

I remember best Pink Floyd's "The Division Bell," Tish Hinojosa's "Aquella Noche," and Todd Rundgren's "Second Wind." Those CDs carried me through the pain of my part of delivering 2.0:

if I have to be alone
then I should make my mind serene
after all you're born alone, you die alone
you might as well spend every moment in between alone

I can remember those nights with my mind, and I do from time to time. But the more visceral level of memory is locked up in those feelings, the memories of the smell, the night air, the darkness, the sense of loneliness that remains in me forever, just looking for a key to unlock and let it out. A black Sharp CD player is just such a key.