Bob Dylan

Ocean Sounds and Sandy Feet

feet

How I love summer! How I live for it!

How has this been the worst summer of my life? Pause for dramatic effect and dramatic statement.

For as long as I can remember, well, since age 16 if memory serves, summer has made me cry. It has left me heartbroken and longing, longing for something I could not have or it was a love/puppy love that left me and broke my heart in which circumstances did not allow love and I to be together. This summer did not disappoint and unfortunately did not break trend. Basically what I am saying is, is that I have had my heart broken every summer since age 16. I don’t know what it is about the summer that makes love sour and then leaves it for dead. I always thought it was called the “Summer of Love” for a reason but then I think my summers flow more along the lines to Lana Del Rey’s “Summertime Sadness”:

I’ve got that summertime, summertime sadness
S-s-summertime, summertime sadness
Got that summertime, summertime sadness
Oh, oh oh oh

And so it goes. That is how I feel on my bad days and even on my good summer days if something goes even slightly wrong or I am forced to leave the beach and drag my tan body and sandy feet all the way into the job that I hate with a fiery passion. I have had to leave the beach many times before and have been through terrible heartache during the summer but this summer will stand out in my mind. I have been to the beach only a handful of times. And as a person who lives for the ocean sounds and the sand in, on and around my feet, not going to the beach has killed my soul or should I say rather that it has injured it and  left it barely hanging in there on life support. The beach is where I replenish my soul, get daily multi-vitamin, if you will, and I have been severely lacking it that I feel like my skin is turning yellow. Perhaps the lack of beach summer fun is perpetuating my heartbreak, my loneliness and my confusion with life and how it should be lived. It goes back to my “analysis paralysis”. I don’t know if my Uncle coined the term but he diagnosed me with this paralysis, which he described as over analyzing life and situations thus leaving you paralyzed, unable to make a concrete decision. The beach has and always will anesthetize my over-analysis and soothe my life ache.

The beach is my great equalizer. I still have some time before the fall arrives to get my daily requirement and save up a little for the fall.

The only thing I knew how to do
Was to keep on keeping on like a bird that flew
Tangled up in blue.

~Bob Dylan, “Tangled  Up In Blue”

Taryn

XO

I Was So Much Older Then, I’m Younger Than That Now

Snowblind | via Tumblr

I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.

I remember hearing this lyric repeatedly over the stereo speakers while sitting in the backseat of my parent’s car at age 12.  My father always made it a point to make my brother and I listen to his music repeatedly.  It used to piss me off so much because all I wanted to do was listen to Britney Spears and *NSYNC.  My brother was indifferent to music; I, on the other hand survived and thrived off it.  I didn’t thrive off my father’s music though because I always found the lyrics confusing and stupid.

He was playing Bob Dylan.

It was only years later that I took (I mean borrowed) my father’s collection of Bob Dylan records and sat and really listened to them:

I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.

The song is called “My Back Pages”.  I got it! I finally got it! Bobby Dylan was trying to tell me something.  His reflection and look back on his life through his lyrics…I finally got it.

I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.

These lyrics express precisely this period of time in my life.  My older self, which is actually my younger self, say around age 16, knew EXACTLY what she wanted to do with her life and knew that she could handle anything that came her way no matter how difficult the obstacle to achieve her goal.  At age 16 I knew I wanted to be an actress. Scratch that.  I wanted to be a wildly famous and successful actress and I promised myself that I would do whatever it took to achieve this ridiculous goal.  I also knew that if (god forbid) I couldn’t accomplish that goal, not at my own hand but at hands of others that my back-up plan would be to go to law school.  What 16 year old thinks that way? I figured if I couldn’t act on television at least I could put on a show in the courtroom Elle Woods style.  I was so much older then. More together then. Or was I just naïve?  You may say that I’m a dreamer but I’m not the only one. Okay, I’ll stop with the lyrics.  Maybe the older-ness of youth is what my generation is missing: the ability to make concrete decisions and fucking follow through on them.

I’m younger than that now.  Although I’m not 16 anymore my perceived older-ness of that time is gone.  Most of the time I am a confused 25 year old child who has the world in front of her and has a tough time making life decisions because now shit it real, so to speak.  But then again, so what.  Shit is real.  I’m slowly learning how to make concrete decisions.  I am a product of the times, so shoot me.  Perhaps my young-ness, when it comes to thinking about life, stems from the fact that when you’re younger you don’t have to truly think about the path because it is set for you every day and for the next few years until you turn 21 and graduate from college.  Everything is a process and I am learning.  I guess my father knew what he was doing when he made me listen to countless hours of the poetic, lyrical and musical genius that is Bob Dylan.

 

“The times they are a changin’”~ Bob Dylan

 

Taryn

XO