Chchchchanges

Best if Bowie / David Bowie











Isn’t funny how things come together? In keeping with recent musing, I just finished listening to John Green’s An Abundance of Katherine’s. It’s a YA novel about a geeky guy who wants to matter. Of course it raises philosophical questions and issues about change, predictability and the meaning of life, etc. etc.



I’ve been very focused this week on changes. Changes at work in staffing. Changes at home with walls and bath. Of course, by focused, I really mean stressed and by stressed, I really mean distressed. Now at the risk of publicly confirming I am a complete lunatic, there is something a little odd that occurs disturbingly often when I am in this state of being.


It is unpredictable. It doesn’t happen when I want it to or if I am seeking it out. And I know that trying to speak of it will sound crazy, but…


The radio speaks to me.


Okay, not like those who wander around MIT or NYC with tin foil on their heads hearing messages from outer space. But more like quite circumstantially I will scan and the scan will stop on a particular significant bit of lyrics.


The first time I remember this happening I was driving home from an encounter with Mother. I was, well traumatized (another story) and the radio was on auto search.


For me, it suddenly stopped on a country and western station, the song unknown , but the lyrics horribly appropriate to the situation, while also reassuring.


I don’t listen to country and western. I had not recalled hitting the pause button. I was torn between being comforted and completely freaked. I dismissed all this as not being in a right state of mind to begin with. I rationalized that I had probably just not realized I’d stopped the scan. I probably only registered the lyrics because they had resonated with me, but it all could just as easily be explained by a lack of paying attention.


But then it happened on several other occasions. And I started to wonder.


The oddest was several year’s ago. Life was in a bit of turmoil. We were getting ready to move (yet again) from an apartment I really, really liked. It was also the place we had stayed the longest: three years. I didn’t want to move, but jobs made it a necessity.


I’d pack some. Cry. Pack some more. I knew the move was necessary, but I was still upset. Worse, I was trying not to show all my upset, so as not to make matters worse.


In the midst of this, after one of my rounds of sniveling, I was gearing up to go to packing when I heard the faint sound of voices. This was disturbing. Only the cat and I were home. The TV wasn’t on and one of the things I loved about the apartment was its sound proofing. Our neighbors had an infant, a two year old and a dog and inside, we never once heard any of them. Yet I was hearing voices and they were NOT coming from inside my head.


Distracted from the packing, I went to investigate. In our office, a room yet to be packed (I was avoiding it) on the back of a shelf was an old portable radio. To my knowledge it never worked and needed batteries. It was definitely NOT plugged in to anything and had not been on in the two years it had sat on the back of the shelf. I remembered placing it there when we moved in. We had discussed if we should even keep it, set it down on the shelf and then promptly never dealt with it again.


I had been in the room thousands of times, almost daily, sometimes more than daily. The computer was in this room and I was hooked: email, play, writing…. I’d never heard the radio.


Now, it played. Not loudly, but loud enough to be heard and call to me from the other room. With goose bumps I picked the radio up raising the volume. With perfect clarity, David Bowie responded, “Turn and face the change….”


I waited for the song to finish. When it had, I turned the volume down and with a distinct click the sound lowered and the radio turned off.


I decided then I had two choices. I could panic or do what I always yelled at the TV when watching horror movies: “Leave the house! Now!”


Or…. I could accept I had no explanation, but maybe the universe really was trying to communicate through the radio. I thought of the many times in the car and I did not leave the house. I did decide though not to verify the batteries. I wasn’t that brave.


For reasons I’ll never understand, I accepted. I went back to packing and stopped sniveling. Relatively speaking, things did work out okay. Today the radio told me I needed to relax. I am trying to take its advice.