I'm somewhat relieved to not go to Los Angeles tonight. I was going to go see my Dalai Lama, but it just ended up not working out. Probably for the best. Spontaneous trips to Los Angeles are only successful if I'm going to see
Gabriel Mann. Otherwise, I always end up with my foot in my eye and Dirty Jeans (once, a friend of mine wrote a poem that had the line "hot jean dry pants" and it was amazing).
That line from a Patty Griffin song:
"It gets harder and harder, Lorraine, to believe in magic
Oh, when what came before you was so very tragic."
really doesn't hit home for me at all. I blogged it the other day because I had it in my head and it's a beautiful song, but I feel like I've come from some pretty tragic situations (the only time I fibbed in the novel was to make certain scenes smash up against other ones, or to make a certain period of time seem longer or shorter than it actually was. The facts? Pretty tragic.) and I believe in magic even more than I did before (not to sound ridiculous and sappy and drippy). Hey, I almost went to LA, right? To see the dark-haired breeze maker? To find the heart of Saturday Night?
Ah, but now I read the line again and realize that it says "when what came BEFORE YOU" which makes a lot more sense. I haven't come from any real tragedy, not historically, or familially speaking. There's hard times, but our family is a rock.
So are my children destined to have a difficult time believing in magic? Is my life tragic? Oh, poisson, it is not true. (Le Poisson, Team Le Poisson!) My life is far enough from tragic for creation's sake. And hey, if I was truly tragic, I might be on a train right now, looking for love in all the wrong places.
