Looseness of association

The windows of my soul
Are made of one-way glass
Don't bother looking into my eyes
If there's something you want to know, just ask

I have this verse stuck in my head. Which is better than what I had in my head previously, which was the theme song from the Stanley Steamer commercial. Anyway, it's from an Ani DiFranco song called Willing to Fight, which, I think has some of the best lyrics ever penned. In fact, here they are:

The windows of my soul
Are made of one-way glass
Don't bother looking into my eyes
If there's something you want to know, just ask

I got a dead bold stroll
Where I'm going is clear
I'm not gonna wait for you to wonder
I'll just tell you why I'm here
'Cause I know the biggest crime
Is just to throw up your hands
Say, "This has nothing to do with me
I just want to live as comfortably as I can."
You gotta look outside your eyes
You gotta think outside your brain
You gotta walk outside your life
To where the neighborhood changes

Tell me, who is your boogeyman
That's who I will be
You don't have to like me for who I am
But we'll see what you're made of by what you make of me

I think it's absurd
That you think I am the derelict daughter
I fight fire with words
Words are hotter than flames
Words are wetter than water

I got friends all over this country
I got friends in other countries, too
I got friends I haven't met yet
I got friends I never knew
I got lovers whose eyes I've only seen at a glance
I got strangers for great grandchildren
I got strangers for ancestors

I was a long time coming
I'll be a long time gone
You've got your whole life to do something
And that's not very long
Why don't you give me a call
When you are willing to fight
For what you think is real
For what you think is right

I don't know why this is so firmly lodged in my psyche right now, but it seems significant (certainly more so than the carpet cleaning jingle). It started because I was thinking about Facebook, and that little "status" line at the top. I was doing the dishes and thinking of things I could change my status to.

Kate...

....inexplicably has the Stanley Steamer jingle stuck in her head.

....thinks that's particularly weird because she has no carpet in her house.

....wishes the damn oven would preheat.

....is hungry.

....wonders if it's bad that she was so grateful that three of her patients didn't show up today.

....thinks it's funny that no one else in her residency is named Kate, but about half of her female patients are.

....wonders why she always seems to be doing dishes.

....is hyperventilating a little at the thought of, if she's forever doing dishes (and laundry!) now, and she's just one person, what the hell is going to happen if she finds some man crazy enough to marry her and/or knock her up?

....is making pizza.

....wonders if she remembers how to give a shot in the deltoid.

....thinks her dog is really funny.

....hasn't been on a bike in a really long time, but figures it's like riding a bike...

Et cetera.

And this got me to thinking about this Marmaduke comic my dad emailed me today, that centered around text messaging. Now, I think of Marmaduke as a seriously old-school comic. You know, back in the Leave it to Beaver days of big doghouses and Norman Rockwell families. Which got me to thinking about how pervasive pop culture and all these new innovations are in our lives. Like, who doesn't know what OMG or LOL means? Every grandparent has email. One of our more senior attendings sent me a message from his iPhone the other day. Little kids and homeless people have cell phones.

Not bad things. But, I keep thinking, like, if my great-grandmother suddenly woke up in the middle of all of this, what would she think about it?

So this gets me to thinking about the internet, and this blog, and Facebook and email and how I have really wonderful connections going right now with people I haven't seen in ten or fifteen years, or people I've never seen at all. Which I think is what got me to the line about "I got friends I haven't met yet/I got friends I never knew." And then I got stuck on the opening verse, because I think that one (and the one about the boogeyman, and the two lines about words are hotter than flame/words are wetter than water) has just so much interpretation and philosophy attached to it...

...yeah, there's no explaining how things work in my head.