with the red and black lumberjack, in the back, with a hat to match

...i might use that lyric more than any other...except for every bob dylan line, i suppose...tater and i saw bob dylan when we were 17 years old. her mother drove us to UCLA some time in may, i believe...it was a monumental trip. we were, of course, in the nose bleeds...we cried like we were seeing the backstreet boys...except that would be those girls, and this was us...fanning out on a 60+ year old man, and not just to be unlike the other girls in our class, and not just to impress the bohemians at our high school (there were none), and not because our fathers had listened, first...but anyway, tater had been searching through his words from about 14 on - i just, last week, came to understand some lines of his from love minus zero / no limit...but tater has always understood everything...she gets everything, at once, from every angle...she gets every one, too, from every angle...their moves their notions their p.o.v., their motivations...she is always right, and i always hope that she's always right...and i hinge my future happiness, at times, on ways that she says i'm going to get out, or through, and i hinge my moods on promises she makes ME, about me...and i hinge my respite on an answered text or a thorough email and sometimes i print them out and put them in my pockets and read them on the train like her messages were a personalized magazine article, with secrets only for me, and between only us...on most days, i look to her as some sort of magic 8 ball, and it has been like that since we were children...our chemistry / our roles were defined for us and at times maybe we fought it or rejected it or played into it or didn't play into it enough or ignored it or didn't want it or thought it meant more or less than what it really means and it wavered but never...really...that much.....and so we assume our adult-ish roles in our own lives, accompanied by a heavy past in our collective memory, an unbroken trust and a unique sort of dialogue... and i think that over time, we just love each other more...

i remember the afternoon tater had found 'blood on the tracks.' we lay on her bed in her wonderful room that i always wanted to be in more so than mine on silkwood drive...her mom usually wasn't home from work before six, and tater had received a stereo with a 6-cd changer, and a remote to match...so we listened to tangled up in blue and by the day's end she had already memorized it...sometimes we went for drives in the orchards just to sing out loud with the windows down...2 years ago we did the same thing on our last trip to santa cruz, in february of '08...i danced in the passenger seat to make her laugh - i always over do it - and i always try to hit the notes i would never try to hit on my own, or care about, on my own, because if i hit them it's funny, and if i don't, it's still funny...and regardless, i wouldn't make any unnecessary noise if she wasn't listening...

happy birthday kmb, from now 'til infinity.