Flashback Friday: "Find out who you are, before you regret it"

So it's not quite Friday yet, but I thought I'd get this out there. I'll try to devote Fridays to music and posting interesting songs-- hopefully with a "flashback" retro theme, but it probably will just be some awesome song that I want to share with everyone.

Shirley Manson of the band Garbage is one of my heroes--hands down. When I was a teenager, she was the epitome of cool, and she still is! When I first heard this song, it reminded me of my best friend. She and I share this love of trains, but she used to ride the subways of New York aimlessly for absolutely no reason except to ride the damn train. She's awesome. But now that we're both grown up, the travel bug, has hit us harder than normal. Especially me. Life hasn't turned out the way I expected, and I think when you're young and jaded, you want the world to fill those expectations you always imagined as a child. Life should be about adventure, exploring, and feeling big emotions. Maybe I should take some cues from Ms. Manson here... she's got the right idea.

"Find out who you are, before you regret it. Cuz life is so short, there's no time to waste it..."

Garbage- Run Baby Run (link expired)
(Buy Album: Bleed Like Me)

"That lightning bolt was mine"

Gabriel Garcia Marquez is a great writer, although he has his moments where the surrealism goes way over my head. Not this time, and not with Of Love and Other Demons. I remember I was reading this particular passage on the subway, and I was just completely blown away. I was having a Rory Gilmore moment and was going to whip out my highlighter so I didn't forget what I just read. You know when you're reading something and there's just a quality about the writing that just resonates with you? The moment is something you don't forget, and despite all that can be wrong with the world, in that second, and point in time, everything just makes sense.

A little background: A marquis is in love with a woman named Dulce Olivia. She is an expert in paper folding and would communicate with him through messages written in little paper birds. However, she is deemed unsuitable by his family and he is forced to marry Dona Ollala. One day, Ollala is sitting underneath an orange tree in a storm and is struck by lightning.

The Marquis ordered a queen's funeral, at which he made his first appearance in the black taffeta and waxen color he would wear forever after. When he returned from the cemetary, he was surprised by a storm of little paper birds falling like snow on the orange trees in the orchard. He caught one of them, unfolded it, and read: That lightning bolt was mine.

A flurry of paper birds... that is love no?