Neko Case, Calling Cards

I’m sorry I’m sorry but every August as soon as the season starts to show the slightest whiff of wanting to change my brain gets totally colonized by nostalgia and all I want are moody tunes about missing people.

Somewhere I still have an old calling card that I could use to make long distance calls and have them billed to my mom and dad. I remember using it at a payphone in Toronto to call a boy I thought I loved. He was an idiot, ultimately, but there’s something so tantalizing and exciting about remembering the feeling of a crush and the sense of hope and possibility it represented: that moment before heartbreak and disillusionment when anything you ever wanted seemed possible.

I think I’m happy now but sometimes I miss that limitless feeling. I think I’m happy now because I don’t have to fear the dark shadow of that feeling, the dark shadow that came out when things didn’t go the way I wanted. Sometimes I get so mad that I wasted time chasing the idiots who embodied that feeling when there are actual people in my life who actually love me. The people I would actually love to call from far away to hear their voices.

I don’t know where this autumn wistfulness comes from but sometimes I feel like I could just fall into it forever.