Sunny, expected high of 117
Sunday here is a working day (Friday-Saturday is the weekend), and Memorial Day doesn't exist in that life-giving-three-day-weekend way. We get a break for Eid (the abbreviation for the holiday celebrated when Ramadan's month of fasting comes to an end), but Oman doesn't know that it's race weekend in Indianapolis, that we're supposed to be having cookouts and staying up late tonight watching marathons of long-gone cult sitcom shows and old movies because there's no work tomorrow. Oman doesn't know that this is a downtown fireworks after the baseball game weekend, lake weekend, a colored-paper napkin party weekend, a poolside weekend, a pitch-in-potluck-picnic weekend. A cabin weekend, a hiking weekend, a weekend when we revel in the always-early, always-on-time heat of full summer (heat that pales in comparison to the oven-baking we've been getting here since late March!) by indulging in just a bit of sun worship with cool drinks nearby.
The girls (Ellen, Miriam, Leigh and I) spent yesterday on a little excursion to interior Oman (Dank, pronounced d-th-ah-nk) to visit one of our local friends and her new baby. It was some things that a Memorial weekend should be - it was hot, we ate amazing food (including southern-style fried chicken, which is a way they love chicken here), hung out and visited a water-spot: the Wadi (a valley creek that fills with water), but on the hour-plus drive home, while we jammed to some American favorites and watched the sun go down over the desert landscape, I drifted back to some of the memories the music conjured.
Dramatic end-of-high-school-coming-of-age songs; relaxed, college day drifting and driving through Kentucky backwoods tunes; summer days at outdoor concert melodies; albums that identify with working on such-and-such a project at work because I listened to the single every morning during rush-hour for six months straight; hits that became ringtones and remind me of the friends to which they were assigned after long hours of cramming at month-long-pharma training camps; the ridiculous pop smashes that littered the repetitive iTunes playlists that were the soundtrack to parties thrown (and workouts survived) by me and my girlfriends back home.
I've always been sensitive to sensual things like music, particularly, and smells, seeing portions of a memory's vision stored away that conjures deja-vu or a vivid and identifiable feeling. Most people are, but I embrace it, love it - for the good and the bad it may bring up. Because that's life, right? And it's better to live it than forget it.
A few tunes that remind me of our life and times here:
Every Time We Touch - David Guetta
Walking on a Dream - Empire of the Sun
The Fear - Lily Allen
Hot n Cold - Katie Perry
Poker Face - Lady GaGa
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