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My iPod’s random shuffle has been on a retro-kick these last few days, pulling me decades back into a wave of nostalgia. When’s the last time I listened to INXS, Suzanne Vega, Billy Idol, or Camper Van Beethoven? I really couldn’t say.

One track hit me hard, one the way back from lunch. It was a tumultuous time in my life; filled with uncertainty about the future and my girlfriend at the time, feeling very … lost. It was late at night, perhaps around 2am, and I was alone driving down Lincoln Avenue in Phoenix. There were no other cars on the road, and Camelback Mountain was close enough to block out much of the light of the city, although I could barely see the stars through the tears that began jumping involuntarily from by eyes.

_ How can I believe that everything in this world is going to be fine?
How can I believe that everything in this world has its place and time?
When I lay down to sleep, I feel the world spin
Slightly off axis, it’s shaped like a fig
And when I lie next to you, I shiver and shake
You tell me you love me, I dream I’m awake

How can I believe that everything in this world is going to be fine?
And how can I believe that everything in this world has its place and time?
‘Cause when I lay down to sleep, I have the same dream
Of a world-famous actress in a pink limousine
And she flies through the sky in that pink Cadillac
While the boys of the Press, we drink vodka in back
And she tells us our fortune by crumbling leaves
And she teaches us card tricks, the Jack makes us weak
She divines water by dancing a jig for the boys of the Press
She will whistle a pitch –
_

It touched me then, adding a compassionate but unpredictable thrust to my tailspin. But somewhere between there and here, I evolved. I can still summon that old me – and sometimes it’s summoned for me – and I love that I still have that part of myself. It humbles me. It gives me hope that I’ll some day be double this growth, that I’ll be one more story up on the helix of personal evolution, and I can look down the spiral and say “without those levels below me, I couldn’t be who I am today,” and then, glancing up, “and that is where I’m going. And I will get there.”