My album is Hard Candy by Counting Crows. I don’t remember why I bought it, but for the fall of 2002, it had a near permanent home in my car’s CD player. Beginning to end and end to beginning. The songs were a strange intensified echo of what was going on in my life.

These are the circumstances: I thought I was trying to be in love with two men at the same time. The real situation, in retrospect, was that I didn’t realize I wasn’t in love with my boyfriend of four years, and I found myself desperately infatuated with someone else. Inevitably, without being technically unfaithful, I was lying to everyone, myself most of all. My boyfriend had to have been willfully ignorant (he was pretty smart except when it came to me) because not one of my friends was fooled by anything I claimed. Hence, the comfort of Adam Durwitz’ voice cracking on emotion that melodies could not contain.

The intervening years (and the influence of my husband) have changed the way I listen to music. Reactions are still viceral, but the depth of the experience flows more from the music itself, and less from outside associations. So a couple of weeks ago, I started wondering how I would react to this album if it came into my life now. Because of those few months, a bloated emotion experienced within a negligible duration, I have a relationship with these songs that colours any objective evaluation of their merits. But the real question is does that matter? Do I need to be able to extricate the music from the memory to evaluate it in terms of present experience?

As a mini-experiment, I put Hard Candy into heavy rotation on my iPod (listening from start to finish once every few days) to see if the separation was possible. For the first few listens, the memory was so vivid the experiment seemed like misplaced nostalgia. I could recall the roads I drove, the texture of the air: late autumn, late night sharpness spiced with fallen leaves drenched in late season rain and early frosts. And of course, each song had underlying harmonics of emotions that had absorbed too much of me for too long.

I should have known it was all related to Pavlovian conditioning: the dogs eventually stopped salivating at the sound of a bell. Each time I listen to the album now lessens previous associations. By asking the question, I began being able to evaluate this one album on its own terms. Eureka. Or something. Because it isn’t quite that simple. Complex neural patterns have been established in my brain; I still enjoy the memories and want to maintain some aspects of their intensity while understanding that none of those people really exist in present terms. Weakening the link is valuable only if I want, on occasion, to enjoy the music itself.

I’m not sure these questions will have any long-term effect on my relationship to music in general, but I’m glad I took the time to explore. I know now that Hard Candy appeals to me on a level beyond objectivity. Guitar riffs, lyrics, over-dramatic production burrow deep into my skin and feed me on a level deeper than analysis. The memories can slide in and out of the experience as they please. I’ll just pour myself another glass of wine. And listen.

Separation, impending or imminent, highlights importance and unimportance. Faces and hearts and minds. The ones I will cherish. Carry through and through and through no matter where the world sets me. The others I will quietly wipe from the slate. Spend an evening shredding evidence and walk away smiling.

I’ve spend the last two days purging old memories. Photographs. Letters never sent. Half-written stories from half-my-life ago. Diaries of a seventeen-year-old me. But I kept the billet-doux passed in elementary school halls. Handwritten letters from lovers (former and current) and friends. All the bits explaining how I came to rest in this moment.

When the pictures have finally come down from the walls. After we have cleaned between the tinny echoes of empty rooms. Once the car is crackling forward on the gravel that never gets completely cleared from these streets. I may acknowledge the sadness of packing up and disconnection. I will frogleap into the west coast rain and resolve my life into waves.

Constance says that isn’t what she meant, so she asks me what I’m waiting for. I say: The right kind of silence. A mid-morning kiss. An evening alone. The light to change. The sky to break. The words to drift past. That song to play again. These seconds to tick the minute-hand to just the right angle. A better day. A shorter month. Less sunlight. A whisper inside my skull.

Constance complains that I never understand her. I kiss her forehead. And nod.

2. I got the twitter. I have no idea why I joined, and I’m not really sure I understand what the point is. But if you’re on twitter and you want to follow me (or if I can follow you), look me up. My username is “milkcratejess”. I remain uncertain and wary. For now.

3. My mind is in turmoil, and my heart has sunk. I have found out that my husband considers mashed potatoes a radical shift in the Christmas dinner traditions of his family. I argue that roasted potatoes are not my forte, and that I’m quite good a preparing mashed potatoes. Besides, I miss them sometimes.

4. The September weather has been dismayingly uncooperative. It persists in breaking records for daytime high temperatures. I want to wear sweaters, and I’m sick of my summer clothes. Far more sick than I ever get of my winer clothes. I want to wear boots. And my new wool hat.

5. I ought to have been in bed an hour ago.

I feel guilty about this lack of discipline, even though I likely read more poetry than the average North American. My guilt is rooted in this: I am a writer of poetry. Poems have always been my preferred output, and they are relatively rarely my literary choice. I used to believe, as many young writers do, that reading too much poetry would stifle my creativity and somehow deform my developing voice. Which, of course, is poppycock. Far from being damaging, reading good poetry is a humble reminder that every single thing has been written about a thousand times over and the best you can hope for is a slightly new arrangement of words. If you’re very lucky, you might discover an underused metaphor to exploit. Creative isolation only leads to unreadable drivel and a sense that you’re among the best poets of your time. But because I am aware of all this, I should be reading as much poetry as I can get my hands on as often as I can get my hands on it.

The truth, however, is undeniable: poetry is hard. Even when it’s short and simple and charming, it demands cognitive space that I don’t often believe I have. Understanding and enjoying a poem requires a mental state that is out of phase with the movement of life. Which is why I think we need it more than we know and why I don’t bother with it often enough. I’ve let my mind become flabby with too much prose, and it doesn’t like the exercise of trying to understand four lines of good poetry.

But putting in the effort to find good poems and reliable poets is usually rewarding. Poets notoriously look at people and emotions and events cockeyed. And then they share their cockeyed vision in the fewest words possible. They can tilt and jostle you, then guide around the house looking into a mirror that’s pointed at the ceiling. It can be incredibly liberating to stand on your head, even if it’s only for a few lines in a year.

I am hopeful that I can find a larger place for other people’s poetry in my life. I do have my favourite poems and poets, and I would like to keep discovering them. Discovering more. Sharing them and encouraging others to discover and share. Because if I’m not promoting and supporting other poets, I can’t complain that no one is promoting or supporting me.

And now, you drive me crazy every time we play Trivial Pursuit.

There is also a whack-a-mole game. But just one.