Thursday, January 10, 2008

Living In Jungleland

Technically not a dream, but rather a daydream...

As I was working from home this afternoon, with the Galaxie Goldrock digital music channel playing on the TV, I fell fairly deep into thought about one of the Agile topics that I was pondering (it had to do with performance management, although that's not important to this story). I lost myself down a very long chain of "What if" scenarios that were quite intriguing to me at that particular moment. And then, out of the blue, my attention shifted from that strange fugue state to the music coming from the TV.

It was the long instrumental section of "Jungleland" by Bruce Springsteen, and for about 2 or 3 seconds I somehow got this overpowering impression that a person could actually live within the confines of those few notes, in much the same way that some people can be born into, grow up, grow old and die inside the loosely defined boundaries of a small town, never really knowing what's outside of it, and therefore more or less content with what little they know.

Just like a dream, this brief sensation made perfect sense to me at the time, but quickly dissolved as the mood broke. I could still remember thinking it, and how absolutely true it had felt in the moment, but couldn't really recapture it afterwards. Very weird experience.

And no, I hadn't fallen asleep or anything close to it! I'm the guy who can never sleep, remember?!

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