how to be dead

Memories are complicated things. They rarely come to our mind in their pure forms. All too often, they are biased. We re-create them from a certain point of view. They are what we want to see as our past. We tend to exegerate the feelings we had in our memories. Bad memories become more bitter, and ordinary things that we didn't think as anything special become "good memories" as time goes by. People always want to justify their past. They want to think what they have done is right and what has tormented them as beyond their control.

That's us. That is human beings.

Memories, in many cases, are connected to other subsidiary, often trivial and minor things. Music, smell, warmth or coldness, colors, state of our body, height of the sun, things like that. When I remember something, I often remember the songs I used to listen to when I was in it. When I was in somewhere in Europe as an exchange student, I was crazy about Snow Patrol's "How To Be Dead". Its simple and calm melody suited that year's cold winter in Europe. I played it on my iPod Touch I bought there, put my headphone that I also bought there, and walked around the town endlesslly when I had time. Snow was falling and I felt I was alone, at least in that moment, far away from my home country and had nothing to turn to. As my days there were approaching the end, I made friends with many people, and I didn't feel loneliness as often as before. I started to listen to more up-tempo songs. "How To Be Dead" still remains my all-time favorite, but it has lost its special meaning for me. It was special in that moment. In that cold winter. In that beautiful, silent town covered with snow. In that strange feeling of being in between a traveler and a resident. 

Those days are gone and lately I tend to listen to peaceful songs in these busy days. Jack Johnson and Jason Mraz are my favorites. I often listen to playlists on 8tracks with tags like "chill", "sunday morning" and "indie". I don't usually listen to Snow Patrol nowadays. Sometimes I badly want to listen to them, but everytime I listen to them, the songs sound different from before. 

Different life. But your life right now is the result of what you have lived. That wind, that snow, that coldness, and that sound... they are all etched in my body and have become part of it.

Sorry if I have made mistakes in English. I'm not using it daily and I'm a bit too sleepy to read this over again.