Today is Sylvia Plath’s birthday. Probably, the most famous literary suicide victim. It struck me that today was her birthday and seemed an oddly fitting way to bring my recent musings and readings about suicide to an end. I mean, it’s all just really odd coincidence isn’t it?

Then tonight over tator tots my friend who is defying a nickname at the moment started talking about how she has become obsessed with the idea of nostalgia and how it’s longing for something that never was, a longing to go back to a fantasy. I told her how I had just written a bit about being nostalgic and that AC, an I Will Dare reader, had some interesting things to say about it. Again, just weird timing. Right?

So when I got home tonight to find not one but two e-mails from people I knew back in 1994 (the very time my I was being nostalgic about) my head popped off. Seriously? How weird is that. I am not even sure if these two people even know each other. One was reading the ‘Mats book, I think the other was trolling Facebook.

Seriously folks, how much synchronicity can one person brush off? And, more importantly, what does it all mean?

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Every time I pick up one of these books I step into a hole in the time-space continuum and it’s 1994 all over again. In fact, it’s so 1994 up in this hizzy that I am actually wearing a shirt I bought in 1994. I like to think that the wearing of the 1994 shirt has more to do with the 55-degree temperature (and my inability to buy any new thermal, long-sleeved longwunderwear shirts) than anything else, but that’s just denial.

Also, I must interrupt this train of thought to tell you that I have new orange socks. I am not generally a socks fan, but these orange socks have me singing a new tune. The love I have for these socks is greater than anything I’ve experienced in a long, long time. These socks give meaning to my life. They are my inspiration.

Anyway, the latest reason for the hole in the time-space continuum is Juliana Hatfield’s memoir When I Grow Up.

I have a soft spot for Hatfield. She was my gateway drug to the likes of Liz Phair, Tori Amos, and virtually every other woman who rocked the 90s. Sure, I had dug chick singers before but they were mostly of the Janet Jackson/Madonna/Cyndi Lauper ilk. Until 1993 my musical sensibilities had mostly been formed by KDWB.

Then I met Jeff Johnson and everything changed. He was the first genuine music geek I’d ever known and he was constantly pushing new things to listen to, introducing me to a new world of music. He had it bad for Juliana Hatfield and his affection rubbed off on everyone around him. In my mind she always be Liz Phair’s nicer, less angry kid sister.

So now I’m 40 or so pages into the memoir (which, like all of them, is good enough, no talk of recoupable debt yet, so I’m happy) and this morning I had to resist the urge to dress in flannel, get stoned, and watch Reservoir Dogs.

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And here’s what I came to tell you, the joy of listening to “Rearviewmirror” as loud as your ears can handle doesn’t dissipate. Ever. Try it, you’ll see that I’m right.

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