bubble wrap

I’ve decided to bring it down a bit tonight. You see, there comes a time when, really, we all find ourselves up at 1:30 in the morning with a bottle of cough mixture in one hand and a guitar in the other. As a good but strangely foreign friend once told me: you just write better songs when you’re drugged up on flu meds. I stand by that, current evidence vindicating.

But this isn’t a post about how I’ve just recently written what I think might be the saddest, heart-wrenching tome I’ve ever set to a standard 4-4. It’s a post about how life (and so much other stuff not included under the heading ‘life’) is like bubble wrap. Having not long ago had the pleasure of being left alone with a deliciously ample supply of what might possibly turn out to be the medium out of which the next Gaga outfit-slash-disaster is crafted, I’ve come to the conclusion that not only does bubble wrap deserve it’s title as Most Loved Packaging Material Ever, it deserves more. It’s just one of those things that has the ability to induce both divine satisfaction and deep, anxious irritation. The unmistakable contrast between the strangely worrying amount of happiness bursting a plastic bubble brings and the freakish paranoia that comes with trying to find one more bubble to pop when you’ve popped all you can and you can’t pop no more is wonderfully fitting when talking about life. And it’s wonderfully fitting at 1:45 in the morning.

Personally, I feel two extremes tonight. One the one hand, I’m an irritatingly keen and perky might-be-spiked bowl of punch for 2011. I love this year already, and am waiting with open arms for all that the next 350-odd days have in store for me. On the other, less thumbs-up hand, I’m achingly close to tears for whatever reason you can think of considering this is a blog and not a confessional. Your avid imagination aside, I turn to about a square meter of bubble wrap as a metaphor to both annoy and console me. It now lies tossed aside, most definitely used up (believe me, I checked, like, 14 times), and that makes me sad. But then again, I can still remember those heady, sun-kissed hours I spent slowly and deliberately popping the hell out of it.

Those were good times. I shall, for the next month or so, never forget them. I fearfully and with exhilaration look forward to better times ahead – for that fateful day when mom gets another parcel from Loot.com bound in that most sacred of protective packaging materials: that destined epoch when I once again experience the joy, laughter, vexation and heartache that is love. I mean, bubble wrap.