'Tedious and breif'

If you love podcasts and especially the investigative journalism kind, and you haven't listened to “S-Town” yet, find it on your podcast app right now.

(Not just because it's an audio masterpiece, but selfishly, so I can have another person to talk to about it.)

In my new chapter of living by myself I've been listening to a lot of podcasts. Since a friend of mine that I recommended this series to finally started it, I decided to join in and re-listen to it.

I've often joked that if I could erase my memory I would just so I could re-listen to “S-Town”. But what I forget is that I can often enjoy media again if it's been a few years because I forget so many details anyways so it's kind of like new.

Though I am aware of the general narrative arc of this story, I'm in love once again with the story and the way the radio producer tells it. I don't want to give anything away or even try to encapsulate the meandering exposition of the life of John B. MacLamore, his life philosophy, and the adjacent stories of the people in his life.

Instead, I just want to take a moment and reflect on why I pressed pause at the beginning of the final episode.

I have a habit of not finishing books (or apparently) podcasts that I like. I've never actually finished Nine Kinds of Naked (a book I'd be quick to tell you is my favorite book) because as I get closer to the end, I love the story so much that I don't want to finish it. I'll put it down for sometimes years at a time and then pick it back up and start from the beginning again.

I realize that there's a parallel between Nine Kinds and the podcast, “S-Town”. They are both about the nature of time and how it is far more complex and less linear than we might think.

One thing I'll tell you about John B. is that he is an expert horologist, one who makes or repairs things that measure time like clocks, watches, and sundials. Apparently, it's common for sundials to have motto or saying printed on them. He's heard repeating this one on the podcast: "Tedious and brief."

As in, life is tedious and brief.

It could sound morbid or negative, but I find it refreshing. A reminder that we all trudge through the tediousness of life and we only have so much time. (Hey, I'm the person who when her friend told her last weekend that there's an app called We Croak that will remind you 5 times a day that you're going to die, I responded with, "I'm downloading that right now.")

So why do I hit pause on a podcast I'm enjoying, or put down a book that I "can't put down"? The answer is that I don't know. But when the theme of the story has to do with time, I feel like I want to play with fate a little bit and let her bring me back to the story "at the right time." I have this belief that the day that I DO finish Nine Kinds of Naked, it will all make sense as to why that moment was when I needed to finish it.

Re-listening to “S-Town” as I washed my dishes last night I couldn't help but reflect on the timing of this second listening. The first time I heard it, I was just rounding out the first year of my marriage when my husband had recommended it to me. We were listening to it separately but around the same time so we were able to discuss the eccentricities of John B. and the story that surrounds him. We could gasp in amazement together as we recounted some of our favorite moments. We had that to share.

Now, I'm listening to it mostly while I'm tidying up the home that we once lived in together, where I now live by myself. The home that for many years before dating my husband I lived with other roommates, most of which haven’t liven in Tampa for years. These walls contain over a decade of memories.. My husband and I are now separated, have filed for divorce, and we don't talk that often. Not enough for me to say, "Hey, I'm re-listening to “S-Town” and I still love the part where ..."

I do have my friend to discuss it with and that's been great, but it offers such a contrast to where I was the first time through. It's as if through re-listening, I'm bending these points in time. The newly-wed me and the facing-divorce me. What remains the same? If I re-listen at another time, what version of me will that be?

Questions. Maybe answers. But always more questions.

At least I know, that I only have so much time. And I have a sense to trust in the timing of things. I'll probably hit 'play' on the rest of “S-Town” tonight, but I wanted to reflect on all this before I finished it.

And if you have a copy of Nine Kinds of Naked and would like to pass it on ... I lost my copy and have been waiting for it to come back into my life at the right moment to re-start (and maybe finish) this delicious tale.