When I was in elementary school, Coca-Cola shirts were popular. They came in a lot of different colors, and somewhere along the way, I saw one in a pastel color and decided that's what I wanted for Christmas. Now, maybe I didn't really see one & just envisioned that a pastel pink Coca-Cola shirt would be nice, because my mom searched high and low for such a thing and she never found it. But that Christmas, I got one anyway. I was so pleased. It was a really good shirt & probably the last time I can remember wanting something pink. What I didn't know at the time, what I only learned years later by Mom letting it slip* was that she found a pink & white shirt and my dad hand-made a stencil of the Coca-Cola logo and painted it on the shirt for me. I had had no idea; I was floored. And very, very touched.

See, that's the thing about wanting something unattainable when you're young: your parents sometimes have the ability to make the impossible happen for you. It just doesn't seem that we have that kind of control when we're on our own. This is not a theorem I have been working on long (2 minutes max). Nay, what I created this HTML page for just moments ago was to rant at length over searching for those things that do not exist. Those intangible things that we think will give us some sort of solace if we possess them.

Today, my search has been for music. There's this one song that's been used in a couple of montages that I like. The song is "Living Dead Girl" by Rob Zombie and it first captured me as the music in a scene of an Angel episode featuring the character Faith. And it popped up again in an episode of Witchblade. Now, I don't know how my brain makes these kind of Pavlov-esque** notions & I somewhat fear that it makes me exactly the kind of target corporate America is aiming at - I just know I like that song. And it amuses me that it's the kind of song that causes some people to raise their brow at me: "You like that song?" Love it. Not a Rob Zombie fan, though. It's not the song, it's not the artist, it's the feeling the song gestates in me. Like that feeling.

So, I've been looking for other songs of a similar nature. All day. And I think I've found maybe four to try & find on Morpheus sometime. But I'm not at all satisfied that I have found what I'm looking for. Maybe it doesn't exist.

The last all-day 'net search I remember going on was for an HTML program that I could download for free for the Mac so I could use the ever-popular drag & drop, WYSIWYG method of web page creation instead of this bare bones, create it in the Geocities HTML editor method. I found nada. Well, I found that if I downloaded Netscape 6.0, then Netscape Composer should come with it. I then, of course, found out I could not download Netscape 6.0. sigh

I am also a master at deciding I want a piece of clothing that will not be popular this year. A navy blue cardigan. A deep red fitted tee. Shiny black boots without 3" heels. A button-up white shirt that doesn't make me look like a waiter.

A strand of paper lantern lights. A comic book that will give me the same satisfaction to read as Neil Gaiman's Sandman series did. Lipstick that is long lasting but doesn't dry out my lips. The search for the thing that does not exist. I am not even going to mention the desire to find people that fulfill a missing something inside of me.

I once decided that the music I like best is the music that finds me. Rarely has a favored item of clothing been one that I tracked down. So here's what I'll do: I'll stop the random casting into the 'net to find that un-ubiquitous piece of music. The more desperately I try to track it down, the less likely I am to find it and the more sure I am to be disgusted with my efforts. Maybe I'll just keep my eyes and ears super-open next time I'm watching an episode of Angel. I'll let the music find me.

* Similar to the way my Grandmother let it slip that a couple of kittens once drowned in my parents' backyard pool.